---
name: org-design
description: Designs how an organization is structured — reporting lines, team boundaries, spans and layers, role definition, and workforce planning against the strategy. Use this to structure a new team, restructure an existing one, resolve unclear ownership between teams, plan headcount, or diagnose why a team underperforms for structural rather than individual reasons.
---

# Org design

Structure determines what is easy and what requires heroics. Most persistent coordination problems
are structural and cannot be fixed by asking people to communicate better.

## Design from the work

Start with the work that must happen and its natural boundaries — where handoffs are expensive, and
where they are cheap. Draw team lines at the cheap handoffs.

Then check: can each team deliver something meaningful without waiting on another? A team that
cannot ship without three dependencies is not a team, it is a queue.

**Design the org for the work, not around the people currently in it.** Then reconcile deliberately,
noting where you have compromised and why. Structures built around individuals fail when those
individuals leave, and everyone can see they were built that way.

## Spans and layers

Wide spans push decisions down and starve people of attention. Narrow spans give attention and breed
layers, which add latency to every decision.

Roughly: five to nine reports for a manager whose people need coaching; more where the work is
consistent and the people are experienced. Every layer must add decision value — a layer that only
passes information along should be removed, and it is usually obvious which one it is.

## Ownership

Every outcome has exactly one owner. Where two teams share an outcome, neither owns it, and it fails
in the gap. Where an owner lacks the authority to deliver, the accountability is fictional.

Write down the boundaries — what each team decides alone, what needs consultation, what needs
approval. Ambiguity between senior teams is expensive and does not resolve itself.

## Workforce planning

Plan roles against the work and the plan, not against last year plus a percentage. For each proposed
role: what does not happen without it, what does it take off someone else, and what is the ramp
before it contributes?

Sequence hires so each has someone to learn from. Hiring three juniors before the senior who leads
them is a common and expensive ordering error.

## Restructuring

- Say why, plainly, and what problem it solves. People fill silence with worse explanations than the
  truth.
- Announce the whole change at once. Serial reorganizations cost more in sustained uncertainty than
  one larger change.
- Anything touching an individual's role, level, or pay goes through the people function before
  announcement, without exception.

## Sources

`references/sources.md` in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions
here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before
answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free
to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.

## Never

- Restructure to avoid a performance conversation.
- Create a role to retain someone the structure does not need.
- Leave an outcome with two owners.