Escalation is not a people problem. It is a design problem. When decisions consistently travel upward to people who should not be making them, the operating model is broken — not the team.
Most organisation design problems are not about org charts. They are about decision rights — who can decide what, at what level, with what information. When that is unclear or wrong, everything slows down. Not because people are slow, but because the system makes speed impossible.
We map the actual decision flows — not the theoretical ones — and redesign the operating model so the right decisions happen at the right level without requiring a meeting that should not be necessary.
If your C-suite is spending more than 30% of their time on decisions that should not reach them, the structure is misaligned — not the leaders.
When a straightforward operational decision needs sign-off from five people across three functions, the accountability structure is broken.
If the second or third restructure has produced the same frustrations as the first, the problem is not the structure — it is the decision rights inside it.
Post-merger synergies rarely fail because the deal was wrong. They fail because the operating model was not redesigned to allow the two organisations to actually work together.
Redesigning the operating model from the decision rights up — mapping what decisions need to be made, at what frequency, with what information, and by whom. We build the role architecture around the work that needs to happen, not around the people currently in the roles.
Building the RACI equivalent that actually works in practice — not the document that gets filed and ignored, but the shared understanding of who owns what that changes how meetings are run, how decisions are made, and how performance is managed.
Working with the leadership team directly — mapping how they actually spend their time versus how they should, redesigning the rhythm of the business, and building the disciplines that make a leadership team genuinely effective rather than just frequently in contact.
Designing the combined operating model that allows two organisations to function as one — resolving the structural conflicts, aligning the decision rights, and building the routines that make integration real rather than nominal. We stay until the model is working, not until the announcement is made.
A German industrial group had undergone two restructures in four years, both of which produced new org charts but did not change how decisions were actually made. We mapped the real decision flows, identified 14 categories of decision that were consistently landing at the wrong level, and rebuilt the operating model around the actual work. Decision cycle time fell by 40% within six months. The senior leadership team reclaimed 12 hours per week of strategic time.
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