An organization is an adaptive system that seeks to accomplish more as a collective body than it can as self-organizing individuals. Over time, organizations evolve by making changes to its structure to balance the forces which the organization is under. As a result, the organization's, throughput is a function of the organization's ability to shape its performance in response to these forces. The success of this adaption is largely determined by the the behaviors of its individual components, and their interoperability. These in turn will establish the utility it provides to the organization's customers, and the resilience it exhibits in response to stresses introduced into its operating environment.

An organization's effectiveness in capturing this feedback, and incorporating this information in tuning its performance, is a critical factor in any organization's ability to improve. Managing the Design Factory, Donald Reinertsen highlights how the interactions between an organization's components will determine the value which a particular organizational structure produces:

Since this structure and interactions are so important, we should have a means to evaluate them. This evaluation can employ techniques used in assessing other architectures - regardless of whether the architecture is intentially designed to address these forces, or is a result of other design criteria or cultural dominance.

Regardless of its sources, the robustness and utility of this architecture will have a profound effect on the ability to influence and shape the group dynamics of its members, and the reliability and efficiency of the organization in producing its outputs. This is because the architecture determines how effectively the roles and responsibilities of the organization can be executed (individually and collectively), and how quickly they can be leveraged to increase value to its customers.

Measuring this effectiveness within an organization is not easy, as As John Sterman notes:

There are many ways for an organization to tap into this value - its strategies, its reward systems, its ability to embrace useful technologies, through the robustness of processes, and in the interactions with its customers. To integrate and realize these sources of value, the organization's technical and management activities should be designed to support these 5 basic functions, which must work together across three distinct, but interrelated perspectives: work packages, processes, and jobs. Without adequate design attention to the organization's , these layers will not be reconciled. Even with thoughtful design, conflicts and inefficiencies can arise between what is optimum for management control, and what is best for efficient production of outputs. Inevitably, the role of managers as components in this system is crucial, but they find themselves in two dilemmas. First, they must balance the needs of the people and the business, as Robert Samuelson reports: Second, they must confront and reconcile their own limits of control, as Phillip Armour describes in The Reorg Cycle:

...the managerial problem arises from the fact that management control structures (reporting channels, accountabilities, chain-of-command) are predominantly a semirigid hierarchical synchronizing and controlling system, whereas what it is attempting to control is predominantly a network of fluid, event-driven interdependencies.

Compounding these control limitations and delays and the turbulent dynamics of the flow of work are added work that is created when things are not meeting expectations (no matter how unrealistic these expectations may be). Areas that are perceived to be underperforming typically get greater attention from senior leaders to demonstrate progress, and provide information about what is happening within each of the layers in which work is being performed. Unfortunately, existing situations are usually the consequences of past behaviors, and immediate signals may just reinforce mistaken beliefs, unless the management system is designed with responsive control mechanisms. When many such situations arise concurrently, a complex organization may exhibit active resistance in attempts to respond to crises and top-down interventions (a phenomenon known as the vicious cycle).

An orderly approach to organizational design is essential for component behaviors to be understood and effectively managed. Such an approach is the only way to reliably achieve meaningful and sustainable gains in effectiveness during and after any reorganization. Since change is inevitable, a commitment to periodic adjustments in the selected approach should also be made, to accommodate the evolving needs of the business over time.

The following articles describe the key parameters for enhancing execution performance as this design proceeds: