Background and Challenge

A leading high-tech engineering company needed to redesign its operating model and organizational strategy.

A prior diagnostic by L.E.K. had highlighted serious issues with both efficiency and effectiveness of the existing organization — and a potential EBITDA upside of £100M per annum.

There was a need to articulate a clearer alignment between strategy and operating model and organizational choices, in particular the respective roles of the group, the business units, support functions and operating entities.

The company engaged us to address this fundamentally divisive, business-critical issue.

Approach and Recommendations

We knew from the outset that the success of the engagement would depend on ensuring all stakeholders contributing to the solution. We worked in close collaboration with a broad range of constituents throughout the organization to thoroughly understand the issues at hand, co-create solutions and test proposed recommendations.

Through creating a clearly laid-out framework to tackle the issues, we were able to navigate a minefield of complex business issues and management objections. A key challenge was to avoid the temptation to jump straight to the answer and create new roles and positions without a clear vision of the overall organizational strategy.

We created a rigorous process and structure within which to assess highly qualitative issues. We developed a detailed assessment of various operating models against key success criteria, as well as detailed decision rights to establish the key roles and responsibilities.

Working closely with the management team, we developed an end-to-end organizational strategy for the company, culminating in the design of an execution plan to embed proposed changes to the business’s operating model, roles and responsibilities.

Results

The outcome was an organizational strategy that allowed the company to truly execute against its strategic objectives. This included a detailed operating model, a clear and agreed-upon definition of various units’ roles, and unambiguous decision rights for all key processes across the organization.

Responsibility for delivering this plan was embedded within the business in the course of the design work, thus allowing for a seamless transition from design to execution.