The Foundation of Organizational Redesign I: How to Identify Your Key Challenges

Redesigning an organization is more than just shifting boxes on an org chart. It is a strategic intervention that requires a "brutally honest" look at your current state. To build an organization that is fit for the future, you must first diagnose the friction points of today.

Identifying key challenges involves a blend of qualitative feedback, quantitative data, and structural analysis. Here is a comprehensive guide on how to audit your current organizational design to pave the way for a successful transformation.

Download our free guide to identify the root causes of your organizational friction and lay the foundation for a successful organizational redesign.

1. Leverage Multi-Level Retrospectives

To understand where an organization is failing, you have to talk to the people doing the work. Facilitated retrospectives across various levels and departments are essential for surfacing the "hidden" hurdles in your delivery pipeline.

• The frustration audit: Ask teams what slows them down, what confuses them, and what causes the most daily frustration.
• Theme mapping: Look for commonalities. Are these challenges universal (systemic issues), or are they specific to certain pockets of the business (contextual issues)?
• Top-down reflection: Ensure the leadership team undergoes the same process. Leadership bottlenecks often look very different from operational ones.

2. Analyze KPI Trends (Leading and Lagging)

Data provides the objective proof needed to justify a redesign. By analyzing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that impact organizational success, you can spot downward trends before they become crises.

• Align with strategy: If your goal is innovation, track your lead time for project delivery. If you are focused on core growth, monitor customer acquisition and margins.
• Balance your indicators: Use lagging indicators to see past performance, but prioritize leading indicators (like consumer engagement) to identify shifts that haven't hit the balance sheet yet.

3. Visualize Your Structure vs. Your Operating Model

There is often a significant gap between how an organization is drawn and how it actually works. Visualizing both is the only way to see where value gets stuck.

• The hierarchy: Map out the formal reporting lines.
• The operating model: Map how value actually flows through that hierarchy.
• Root cause analysis: Try mapping the frustrations from your retrospectives directly onto these visualizations. You will often find that a "people problem" is actually a "structural problem" or a flaw in the operating model.

4. Decode Culture with Surveys

Culture is the "operating system" of your organization. Tools like the Competing Values Framework (CVF) allow you to quantify how different groups perceive the company's values.

• Identify misalignments: Surveys are most powerful when they reveal gaps. For instance, leadership might perceive a culture of high autonomy, while the teams feel a lack of agency.
• Clarity of identity: Understanding the current cultural "As-Is" prevents you from designing a "To-Be" state that the organization is culturally incapable of adopting.

5. Assess Organizational Agility and Maturity

Modern organizations must be resilient and responsive. Assessing the maturity of your current practices can highlight why the organization feels stagnant.

• Priority and Focus: Do teams have clear priorities, and—more importantly—are they protected so they can focus on them?
• Quality and Rework: Is work done right the first time, or is there a loop of "rework" that suggests a lack of technical or process maturity?
• Transparency and Pivot Speed: Can you accurately see the progress of projects? When the market shifts, how quickly can the organization realistically change direction?

Final thoughts

A successful organizational redesign isn't based on a "hunch"—it’s based on a diagnostic. By combining cultural insights, KPI trends, and structural mapping, you create a roadmap for a redesign that solves actual problems rather than just moving people around.