Organizational Design and Structure

Daniel Space (DanFromHR)

HRBP Exec Speaker | Spotify, EA, & Epic

Learn How to Design Organizations

Most HRBPs learn organizational design by being handed a reorg and told to execute it. Nobody ever teaches them the underlying logic: how to think about reporting structures, spans of control, layer counts, role boundaries, or how a change in one part of the org ripples through the rest of the business.

So HRBPs end up implementing someone else's org design instead of shaping it.

They watch leadership make structural decisions without the vocabulary to push back when something is off. They inherit job title architectures built on politics instead of function. And they sit through quarterly reorganizations without a framework to explain why the last one did not hold.

This workshop fixes that. It teaches organizational design the way a strategic HRBP needs to understand it: from the first principles of structure, through the architecture of titles and levels, into the actual mechanics of building and reshaping organizations that hold up when the business changes.

By the end, you will have the frameworks to design structures yourself, the vocabulary to challenge bad ones, and the credibility to be in the room when the next reorg is being debated instead of executing it after the fact.

What you’ll learn

Become an organizational design expert

First principles of structure: why orgs have layers, spans, and reporting lines in the first place
The relationship between business strategy, function, and organizational form
How business model dictates the optimal structural shape of any company

Choose span of control based on role complexity instead of arbitrary tradition
Decide how many management layers your organization actually needs at this stage
Build structures that match growth stage and strategic intent, not legacy habits

Create consistent naming conventions across functions, families, and levels
Avoid title inflation and the political drift that quietly destroys comp bands
Design titles that signal external market value AND internal role clarity

Link strategic priorities directly to structural choices leadership can defend
Build org designs that enable the business model, instead of fighting it
Defend design decisions with business logic, not HR tradition or precedent

Spot overlapping roles, unclear accountability, and broken reporting lines
Identify where the org chart is lying about how work actually happens day to day
Measure structural health using the right data and the right diagnostic lens

Walk into a reorg discussion with frameworks and vocabulary, not opinions
Push back on bad structural ideas with evidence leadership will take seriously
Earn the seat at the table where structural decisions actually get made

Workshop agenda

The First Principles of Organizational Design
Why organizations exist in specific shapes. The relationship between strategy, function, and form. How business model dictates structural choice. The frameworks that make everything else possible.
Constructing an Organization From Strategy to Structure
How to translate business strategy into reporting structures, spans of control, and layer counts. Building the physical architecture of an org that actually fits what the business is trying to do.
Job Title Architecture and Role Creation
How to build title systems that hold up under growth. Naming conventions across functions. Avoiding title inflation. Role design that communicates both internal structure and external market value.
Assessing Org Health and Measuring Structural Performance
How to diagnose existing organizations. Spotting dysfunction in reporting lines, accountability gaps, and overlapping roles. Measuring whether your structure is actually enabling the business or not.