When I’m asked to assess an organization’s structure or culture, my first question is always:

What is your strategy?

Because unless I know where you’re heading, I can’t help you align how your organization is built or behaves.


What surprises me—time and time again—is how many companies, even large, successful ones, can’t clearly articulate what that strategy is.

Too often, strategy gets reduced to vague ambitions like “profitable growth” or “being more agile” or “becoming innovative.” But when I ask how they’ll achieve this, the answers become muddled—more about gut feeling than direction. That’s a problem.

Because without clarity of purpose:

  • Agility becomes an excuse for constant pivoting—today’s shower idea becomes tomorrow’s new direction.
  • Innovation turns into an empty buzzword—if you don’t know why you want to innovate, you won’t do it well.
  • And ownership becomes a demand, rather than a design—people can’t take accountability for goals that don’t exist.

So before you restructure your teams or try to “fix the culture,” ask yourself: Where are we heading?

This is where I start with my clients, using what I call the 3+1 questions:

+1: What’s changing in your external context?
What macro forces will shape your industry in the next 3–5 years? Use models like PEST(LE) to think through scenarios. Some shifts are predictable (like sustainability), others aren’t (like political turbulence). Your strategy needs to navigate both.

1. Whose needs will you solve?
This defines your future customer and your product or service focus.

2. Why you?
This gets to your competitive edge—why those customers will choose you.

3. How will you make money?
The business model—how your value creation connects to value capture.

Only after answering these can you meaningfully evaluate your organization’s structure and culture.

That, in my view, is how any organizational development project should begin.