Organization, Change & Leadership

When an organization doesn’t meet its stakeholders’ needs and expectations, the cause may not be a misguided strategy or vision.

Instead, underperformance is often the result of a misalignment of the company’s strategy and its many complex, interacting organizational parts. To address such situations, Booz & Company designs new operating models, based on market economics and customized to deliver against shareholder expectations, customer needs, and the relationships among the constituencies in the organization’s extended enterprise.

Tailored to meet a company’s particular situation, a new operating model typically includes any or all of the following elements:

Market-like mechanisms for allocating scarce resources
A decision-rights framework that clearly identifies and motivates individuals to work, individually and together, toward strategic objectives
Profit-accountable business units formed around distinct value propositions
Overhead optimization and outsourcing based on market models to serve internal clients responsively and competitively
Lean and strategically focused head offices
Alliances and partnerships with best-in-class providers to leverage scale, access expertise, and increase flexibility
Linkages among organizational elements that measure, inform, and motivate them to effectively work together to execute the firm’s strategy
Defining the people requirements of the new operating model as well as designing the initiatives to make fundamental change happen

Booz & Company has deep expertise to not only design operating models and organizations, but also to help realize the potential of a new organization by deploying our experts in organization efficiency, outsourcing, human capital and talent management, learning and leadership development, change management, and strategic communications.

Organization Design & Organizational DNA
We take a holistic approach to organization, from the structural elements of organization design (corporate operating models, business units, functions) to the informal elements that influence its success. Our Organizational DNA capability examines the underlying factors that together define an organization’s “personality” and help explain its performance, distilled from years of experience studying how companies organize and execute. read more >

Organization Efficiency
We assist clients in responding to competitive pressures by restructuring their organizations and achieve step-change improvements in cost performance. We help them cut costs to grow stronger, ensuring resources are placed in capability areas that will differentiate their marketplace performance. This often involves creating a lean headquarters model, setting up and optimizing shared services, leveraging outsourcing and off shoring, and redesigning business processes end-to-end. Our capabilities span the full lifecycle of a cost transformation ― from the strategy/diagnostic phase to detailed design and through implementation. read more >

People Capabilities/Global Talent Innovation
In the global knowledge economy, competitive advantage is determined and driven more than ever by human capital. Our dedicated team of functional experts and thought leaders in HR and talent management helps clients build differentiated employee capabilities across the business. We also focus on improving the capability, effectiveness, and business alignment of the HR function. read more >

Change Management
Change Management is a systematic approach for enabling an organization to transition from a current state to a desired future state. Inadequate change management increases risk of failure for any new strategy implementation or organizational transformation. Our approach is to balance formal and informal interventions to ensure that leaders drive and role model the change, people throughout the organization adopt new ways of working, and the business benefits of the change are sustained. read more >

Corporate Governance
We believe companies must look beyond mere compliance and embed corporate governance in the business processes and culture of the organization. We address corporate governance at the shareholder, board, and management levels through five service areas: Defining corporate governance framework; refocusing corporate governance on value creation; measuring performance and creating accountability; creating a complete system; and creating cohesiveness among management and board members. read more >

Our Thought Leadership

The 2012 Chief Executive Study: Time for New CEOs
This is the thirteenth year that Booz & Company has examined CEO successions among the world’s top 2,500 public companies. In 2012, 15.0 percent of CEOs at those companies left office, up from 14.2 percent in 2011. read more >

The New Functional Agenda: How Corporate Functions Can Add Value in a New Strategic Era
There is a golden opportunity today for the leaders of HR, IT, finance, operations, R&D, marketing, sales, sourcing, and other corporate functions and shared services. download (243kb, PDF) >

Silicon Valley’s Innovation Secret
Find out how you can build an innovation culture that puts the secrets of Silicon Valley to work for your company. watch video >

The Culture of Innovation: What Makes San Francisco Bay Area Companies Different?
The Bay Area is famous for its long history of leadership in innovation-based industries. Booz & Company worked with the Bay Area Council Economic Institute to identify the strategic, cultural, and organizational attributes. download (1.7mb, PDF) >

Achieving Cultural Change that Sticks
Jon Katzenbach, Senior Partner at Booz & Company with more than 50 years of experience studying corporate culture, talks about the most critical element in building a culture that's right for your company - working with your culture, not against it. watch video >

Change your Culture One Behavior at a Time
Jon Katzenbach, Senior Partner at Booz & Company with more than 50 years of experience studying corporate culture, provides his insights on how changing critical behaviors can fuel cultural transformation. watch video >

Harvard Business Review: Cultural Change That Sticks
Drawing on recent research and real examples, the article’s authors present a new approach that leverages what is strongest in an organization’s existing culture, providing a practical road map for real, substantive evolution in employees’ ways of behaving by focusing on a few critical shifts. download (1.2mb, PDF) >

Harvard Business Review: How Many Direct Reports?
This article by Booz & Company’s Gary Neilson and Harvard Business School Associate Professor Julie Wulf, published in the April 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review, looks at the logical evolution of a CEO’s span of control and offers advice for managers as they progress in their careers. download (600kb, PDF) >

Attacking Overhead Costs from Both Sides
"Business is flat. I need to cut overhead costs quickly to meet my earnings forecast. At the same time, I have to launch an even bolder round of restructuring to bring costs down 30 to 40 percent over the next three to five years." download (394kb, PDF) >

Optimizing Overhead
This in-depth guide by Booz & Company’s unparalleled team of organizational experts shows how to emulate the world’s most effective administrative leaders. Create a highly scalable strategic overhead structure that can shift quickly in the wake of mergers or new regulations. read more on strategy+business >

Leading Outside the Lines
Every enterprise has an informal as well as a formal organization. The case study approach reveals how top organizations balance both formal and informal elements to achieve outstanding results. read more >