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About the guest
Herman VanTrappen is the Managing Director of Akordeon, specializing in business strategy and organization design. With nearly 25 years at Arthur D. Little as a Senior Partner and board member, he co-authored "The Organization Design Guide" and "Fad-Free Strategy." VanTrappen has published in prestigious journals like Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, and holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon and an MS in Engineering from KU Leuven. Learn more about him on his expert page.
Summary
In this episode of The Org Design Podcast, hosts Tim Brewer and Amy Springer sit down with Herman Vantrappen, internationally respected management consultant and co-author of The Organization Design Guide, for a deeply insightful conversation on what it really takes to get organizational design right.
From his very first consulting project with Arthur D. Little to decades of independent work across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Herman shares what he’s learned about how organizations function—and more importantly, how they fail when design decisions are made without context, structure, or nuance.
- Org Design is contextual, not formulaic: Herman debunks the myth of one-size-fits-all design principles and challenges popular business book advice that oversimplifies complex realities.
- Why most org design books fail leaders: Unlike trend-driven books that dramatize resilience, agility, or autonomy, The Organization Design Guide provides a robust framework tailored for real-world decision-making—not just consultants, but the leaders in the trenches.
- The CEO’s role is non-negotiable: Success in organization redesign hinges on CEO commitment from start to finish. Delegation, half-heartedness, or indecisiveness are early warning signs of a doomed project.
- Friction is often designed in by accident: Using the fictional (but painfully familiar) case of “Widget Inc.,” Herman illustrates how ambiguous structures and competing verticals can escalate small operational issues to the CEO’s desk, wasting time, damaging morale, and hurting customers.
- Structure vs. autonomy isn’t binary: In one of the most memorable moments of the episode, Herman uses a brilliant analogy—comparing snakes and earthworms—to show why agility requires a strong backbone, not the absence of structure.
Can leaders do org design without external consultants? Yes—but only with the right frameworks and internal clarity.
Q1: What behaviors do CEOs need to lead a successful redesign? Ownership, clarity of purpose, readiness for tough decisions, and control over the process.
Q2: How long does it take to redesign an org? It depends—but meaningful change can range from 3 months to a year, depending on complexity.
Whether you’re a CEO facing your first major restructure, a team leader navigating internal silos, or a consultant looking for a grounded framework—this episode will reshape how you think about designing organizations that actually work.
Show Notes
Arkordean Consulting - https://akordeon.com/
The Organization Design Guide by Herman Vantrappen & Frederic Wirtz - https://orgdesignguide.com/
CEOs Can Make (or Break) an Organization Redesign - https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/ceos-can-make-or-break-an-organization-redesign/
Dealing with Consequential Inflections and Surprises- https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2025/04/dealing-with-consequential-inflections-and-surprises/
Transcript
[00:00:00] **Tim Brewer:** Welcome to the Org Design Podcast. Thank you for joining, good to see you again. We have the pleasure today of having Herman Vantrappen with us. Herman, we appreciate you joining us on the call. How did you end up in org design and when in your life did you realize, "Oh, a majority of my time is now spent doing org design". We'd love to hear the story of how you got to what you do today.
[00:00:26] **Herman Vantrappen:** I love your expression "end up" in org design. Because in my case, the better expression would've been not end up, but " start off" with org design or even "get stuck" in org design. And that's because I've been working as a management consultant ever since I got my MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in the, in Pittsburgh at the tender age of 25. long time ago. And straight after I started as a junior consultant, with Arthur D. Little in Europe. And the very first project I did, was a major organizational restructuring, of one of the largest construction companies in the Netherlands. And org design has been a major part of my work ever since, and in particular, since 2012, at the time I was a senior partner at Arthur D. Little, but I left to start on my own as a fully independent contractor. It's the org design work that I've done since then that has also been the basis of my new book, the Organization Design Guide which I co-authored with Frederic Wirtz. Frederic and I frequently work together on org design projects for clients in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. So I've been in org design for most of my career, I would say.
[00:01:48] **Tim Brewer:** So you're doing this great work with org design. I don't know many many authors that make a lot of money during the book publishing process, it's typically just a huge amount of extra work. What inspired you to write the book and who is it for?
[00:02:03] **Herman Vantrappen:** When I'm involved in an org design project that with a client, there usually is a core team, a project leader, a steering committee and so forth. And what I like to tell them at the start of the exercise, let's all have a look at this or that framework in an article or a book so that we can share a common vocabulary and logic, as we go through the redesign exercise. I looked for such a book, that could be, serve as a framework, a logic, a vocabulary for a long time. But honestly, I did not find one, at least, not one that is publicly available. So I didn't find such a book, and that's why I decided to to write it myself.
Of course, there are countless management books on organization design. But my finding was that most of those books focus on one very specific flavor of the year, often topic, and these days you would find lots of books about, say resilience. Okay. But what happens then is that the author of these books then tend to dramatize the significance of that temporary novelty.
They use anecdotes from today's superstar firms with spectacular performance. But, these anecdotes are in fact misleading because you cannot infer from the anecdotes a generalizable or applicable recipe, That is applicable to, let's face it, 99% of the firms that are just ordinary.
And also what I found is that these authors often use simplistic formula-based solutions in the sense of if done for example, a rule might be if your business strategy is about customer centricity, then you must organize by customer segments.
No, not necessarily there are no kind of universal rules because organizational design choices are contextual. They very much depend on the company's specific situation and it's history.
So I'm not saying that all those books are useless, certainly not. They, most of them address a very relevant and timely issue. The advice they give usually makes a lot of sense. And if not, at least it's like great, feel good entertainment.
But for managing an organizational redesign process, what I find is that executives really need a robust and comprehensive framework. That means a framework that stimulates nuanced debate because Org design is often a complex and emotionally charged subject. So they need something that allows them to have nuanced debates among smart executives. And secondly, they also need a framework to to help them go in an efficient way towards clear and conclusive design choices.
So that's all of that. Long story, but I didn't find that kind of book and so that's why I decided to write it myself.
[00:05:10] **Tim Brewer:** We've seen a lot of books written to experts, experts sharing their learnings or sharing their expertise for other people getting into the org design space as a discipline or as a consultant or as a business or maybe an internal org design team that's trying to work out how to do that for the very first time in a big org. But we don't see a lot of stuff written to leaders. We're really excited by that this podcast is for everyday leaders doing great things in their companies, and so it was really cool to see that you've written a book for leaders to go on that journey of org design.
Now, obviously, when you are sharing the book with people you consult with they've got someone holding their hand, so to speak, through the process, do you see a future where a lot of people will try, and- or currently attempting org design themselves, like DIY or do it yourself org design, where they're actually leading large or small change in their own organization without External support in some cases where they have the skills or capabilities.
[00:06:14] **Herman Vantrappen:** I would assume that many companies, many managers at the CXO level or for department or given function or a business unit, they often do org design work themselves without relying on external support. They need a framework that will guide them through through this process in a orderly way, efficient way. And coming to nuanced decisions because there are so many or design topics where the debate can become very, I would say doctrinal. Hence get emotional And sometimes even with the executive team members falling into two camps. Just to give you an example, I was recently working with a business services company and there was a heated debate that they had started themselves about the self-managing teams. And one of the two camps also insisting on autonomy and agility. The other camp was really insisting on structure and alignment with the company's corporate objectives. of course, we all know that it's not an "all or nothing" thing, the autonomy without structure means chaos and structure without autonomy usually leads to a standstill.
So, in the discussion I tend to ask to the people in those two camps, what's the most agile animal, and then a snake is a pretty agile animal. I ask, how many vertebra does a snake have?
Snakes have an extremely well developed backbone. Amazing. And they have up to several hundreds of of vertebra compared with humans. 24 vertebra. So they are extremely agile, thanks to a very well developed backbone.
They are agile, but they still have structure.
And then I finally ask the almost rhetorical question, we probably agree that an earthworm unlike a snake is not very agile. And how many vertebra does an earthworm have? Of course, it doesn't have any, right, and it has no backbone.
So, this is just one example of topics where the debate can get fairly binary.
The classical one is the corporate center. The corporate health office. The corporate parents. Should we have more corporate center or less corporate center? And of course, the real question is not about more or less center. The question is really about getting a better center or should we have a matrix organization, yes or no? There again it's more nuanced than that. Or should we go for radical change or incremental change? There again, you probably need a mix.
So, the framework itself should be agnostic about the best design choice. But it should stimulate the debate about the factors that should ultimately inform the eventual design choice. That kind of framework is what this book is all about.
[00:09:10] **Tim Brewer:** Yeah. I know you published a thought piece recently on whether or not we're asking too much from leaders. What triggered you writing that piece and what do you see being too much?
[00:09:26] **Herman Vantrappen:** It was in fact based upon two observations.
The first observation is that these days you can't really open a management magazine or a social media channel without there being an article or a post about- _how to be a better leader_. And of course, such a question appeals to a very natural and universal yearning among all of us, to be, or to become a better leader. Leaders are encouraged, even expected, not only to be brilliant, of course, but also humble, servants, authentic, transformational, vulnerable emotionally intelligent, empathetic. All of those excellent qualities, and of course, I'm not disputing the importance of those qualities, but the thing is that when leaders need to activate these qualities and these behaviors in concrete situations. That consumes a lot of time and energy.
For example, they may need to activate those leadership qualities, when two subordinates, there's some conflict between them or simmering tension, and the leader has to step in and use his or her emotional intelligence to resolve the issue. And you could say, Yeah, but that's okay, that's managing people, managing tensions. That's what leaders do.
That's why we have leaders in the first place, and that's true of course, but here comes then my second observation that led to the article. Such tensions often escalate to the level of the CEO needlessly, because they're due to intrinsic design faults in the design of the organization.
In some organizations, tensions are baked into the design. Some designs are intrinsically frictional. Or at least they lack mechanisms to resolve friction at the source in the future when they occur.
And therefore, if we could avoid or eliminate such design faults and the needless escalation of conflicts, leaders could devote their sparse time and energy and their qualities to situations where these things are really needed. So that's two observations that led to that article.
[00:11:46] **Amy Springer:** You mentioned design faults,
[00:11:50] **Herman Vantrappen:** Yeah.
[00:11:50] **Amy Springer:** How would they be appearing or showing up or being felt in the organization?
[00:11:58] **Herman Vantrappen:** Let me give you an example. It's a bit of a stylized example, but it's reality.
It's a case of, Laura and Lucas both work at at the company, which I which I, we call Widget Incorporated. And Laura is the the regional commercial manager in Brazil. And sales are going a bit more slowly in Brazil than expected this year. And she's afraid she'll not hit her numbers for this year. So she's desperate to to win a specific new client because she knows if she wins that client, she will reach her numbers. But to win the client, she has to be able to offer a special off catalog product. Okay. So she turns to Lucas, Lucas is the global manager at head office in charge of the product line concerned. So to discuss, but then Lucas has to to get back to Laura and tell her Laura, "I'm very sorry, but, our capacity in our plant is fully booked until for the next six months. There's no way we can slot in your special products. I'm sorry". So the tension rises and you see what happens. The issue escalates to their respective bosses. Laura talks to her boss, who is the EVP of the regions. And Lucas talks to his boss, who is the Executive Vice President of Products. So the two EVPs start discussing among themselves. And you guess also they don't arrive at the satisfactory solution. And even worse, at the next executive team meeting the issue, the conflict leads to a very acrimonious debate which the two EVPs blame each other for chronic lack of flexibility.
So you guess the issue which was originally very operational lands on the desk of the CEO. Now, the CEO is an excellent leader. huh. And at that point she activates those various, what we discussed, very commendable behaviors. she's empathetic. She's saying, "look, I sense how strongly you feel both about this important matter". She's servant, saying, " I don't blame you for bringing this to my attention". She's humble. Saying I realize I should have put in place a way of preventing issues like this. And she's vulnerable saying, in fact, I once struggled myself with a similar issue, and so on. So she may be doing all the right things at that moment, But the real question is, could she have been spared the burden of having to deal with this originally very operational, field issue if only the company's organization had been designed differently.
As it happens, at Widget Inc, they have two primary verticals in the architecture. There is the vertical regions and the vertical products. Both have full P& L responsibility. So the two EVPs compete with one another for resources, decision power, attention. And so on. And there's no general rule that such a structure will not work. But in general, it tends to be an intrinsically frictional design. So the general message is that, when CEOs seek remedies for chronic pain points in the organization, they should not count only on, or we should not count only on those great leadership qualities. But they should also check for fundamental design faults or ambiguities in their organization design. And there are many examples like this about intrinsically frictional designs that lead to this needless escalation of operational issues to, to the very top of them.
[00:15:45] **Tim Brewer:** you multiply that out by lots of friction points. That's a really big cost. That's going to impact the organization's speed, it's gonna impact agility, all these negative outcomes, not to mention the individuals involved in the amount of time they've spent, overlapping each other in trying to get decisions made. And then the obvious customer impact who waited this whole time trying to get a decision on the purchase that they were trying to make or sale that they were trying to lock in, that couldn't get what they needed either. A Very high impact to an organization not having the right organization structure in play.
[00:16:24] **Herman Vantrappen:** An organization is a means to an end and the end of course is to achieve the company's, to talk about it at the high level it's strategic objective. And if the means are not efficient, then of course, yeah, it'll take more time or objectives will not be achieved at all. So organization is only a means, but it's a crucial means of course.
[00:16:43] **Amy Springer:** we've highlighted how critical it is to get the org design right to achieve a company strategic objectives. So it's obviously a critically important skill for our leaders. if we could click our fingers and they could all have a skill related to org design, what would it be? Or as you've more beautifully put it in your article, what behaviors must CEOs adopt to make an organizational redesign exercise successful? But yeah what do those skills look like?
[00:17:19] **Herman Vantrappen:** Yeah, of course, many but in fact, in that article to which you're referring in the Sloane Management Review we based that article on my co-author and I, we looked at the more than 30 major re redesigns we have done in the past. And we look back at why some of these assignments or redesigns, were sometimes less effective than others. Okay. And there are of course always many and specific explanations for that. But one thing came back and was our headline is that the most important success factor for successful organization redesign, if you talk about it at corporate level or company-wide level, is that the CEO should take full ownership of the redesign process from start to finish, less so than in strategy exercises, where you can delegate to a task force or or a project team, and then the CEO can stand back and wait for the proposal to come to you and approve to disapprove it. In org design it's really crucial that the CEO is involved personally and directly from start to finish. And okay, that's bit abstract, but what it means and why they do it, why they should do it, there are probably four reasons for it.
First, they want to think themselves about the pros and cons of alternative designs. As of course, **there's not a single, best and perfect design**. Therefore, CEOs want to give themselves the opportunity to form their own ideas about a fit for purpose design. They don't leave the thinking to a project team or to a consultant for that matter. So what we've seen is that effective CEOs in redesign process, first of all, they get personally involved from start to finish to think through the solutions themselves.
Secondly, they want say involved because in a, in an org design process, as it progresses, Inevitably there are some explicit or implicit micro-commitments are being made throughout , about people, about roles, about reporting lines, what have you, and CEOs want to spot improper design ideas that might emerge early before these ideas Gain momentum and start taking on the line of their own. So that's the second reason why they stay involved.
The third reason is that They want to be able, the CEOs to communicate the outcomes of the design exercise in a credible and, of course, convincing way. So when the, having a town hall or speaking to internal audience in general they want to feel comfortable to, to provide unscripted answers to unforeseeable questions. And they can only do so credibly, if they themselves have immersed themselves personally in the real actual design work.
And the final reason why effective CEOs insist on being personally involved from start to finish is that by doing so, they get direct exposure to large groups of people outside the top man, top management team, if whom they otherwise might not have much contact. And so they will be better placed to see how people in the organization really think, how they behave, how they interact. And so they get the better feel for the people side of business. And eventually that's what org design is all about. It's about people. CEOs get personally involved from start to finish directly.
But there's one more thing which we found and that applies to even before the start of an org design exercise. And they should ask themselves four questions.
The first question is about being half-hearted. The question is, do I, as CEO, do I fully believe in the redesign initiative? Because an exercise led by a half-hearted CEO is, of course, off to a bad start. **So, am I really convinced about the need for this redesign initiative?**
The second question is about the risk of being too appeasing. The question they should add themselves, **will I, as CEO listen to the right people? Without letting the process go off track**. CEOs, of course, it's important that they listen to many people, but they can go overboard and try to appease as many people as possible and getting into endless situations. But at some point, a CEO, must conclude, decide, and freeze the design.
The third point of introspection is about the question of being indecisive. The question is, again, am I, as CEO **prepared to make tough decisions where needed, and then even more importantly, stick to those decisions?** I've seen examples quite a few times, and it's a terrible, ex terrible thing to happen is that where a CEO ultimately is giving into an kind of "over my dead body" threatened by a manager, who happens to disagree with a Decision made by the executive team, of course, giving into those threats is devastating for the CEO's credibility.
And the fourth point of introspection is about being incapacitated. And that means do I, as CEO, **am I in control of all the levers I need, I we need to pull in this redesign exercise**, for example if the board of directors has an executive chair, or if there was a director who used to be the CEO and the Founder. There is a natural tendency for many of those people to short circuit the CEO and talk directly to people in the organization and protect their old favorites and so on. So if as a CEO at the start of the exercise, you sense that maybe one of those four vulnerabilities applied to myself, being half-hearted, too appeasing, indecisive incapacitated. Then think about what you can do to actually mitigate those vulnerabilities.
[00:23:19] **Tim Brewer:** It seems so obvious, or feel, feels obvious to me, but it's really interesting to see that data come through rather than just feel logical and common sense that actually in the out in the trenches is one of the most important factors correlated to success of an organizational change.
Herman. Now, I know you consult, still consulting to organizations, how do people know if they're listening to the podcast, if they're a right fit for the type of work you do? And they're thinking actually, Herman and his work sounds right for me. How do they know what kind of Organizations or industries do you work with?
[00:23:56] **Herman Vantrappen:** If you're a strategy consultant doing business strategy, of course, business strategy is very much sector specific, industry specific. As a strategy consultant, you tend to focus on the particular industry sector, say banking or automotive or whatever.
In org design work, in fact, it's much less the case because , I've come across quite a few times across two direct competitors in the same industry, same size, even same headquarters in the same country, so similar culture, and both are equally successful. But still, they have totally different organization designs. So I'm saying this to say that all design approaches are actually deployable across all industries. They're not that specific. And that's why in fact, I observe myself that I work across many different industries. And also the framework I was referring to is applicable to small companies as for large companies, even public, as opposed to commercial enterprises government organizations it's fairly universal. So it's a logic that is applicable, widely applicable.
Your second part of your question was how long does it take? Typically what we do is we start off with and that's very, that's attract crucial is to with kind of a phase where you very well defined. what do you want to achieve with an org design?
As we said before, an organization is a means to an end. So if you don't have to change the design, certainly don't do it.
So it's very important in the first phase to define what are we trying to achieve, what are the benefits we're trying to achieve. Not yet talk about solutions, but about the inspired benefits and also very importantly in org design is to what are our freedoms of design or vice versa. what can we not touch during the redesign because the Board has imposed certain boundaries or maybe there's some legal restrictions, whatever. So defining well the criteria, the objectives, pursuits and the degrees of freedom is a very important part.
Again, depending on the size of the company, it may take, four weeks, six weeks, and I'm always wary of consultants who come with a PowerPoint slide the five bullet points. These are the five things you have to address. And that's it. I think that systems thinking is very important in organization design. Because an organization is a system and there's not a single cause of the problems, it's often a mix of interlocking factors. And getting a grip on that is is extremely important. So that say four to six weeks then you have the very important, also the concept design phase where you look at alternative solutions.
As I said before, there's not a single best solution. It's always almost a matter of choosing the least bad solution. So you have to develop a couple of alternative solutions, check them against the design criteria, and then go for the best possible solution from those various alternatives. So that's the concept design phase. That's very variable. It can be two months, three months.
Then you get into the detail design phase where you take the selected concept and really detail it out. You get, you involve more people. It's much more participative. There again, it can range from couple months to to six months. And then once the design is completed, then and approved, then you transition to the, what we call sometimes day one, day one is the day where you go live with the new design, but you have to prepare it very well because you cannot afford disruption.
So there is a transition phase, again, maybe two months. So all in all, depending on if you, add it all up depending on the size and the complexity and the scope, maybe between three months and a year for really comprehensive redesigns. But again it's very variable. It's hard to make a general rule.
[00:27:55] **Tim Brewer:** Yeah. the domain of where people can find your book? Is it available on Amazon? The org design guide, where can people find your your work?
[00:28:07] **Herman Vantrappen:** Yeah. The book was published by Routledge late last year. So it's available on the Routledge website. But other than that it's available at all all retailers starting with Amazon and any other publisher or distributor. And there is a website where you can find a Q& A also some video tutorials. If you want to get the first feel for what it's all about.
[00:28:29] **Amy Springer:** if I'm a CEO listening, we've already got an org design project underway, and I've just picked up your book, not much time, which chapter should I jump into first.
[00:28:44] **Herman Vantrappen:** I would pick, there is a kind of an overview of the whole, what I just explained, the different phases and so on,Explaining the different building blocks of the framework and the logic. So I would start there, chapter two, and then chapter five looks at gives **overview of the concept design phase. I think the concept design phase is critical.** Then we can, it consists of sub blocks, and chapter five explains those sub blocks in quite some detail.
[00:29:12] **Tim Brewer:** Herman Vantrappen. Thank you so much for coming and joining us on the org design podcast. Amy Springer co-host, thank you for joining us again today. It was, That was excellent. In the show notes, we're gonna include Herman's contact details and a link across his org design expert page as well as reference and links to the book and your website, Herman. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Have a great rest of the day.
[00:29:36] **Herman Vantrappen:** Thank you very much, you and Amy, and a look forward to seeing you again.
Functionly provides a robust platform that enables organizations to visualize their structure and design processes effectively. By leveraging Functionly's intuitive tools, leaders can align their organizational design with strategic objectives, facilitating clearer communication and collaboration among teams. This aligns perfectly with the key takeaways from this episode, where Herman Vantrappen emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive framework for navigating organizational design challenges. Functionly equips leaders with the ability to make informed design choices, ultimately enhancing agility and reducing friction within their organizations. Learn more.
