Decision rights are the cheapest reorg you'll ever run.

Most leadership teams I work with believe they have an org problem. They almost always have a decision-rights problem dressed up as an org problem. The good news: decision-rights work is cheap, fast, and reversible — three things a reorg will never be.

The setup

A few signs you’re looking at a decision-rights issue, not a structural one:

• The same call gets re-litigated in three different meetings.
• People know who has the title, but no one is sure who actually decides.
• Cross-functional projects stall in week three for “alignment.”
• Your best operators feel ambient frustration they can’t quite name.

If two or more of those resonate, start with decision rights. You can always do a reorg later — but you’ll almost never need to.

The framework

For every meaningful decision your company makes, name four roles. Force exactly one name into each slot:

1. Decide — the person who makes the call. One name. Not “the team.”
2. Recommend — the person whose analysis is the input to the decision.
3. Consulted — people whose perspective must be heard before the call.
4. Informed — people who hear the outcome after.

The trick is that most teams know roles 2–4 implicitly. The fight is always over role 1. Force the conversation.

Where to start

Pick the five decisions your exec team has revisited most often in the last two quarters. Run them through the framework in a single 90-minute working session. Publish the output. Re-visit in 30 days.

That’s the entire intervention. The “reorg” most teams were about to do is usually unnecessary after this — and the ones that are still needed get a lot smaller.