Org design options

Skill stephenrogan/leadership-skills/skills/org-design-options

Agent Skills-compatible leadership and manager workflow library

Install

npx -y skills add stephenrogan/leadership-skills --skill org-design-options

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Generates organisation design options with strategy fit, customer segmentation, capacity, spans, roles, tradeoffs, transition risks, and communication implications. Use when growth, churn, margin, coverage, or strategy changes require rethinking team structure.

The file declares its own license as MIT. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.

SKILL.md

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Org Design Options

Overview

Use this skill to support the leader as Org architect. A set of org design options with explicit tradeoffs instead of a single overconfident structure.

This skill is human-led by design: the agent prepares the work, but the human leader owns judgment, relationship, accountability, and final decisions.

When to Use

Run this skill when:

Current structure no longer fits strategy or scale
Coverage, capacity, or customer experience is breaking
Leader needs options before changing roles or reporting lines

Do not use it as a substitute for legal, HR, finance, security, medical, or executive approval. If the workflow affects employment, compensation, customer commitments, external messaging, or sensitive personal data, prepare the packet and stop for human review.

Inputs

Ask for or gather:

Strategic priorities and customer segments
Current org, roles, capacity, and performance
Customer economics and risk profile
Constraints, transition timing, and talent realities

If inputs are missing, proceed with explicit assumptions and label confidence. Do not invent private context, motives, or facts.

Workflow

Follow this sequence:

Clarify design principles and non-goals
Generate 2-4 viable models, including status quo if credible
Assess each model for customer impact, manager load, cost, risk, and reversibility
Identify transition risks, communications, and sequencing
Recommend decision questions rather than pretending the spreadsheet decides

Before finalizing, run the boundary check: what is evidence, what is interpretation, what is a recommendation, and what must remain a human decision?

Output Format

Produce a concise, decision-ready artifact using this structure:

# Org Design Options

## Situation
[Brief context and why this workflow is being run.]

## Evidence and Signals
- Fact:
- Pattern:
- Hypothesis, confidence:

## Recommended Focus
1. [Highest leverage focus]
2. [Second focus]
3. [Third focus, optional]

## Working Artifact
[Agenda, memo, brief, plan, map, script, or tracker depending on the workflow.]

## Human Decisions Required
- [Decision/action the agent must not take.]

## Follow-Up
- Owner:
- Date:
- Success signal:

Expected deliverables:

Org design option set
Tradeoff matrix
Transition risk map
Decision questions
Communication implications

See assets/output-template.md for a reusable version.

Human Decision Boundary

The agent may prepare, synthesize, compare, draft, and track. The agent must not cross these boundaries:

Do not decide reporting lines, layoffs, compensation, or people moves
Do not hide human impact behind efficiency language
Executive leader owns design choice and sequencing

Stop and ask for explicit approval before sending messages, changing employment status, making customer promises, publishing, sharing sensitive information, or committing budget/resources.

Quality Bar

A strong output for this skill:

Separates facts, interpretations, hypotheses, and recommendations.
Names uncertainty and missing context instead of hiding it.
Produces an artifact a busy leader can use immediately.
Reduces avoidance, ambiguity, rework, or decision drift.
Makes the human judgment boundary visible.
Includes concrete follow-up with owner, date, and success signal where applicable.

Failure Modes

Watch for these mistakes:

Overconfident claims from thin notes or sentiment.
Generic management advice with no artifact.
Automating sensitive judgment instead of preparing it.
Producing too many options without a recommended default.
Treating leadership as text generation rather than accountability.

References

Operating model and org design principles
Grove: leverage and managerial output
Leadership Pipeline role-scope transitions

For the shared methodology spine, see ../../docs/SOURCE-SPINE.md.