Reorganizations are disruptive. Nevertheless, companies and institutions frequently shuffle the roles and responsibilities on their organization charts, seeking to adapt their structures to changing needs. Creating new structures means defining new jobs, agreeing fresh objectives and realigning accounting and information systems. Inevitably, this adds to the day-to-day tasks of running a business in the near term.

Companies typically organize by function, market or line of business. There is no one right way to organize. Each option makes some things easier and other things harder. Functional structures, for example, put the focus on Research & Development, Purchasing, Manufacturing, Sales and Marketing and so on, but make cross-functional work harder.

Market-based structures align activities with the distribution of customers, by country or region, making international or cross-regional cooperation more of a challenge.

Line-of-business structures recognize the distinct requirements of different product/service offerings, but soften the focus on functions and markets.

A major manufacturing company (organized along functional lines) used a Yala to manage the activities of its cross-functional bid teams. The job of these teams, lasting four to six months, was to respond to customers’ requests for quotations and, of course, to win the work. At any time, there would be twelve to sixteen bids underway and the Yala served to coordinate these activities and share best practice across the organization.

Over time, customer focus became so important that the company decided to reorganize from a functional to a market structure. Enterprising staff people took the opportunity, while their own jobs were still in transition, to use a Yala to help the organization define and manage the interfaces created by its new structure.