Big companies used to follow a simple rule of organizational design: "structure follows strategy." With this approach, executives would first set their strategy and then define the organizational model that best supported it. These days, however, big companies rarely have the luxury of following stable, long-lived strategies—and those companies7 organizational structures must now be as supple and adaptable as the strategies they reflect.
As Sir John Browne, of British Petroleum, puts it, "Our strategy is our organization." In this model, organizational design, the quality of interactions within teams, and the distribution of energy in a company may be far more important determinants of success than the soundness of a given strategy.