-2.svg)
-1.svg)
Listen to the episode
%20(Logo).png)
🎧 Spotify, Apple, 📺 YouTube
Please hit subscribe wherever you consume our podcast ✌️
About the guest
Dr. Erika Jacobi is the Executive Director and founder of LC GLOBAL®, specializing in adaptive organization design and organizational development. With over 15 years of experience, she has worked with Fortune 50 companies, SMEs, and non-profits across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. Dr. Jacobi holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Development and Change, along with an M.A. in Human and Organizational Behavior, and is a five-time Forbes contributor and associate faculty member at Colorado State University. Learn more about her on her expert page.
Summary
What if the real problem in your organization isn’t your people—but your structure?
In this episode of the Org Design Podcast, Erika Jacobi, Ph.D., Founder and MD of LC Global Consulting, joins Amy Springer and Damian Bramanis to unpack why structure drives behavior—and how most organizations are solving symptoms, not root causes
Erika shares insights from 20+ years in organizational development, explaining:
• Why coaching and training often fail without systemic design
• How to spot when your organization’s structure is the real issue
• The critical breaking points in company growth—from 2 to 200,000 people
• Why adaptability and stability are not opposites in modern orgs
• How visionary CEOs can accidentally create chaos (and what to do about it)
Packed with clarity, candor, and a systems-thinking lens, Erika invites leaders to move from reactive reorgs to thoughtful, adaptive design—starting with their own thinking.
🎧 Whether you’re a founder at 5 employees or an exec at 50,000—this conversation will reshape how you think about scale, culture, and sustainable growth.
Show Notes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-jacobi-ph-d-b5261611/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Amy Springer: Thank you for joining us on the Org Design Podcast. Today, we have Erica Jacobi. She is the founder and MD of LC Global Consulting. That's LC, letter L, Letter C for anyone that wants to look it up. She's joining us from New York city, but as you'll hear shortly, it's not a straight New York accent, so we'll get Erica to let us know her background and where that accent comes from. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:30] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : Thanks so much for having me, and if people really wanna look up the company, the L stands for leadership and the C stands for change. .
[00:00:39] Amy Springer: Amazing. And we are joined by my co-host, Damian Bramanis from London. So we've got the three sides of the globe on this interview today. So to kick us off, Erica, how did you end up here? How did you end up in the org design space? Any highlights from across your journey that can help us understand that?
[00:00:59] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : Org design has had different names, but I've been in the business of designing organizations probably for the last two decades plus. It started out with organizational development, even coaching, training, and design, learning and development. And then from there, I simply thought that you can run a lot of training courses, but it will not make a big difference in the company. But that was just my journey, that I felt at the beginning I thought it's leaders, then I thought it's the culture, and then I went into culture and learning and development, and at some point, I thought, and I still believe that and it's backed up by a lot of research that structure simply drives behavior.
People behave differently if they are in a prison or at a football stadium. Structure drives behavior, so we can also influence that and align it with the purpose of the organization. now that I'm in org design, I still use the other features like coaching and training, but it's much more embedded in that overall ambition to design a system, to design processes, to design an organization, whether that's a team, a division, or an entire company.
[00:02:21] Damian Bramanis: That's a really interesting point because it, I wonder many of our listeners might be in that position where they're going through training and coaching and finding ways to improve their organization, but finding that It's not working, that the same problems and frictions and the same symptoms that they've been seeing are still there. What is it that someone might look for to have that 'aha moment' that maybe there's something deeper fundamental about my organization, whether it's the the structure or the processes or some other part of my organization, which needs to change before this symptom is going to get resolved.
[00:02:57] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : I would say it's really the distinction between a symptom and a cost. And I do think we confuse that quite a bit in organizations. So what is symptomatic and what is actually the root cause? And *the root cause is hardly ever what meets the eye*. And I also don't think that any one person can decide alone what the root cause might be because it is co-created. In my eyes. What you do to understand on which level the problem resides, is to really do an analysis and ask yourself. What are the pain points that we're experiencing? And I think the good old saying that you can't solve the problem on the level at which it occurred is still true.
You think, we think it's the leader. So we're doing some coaching. But is that really true? Or is it the system that enables, empowers leaders to be the way they currently behave and put themselves out into the org? So then we need to change the system, but there we also don't wanna throw the baby out with the bath water. It's complex. Although I don't like the word, we definitely need to look at the issues. Usually it's more than one, and if you only have one I'm not buying it.
If you can pinpoint it to one aspect, I'm not buying it. So I think that's the most important aspect of it. Are we lying to ourselves? Is it confirmation bias? Yes, the first person said it's this leader, so we need to do something or get them out. The second person says the same thing. That's really headed towards confirmation bias, but usually whether it is a leader, there is also a system or a not so great functioning team. There's also a system that enables that and empowers that and the same system will enable it several times because *nothing is more scalable than, design mistakes*, or flaws. So I would say to answer your question, look at the issue from various angles, look at it from various perspectives, on various levels, pull people in and and try to find out where does the issue really originate and then see how you would resolve that. Because it's clear what organizations typically do if they think it's the leader, it's either coaching or ultimately they're out and they were gonna get a new one in and then we see that we have the same problem all over again. Those are very telling signs that it is actually the system. The more pain points you have, likely the root cause is the system. And then there's also issues that are simply baked into the growth phases of a company. We can't just say, "Oh, we did it once, and then we're done", it's the dynamic process as well.
[00:05:51] Damian Bramanis: No I love that the root cause is hardly ever what meets the eye and that idea of walking into the room and pointing at there's the problem right there, typically is not the right one. I think what you said was the same system will enable the same problem multiple times.
[00:06:05] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : Absolutely.
[00:06:05] Damian Bramanis: Yeah, we definitely see that I'd love to dig into something you mentioned just at the end there, that there are certain issues baked into the different growth phases of a company. And we've seen some of the same things, where a company hits a particular growth milestone, and often we've seen it around a certain number of employees, that once the growth phase hits a certain size, all of a sudden, the processes that you have and the structures that you have, the way that you communicate and make decisions and the way that you manage the organization breaks. Those old systems stop working and you need to rethink them. And then a few years later, the company's grown even further and what you thought was the perfect solution then breaks another time. I'm really interested to dig further into where you see those growth phases, where you see the kind of breaking points and what typically you'd see break at those points?
[00:07:00] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : Yeah, I would say the first one is anything after one. Founders of startups, whether they make it or not, but founders that have that urge of, I don't wanna be alone in this. So then they ideate together, but then at some point comes the need for the good old division of labor, and then I think a lot of things can go wrong there already, and I think there already, you have to give it a lot of thought and you should plan with the end in mind.
Things, hopefully if you're lucky and if you're good, will not stay the way they are. They will not stay at one or two people or three or five of developers that you brought in, so always design with the end in mind. But the space where we start coming in is more ambitious, fast growing startups or up to a Fortune 50.
So the, for me, the phases are, okay, from one to two or five to 50. I think at 50, a lot of companies at 50, that's where the rubber hits the road and they can't structure it in the same way they structure things before. So then they understand we need to do something. We need to allocate certain roles.
Then people in the company will also have a beef with that, they will go but why am I now only a number to you? Like, why don't I have direct access to you as before, so those issues could occur. Then we're likely gonna call it a culture issue, so things are simply not the way that you used to be here any longer. And that, I think this is also a fantastic example, if you then run a culture initiative, it is absolutely not gonna go anywhere, at best. It is likely gonna backfire on you because then someone will say, and now we're cementing this, now we're formalizing that It is a culture that I don't have access to the CEO any longer. So people might not even take that well, and it might entirely backfire on you. But there are different ways of structuring things and putting the system up so that you can keep your old spirit and mindset and also certain processes.
So, that's definitely a ballpark figure of employee count where you should get active period. The next one is likely, a hundred fifty, three hundred fifty and from there, we're happily going into 3000, 6000.
I always say it also depends on the *pace of your growth*, are we doing acquisition based growth where you have different issues that you need to address, that's also why I like the word org design so much. Because some people say, isn't it a good old restructure? Or re- org. But it is a lot more *because we're designing what we want our world to be like*, what we want our collaboration to be like in units, in teams, in divisions, in functions, but also for the entire org. So it encompasses a lot more. And once we're going much higher, like 30,000, 100, 000 then your work will likely be more around, how can we connect divisions, how can we break down silos? How can we increase collaboration and one of my favorites is always, how can we make the company more adaptable? How can we adapt fast? We have to adapt and after decades and centuries of business leadership where we thought we had figured it out, where there were rules as to how to effectively run a company and how to structure it. We had it all figured out and now we need to adapt.
[00:11:01] Amy Springer: We were talking about the breaking points but you finished with that, the great word of adaptive org design, are you saying that we actually have gone through a shift, that those breaking points aren't necessarily the only time you're gonna have to think about a big org design moving forward, is it gonna be more constant? We need to think about it more often. I guess those breaking points indicate steady growth in a fairly predictable way. Is the challenge now that different things are influencing the way an organization needs to be designed?
[00:11:39] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : If you think about it, a hundred years ago, we would not think about org design, seven times in a lifespan of a company. We would say a hierarchy is it, and yeah, we have a new division, we're gonna design it in the same way. That is the old school.
Now, we could say and there are certain issues that will most certainly appear, and one I mentioned in the first minute of your lifespan as a company, and also, once you've reached 100,000, 200,000, I don't wanna say it's the last growth phase, but at some point you're gonna measure your growth differently than through people, right?
But now we have to look at the phenomenon. much more often. That's number one. And I would really not say now we're gonna look at it a fixated seven times. That's not what I'm saying. We see organizations either as network based or as living organisms, and living organisms they grow and grow. And so it's very natural to have certain issues in certain phases, and all of them you have to adapt.
The savvy leader or savvy organization will do things proactively and not wait till those issues hit you. But I would say the best org design, to really get to an adaptive org design, we're the renewal is baked into the design.
So we're doing it proactively. But we have thought about how we're doing this. I also know quite a number of companies, that change all the time, but it's absolutely frantic change. The ideal system would be you get an input, anything that hits you, or anything normal, or anything in between, the system can translate that into sound, multi-layered action. That's what we're designing around.
Because we do know that there will be certain changes. There will always be planned changes, or expected changes, but there will also be a lot of unexpected changes and in the best of all worlds, and then we're talking innovation, we need to be ahead, we need to be that change with our products, with our software.
Technology evolves so fast, that whether we are a tech company or not, we have to find our position. And our teams must be able to adapt to many things very fast. So the smaller the cells get within an organization, the faster we need to be able to adapt. But that's where I also sometimes say adaptability also rhymes with stability.
So adaptability and stability go together. We can't just be loosey goosey. That's not what that is. And I think a lot of people misunderstand that. We need to get the company stable and dynamic at the same time. And that equilibrium that is worth a design. Thinking about a design. So I think the first mistake, that we're making is to always think of the big reorg.
The design questions can be and should be much more subtle. When we get org designers and it doesn't mean that we will have to do the big reorg. It could happen, but it could also not happen. And then the question is also how are we gonna do that.
[00:15:21] Damian Bramanis: Yeah. And that big reorg when you talked about the franticness on one side that seems to align up with unexpected change and the big reorg. And then moving to an adaptable sorry, an adaptive org design, which is much more proactive and mindful and thoughtful. I think that really resonates with me.
[00:15:39] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : I think the frantic decision making can come in response to an unexpected change and unexpected drastic change, but it's also baked into the personality and DNA of many leaders because many company leaders, many CEOs are super visionaries. So, sometimes they jump from one idea to the next and forget that they have 3000 people that all wanna be on board. It should be mindful, and we need to think about things, and we need to bake a process in that's enabling the entire organization.
[00:16:17] Damian Bramanis: Yeah, you talked about the frantic decision making that's baked into the DNA of many leaders and reading between the lines, there's something you've mentioned a few times. You talked about the people who'd sort of jumped to conclusions and point to I think that's where the problem is. And you talked about savvy leaders also talked about vulnerability, the role of a leader and having vulnerability. And it seems that a lot of the work about org design is not just about the organization. It's about holding a mirror up to the leader themselves to understand what part they play in the organization.
[00:16:51] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : The leader is part of the behavior that a system drives. So at the beginning, I said structure drives behavior. So it also drives the behavior of a CEO, or the whole C-suite. And that's where the change work, the transformation work begins.
In theory, we could say, okay, we're gonna change the structure, and then everybody will have to change. Maybe we might even have a new CEO, and, oh, wow, that's why they're blocking it, no wonder. So in theory we could say and trust me, it has been done many times. We could say, let's change the system, and then everybody will change, but aren't we forgetting something human beings in there. If you want an adaptive system, a modern system, a dynamic system, changing it can't happen top down, we can't just say, "oh, here's your new structure, get used to it", or let's do a training to get used to it, isn't it all easy?
That's the opposite of adaptive. But all of this, needs to happen under the understanding that someone also needs to sign off on this whole thing. For us, it's very clear if the CEO is not on board and very often, we have to help them understand, This is what you want, this is what we might be able to do, this could be a step one and so on, but your role will also change. Are you sure you really want that? And that happens very often before the CEO signs off on it. They need to understand that it's not the good old days where the top signs and other people change.
An org design process that involves people so much that we're already replicating the behavior That we wanna see later. One thing I forgot to mention about my background is I have a PhD in organizational change and development, but my Masters is in human and organizational behavior systems and development, and I'm so influenced by that mindset, human and organizational behavior systems and development, all of these go together and all of these must be tackled or else I would rather call it a reorg, than org design.
So for me, that's the distinction in org design, we do take care of people, we do try to replicate, we try to create situations where people can mirror the behavior, that they, that is important later on, and then they ease into it. They grow into it, and also the leaders. And then you grow into the system as a collective. We're not doing it without them.
[00:19:42] Amy Springer: Erica, for a leader that's listening and they're thinking, this adaptive org design approach sounds like the right fit for me, I wanna start heading in that direction. We have touched on a lot of great ideas, but what's the one or two or three first steps that you've witnessed with your clients previously that would be a great place for them to start.
[00:20:07] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : I would say number one, I've never come across anybody who says " Oh, we wanna do adaptive org design". So that's the, it's,
[00:20:14] Amy Springer: That's the challenge
[00:20:15] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : but exactly. That's the challenge. But if you think your company is not, fast enough, not adaptive enough, I would sit down and it starts with thinking. Thinking is an action, And I wish we had that kind of action before. So I would sit down and first of all, think about where do I think our system, whether it's my team, my division, my entire company, where do I actually think are some pain points?
And that's the big art of thinking, observing without judging or without evaluation. So we wanna think about it, we may wanna have a conversation about it with our team members. Where do we see the pain points and what are the effects of that, and then at the same time, again, we don't wanna evaluate, we don't wanna judge, but at the same time, have a clear reflection.
It's that great art of looking at something and withholding judgment and evaluation, and noticing your own actions in between. And then from there, you could start having a conversation with the respective people as to where do we think we could break down some silos. Where could we carefully try and increase collaboration? And that should be a conversation that shouldn't be in the ivory tower. It shouldn't be done in isolation and also not thought through in isolation, but of course, adaptability has to do with, where can we increase networks, where can we increase connections, and take it from there.
Thinking is never a bad start.
[00:22:12] Damian Bramanis: Yeah, thank you so much, Erica. It's been great to chat with you today. If people are interested in what you've been talking about and wanted to learn more, what's the best way for them to reach out or to learn more about what you've been talking about today?
[00:22:26] Erika Jacobi, Ph.D. : I would say the best is our website lc-global.com. We are on LinkedIn, we post regularly and I always enjoy conversations, so all those channels might be good to reach out.
[00:22:42] Damian Bramanis: And thank you again for really enlightening discussion, which about what I feel is a very modern org design approach where you've talked about humanness and adaptability and how to think about org designing complex systems. And then I'll remember the phrase that _structure drives behavior._ So thank you.
Functionly empowers organizations to navigate complex changes and enhance adaptability through innovative organizational design.By enabling leaders to visualize their structure and processes, Functionly fosters collaboration and alignment across teams, ensuring that as companies grow, their systems evolve seamlessly. With tools that help identify pain points and facilitate meaningful conversations about organizational dynamics, Functionly allows businesses to not just react to challenges but proactively design their systems for sustained growth and effectiveness. This approach aligns perfectly with the need for organizations to be adaptable while maintaining stability, driving engagement and organizational health.
