Structure must follow strategy
A new strategy cannot succeed while the organization keeps the shape built for the old one. Managers have to be willing to wrench the organization into a new form that fits the new direction, or the strategy stalls.
Business
Growth turns management into the problem
As a business expands, its central difficulty shifts from making or selling more to running the enlarged whole effectively. Across the largest American corporations, this one administrative problem kept recurring.
Similar strains produce similar solutions
Large companies facing the same pressures of expansion separately arrived at the same answer: a decentralized structure split into divisions. When the problem is shared, organizations can converge on a common form without copying one another.