A Leader’s Guide to Designing Organisations

Sooner or later, every leader has to redesign something: a team, a function, sometimes the whole organisation. Most of us do it with little more than an org chart and good intentions.

Jaimini Lakhani has spent over twenty years alongside leaders at those moments. She is a former VP Organisation Design at Burberry and has advised the British Council, Accenture, Heathrow and BP. Her work has covered industries from construction to retail, from China to South Africa. The question leaders keep bringing her is simple:

“How do I make sure my design actually improves performance?”

This session explores her answer.

Organisation design often makes the headlines, but leaders rarely understand it well. The same myths keep coming up: that design means org charts, that a redesign means job losses, or that changing roles and reporting lines will fix deep-rooted cultural problems. Leaders who act on these myths lose momentum and trust, and their strategy stalls before it’s delivered.

What you’ll take away as a leader:

• Why design is a leadership decision, not an HR exercise: how a deliberate shift in organisation strategy can change the direction of your business
• The ten myths to watch out for: the most common misconceptions in organisation design, and how they quietly shape the decisions you make
• How to make it stick: practical steps to start building organisation design capability in your organisation and keep it going

This session is part of the FirstHuman Community, a peer-group leadership accelerator for senior executives.