Work and capability diagnosis
Evidence of how work creates value and where unclear decisions, duplication or difficult handovers constrain it.
03Organisation Design and Change Management
Organisational Design Framework
Design roles, decisions and working relationships around the work your strategy needs to deliver.
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Design choices grounded in work
Explicit decision rights
A transition linked to service continuity
ODFStrategy-to-Value Design Spine
Start with your situation
When this framework helps.
- A new strategy is being delivered through an outdated operating model.
- Teams duplicate work or struggle with cross-functional decisions.
- Leaders are considering a restructure without a clear diagnosis.
The decisions it supports
- Which capabilities and workflows must the design support?
- Where should responsibility and decision authority sit?
- Which design option is workable for customers, employees and the organisation?
The framework at a glance
Strategy-to-Value Design Spine
Align structure, roles, decisions and workflows with what the organisation needs to achieve.
Explore the complete model
The HR Delivery Strategy-to-Value model, dated 16 August 2026.
The approach
From strategy and capability to measurable value.
Connect strategic priorities with capabilities, work, decisions and people. HR Delivery’s Organisational Design Framework provides a structured route from understanding the current system to designing, aligning and implementing an organisation that can perform.
Structure is one part of that system. A useful design also makes accountabilities, interfaces, workforce implications and transition choices explicit.
Organisation design is most useful when it addresses a clear performance need. Growth, changing customer expectations, a new strategy, duplication, slow decisions or difficult handovers can each prompt a review. The starting question is what the organisation must achieve and which operating conditions support that outcome.
The five stages move from understanding current work to implementing an agreed design. The strategy-to-value design spine keeps the link between business purpose, capabilities, roles and decisions visible. Five design tests help compare options before selecting one; review continues after implementation to check the effect on customers, employees and delivery.
- Five connected delivery stages
- Eight links in the strategy-to-value design spine
- Five non-negotiable design tests
- Continuous review, learning and renewal
What you can take forward
Useful work. Clear next steps.
Tested design options
Alternatives assessed against strategic fit, customer value, operational coherence, people sustainability, affordability and risk.
Operating and transition design
Responsibilities, interfaces, workforce implications and a sequenced transition that maintains service continuity.
ODF · In practice
Keep the strategy-to-value design spine visible.
Every major design choice should connect to a clear purpose and its practical consequences. The eight links provide a traceable route through those decisions.
Strategy & outcomes
Define the strategic choices and results the organisation needs to deliver. Clarify success measures, priorities and constraints so that competing proposals can be judged against a common purpose.
Critical capabilities
Identify what the organisation must be able to do reliably. Examine the capabilities that support the strategy and the gaps that may constrain delivery.
Design principles
Translate priorities into explicit criteria for making choices. Principles should help resolve real trade-offs, such as consistency and local responsiveness, rather than remain broad statements everyone can endorse. State where a principle takes precedence and what evidence could justify an exception. This makes it useful when options compete.
Operating model
Describe how work creates value and how people, processes, technology and governance connect. Clarify the organisation’s main delivery relationships and the responsibilities that must work across boundaries.
High-level design
Compare the main organisational options and the logic for grouping work. Make the consequences for accountability, coordination and decision-making visible before moving into detailed structures.
Detailed design
Define teams, responsibilities, workflows and interfaces with enough precision to test how the organisation will operate. Examine important decisions, handovers and escalation points.
Jobs, grades & workforce
Translate the design into coherent roles and workforce requirements. Consider job content, capacity, capability and the relationship with the organisation’s established job evaluation and grading arrangements.
Transition & value
Plan how to move from the current organisation to the future design, maintain delivery and track outcomes. Establish ownership for implementation, stabilisation and ongoing improvement.
The spine encourages traceability. A proposed reporting line should have a defensible connection to work and accountability; a workforce change should be considered alongside its capability and delivery implications.
ODF · In practice
Five stages turn the design into an operating organisation.
The eight spine links describe the design decisions; the five stages organise the work needed to investigate, develop, approve and implement them. A later test may require an earlier assumption or option to be revisited.
Discover
Establish direction, mandate, scope and evidence. Agree the problem to solve, the decisions the work can influence and the boundaries of the review. Identify sponsors, stakeholders, existing commitments and the information needed to understand the organisation.
A clear mandate prevents the design process from drifting into unrelated changes. It also makes assumptions and constraints visible early, including areas where decisions have already been made.
Diagnose
Examine the current system, capabilities and root causes. Look at how work actually flows, how decisions are made and where service or performance becomes difficult. Combine organisational information with the experience of people doing and receiving the work.
Diagnosis should distinguish symptoms from underlying mechanisms. A coordination problem might arise from unclear decisions, poorly connected processes, capacity or conflicting priorities. Each would imply different design choices.
Design
Develop principles, options, high-level design and detailed design. Compare alternatives against the agreed criteria and explore their implications through representative work scenarios. Specify the responsibilities and interfaces needed to make the chosen option practical.
Record why an option was selected, which risks remain and which assumptions need testing during implementation. Include keeping the present structure with targeted repairs where it is a credible option. Compare a representative customer request or delivery decision across alternatives, including exceptions and escalation, before concluding that a new grouping will work.
Align
Bring together assurance, validation, roles, grades and approval. Test the proposed design with the people who perform and depend on the work, alongside formal specialist review. Check whether the proposed organisation is internally coherent, practical for its people and consistent with the requirements that govern it.
Relevant leaders and specialists should test the design before approval. Workforce, finance, technology, risk, reward and employee-relations input may be needed, depending on the change. Identify unresolved issues and the authority required to settle them.
Deliver
Plan and carry out transition, communication, implementation and stabilisation. Make responsibilities clear, prepare managers and teams, and protect essential delivery while new relationships and ways of working become established.
Implementation includes practical learning. Review whether the design behaves as intended, resolve friction and transfer ownership into everyday management. Track benefits and consequences beyond the date the new structure takes effect. Agree the operational signs of stabilisation, such as understood accountabilities, functioning handovers and manageable workloads, and the owner who will resolve remaining friction.
ODF · In practice
Apply five non-negotiable design tests.
The tests provide a shared language for comparing options and challenging the chosen design. They should be used together, with evidence and judgement appropriate to the organisation.
Strategic fit
Does it make the strategy executable? Test whether critical capabilities, priorities and accountabilities support the outcomes the organisation has chosen.
Customer value
Does it improve outcomes and reduce friction? Consider the experience of customers, service users and the people who depend on the organisation’s work.
Operational coherence
Do work, decisions and interfaces fit? Test the connections between teams and functions, particularly where responsibilities overlap or a decision must cross boundaries.
People sustainability
Are jobs, capacity and leadership viable? Examine whether the design creates workable expectations, sufficient capability and a realistic load for the people who must deliver it.
Affordability & risk
Can it be governed, funded and implemented safely? Review ongoing and transition requirements, dependencies and the controls needed to manage material risks.
These tests support accountable choices. They do not produce a universal ideal structure or replace specialist assessment where obligations or significant risks are involved.
From insight to action
Evidence and outputs that support real decisions.
The scope of diagnosis depends on the question. Useful evidence can include strategy, service outcomes, process and decision maps, role information, workload, costs and stakeholder interviews. Check its currency and coverage before drawing conclusions, and keep uncertain assumptions visible.
A proportionate design engagement can produce:
- A design mandate with outcomes, scope and decision rights
- A current-system diagnosis and critical capability priorities
- Agreed design principles and an options comparison
- A high-level and detailed organisation design
- Clear roles, interfaces and workforce implications
- An assurance and approval record
- A transition, communication and stabilisation plan
- A review approach for benefits, assumptions and unintended consequences
These are practical ways to apply the framework. The deliverables and depth should be agreed around the organisation’s decision, rather than treated as a fixed document checklist.
ODF · In practice
Protect people and maintain delivery through the change.
Use proportionate information and protect confidential employee and workforce data. Diagnose the operating system fairly, considering how work is organised and supported. Avoid treating role redesign as a judgement about the current role holder.
Keep design decisions separate from individual selection and employment processes, with appropriate specialist review and consultation. Communicate what has been decided, what remains open and how people can contribute. Local legal, safety, accessibility and employee-relations obligations require qualified advice where applicable.
Your questions, answered
Frequently asked questions
Must a design review change the structure?
No. Diagnosis may point to changes in accountabilities, decisions, interfaces or capacity. The response should follow the evidence and agreed outcomes.
Can the framework support one function?
Yes. Scope can be focused, provided its dependencies and effects on the wider organisation remain visible.
How are grades handled?
Jobs and grading implications are considered within alignment, using appropriate job evaluation and reward expertise. The framework itself does not prescribe a grading scale.
What happens after implementation?
Continuous review tracks benefits, tests assumptions, corrects unintended consequences and refreshes the design as strategy and context change.
An illustrative application
Remove duplication and slow decisions
This illustrative example shows the decisions and records the framework supports; it is not a reported client result.
The situation
An organisation’s strategy calls for faster customer decisions, but sales, operations and specialist teams duplicate checks and pass approvals between them. A proposed reorganisation would change reporting lines before the decision problem has been understood.
Explore the evidence
Discover the intended customer outcome and Diagnose a sample of decisions from request to resolution. Identify the expertise, authority and controls each step needs. Compare repairing decision rights in the current structure with alternative work groupings, using all five design tests and realistic exception cases.
Agree the next step
Design explicit accountabilities, interfaces and escalation routes for the preferred option. Align workforce, cost, technology and control implications before approval. Deliver a sequenced transition with temporary decision arrangements, manager preparation and ownership for unresolved dependencies.
Review what changes
Track decision time, rework, customer experience and workload against an agreed baseline, using comparable request types and explicit start and end points. Check whether responsibilities operate as intended and whether delays have moved elsewhere. Review the design after stabilisation and adjust the interface or authority where the work still fails, rather than declaring completion when the chart is issued.
Put the framework to work
Ready to align your organisation with what it needs to achieve?
HR Delivery can help you clarify the design challenge, compare options and build a practical route through implementation and review.