Redrawing who reports to whom so the units a strategy depends on sit under one accountable executive ends the cross-unit standoffs that kept it stalled.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Warranty claims on a brake component line were running at $9 million a year at an auto parts maker, and its chief executive had spent a year trying to get product engineering and plant quality to agree on a fix. Engineering reported to the chief technology officer, quality to the head of manufacturing, and every change stalled between them. He moved both groups under a newly appointed vice president for the brake business, with a single target: halve warranty claims in eighteen months. The announcement to staff gave the reason in two paragraphs, named the target, and said both previous bosses had been consulted and would keep their other groups. The chief technology officer objected to losing the engineers and said so in the leadership meeting. The move stood. The vice president's first joint review produced three design changes that had been in dispute for a year.
Why it works
When the units a plan depends on report to different executives, every disagreement must travel up two chains, and each side can wait the other out. Putting them under one accountable executive turns a negotiation into a decision, which makes the strategy far easier to carry out, and it consolidates power with whoever controls the structure. It depends on the redesigner having the authority and a real operating reason, and on the willingness to absorb the anger of executives who lose scope.
The thinking behind it
Jeffrey Pfeffer Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations (1992) treats changing the structure as a way to consolidate power, by putting allies in control of resources and information. Moving engineering and quality under one executive does that openly, for a stated operating reason: the standoff ends because one person now controls both sides of it. The same tool, used without that reason, is how reorganizations become retaliation.
When it fits
Strategies stuck because the work is split across reporting lines call for it: a product line divided between engineering and operations, a customer split between regions. You need formal authority over the structure, or the backing of whoever has it, a clear operating rationale, and a leader for the combined unit who can deliver.
How to use it well
State the operating problem first: what is stalled, what it costs, and why the current lines cause it.
- Design the new structure around the outcome, with one accountable leader and one target.
- Talk privately with the executives who lose scope before the announcement, and hear their objections.
- Announce it openly, with the reasons, the target, and what stays the same.
- Give the combined unit's leader the authority and budget the target requires.
- Review in six months whether the outcome moved.
Keep the change as narrow as the problem. Broad redesigns invite suspicion about the motive.
What it costs and where it backfires
Reorganizations cost months of distraction, and the executives who lose scope may become opponents; if the combined unit fails, the structure gets the blame. Settling disputes through structure is blunt, and people will read every later reorganization for its politics. If the stated reason is a pretext for breaking up a group that opposes you, or for isolating a person, the move has become retaliation with an org chart.
When it is used on you
Ask for the operating rationale and the target in writing, and the date of the review, when a reorganization takes units away from you. If the reasons are real, make the new unit work and protect your people's roles in it. If they look like a pretext, put the stated target on record so the result can be judged against it.