Built from 18 years in the field, not from a textbook.
I have led and supported organizational redesigns across different industries, sizes and stages of change, and I kept seeing the same thing: most of them fail. The studies back it up. In one McKinsey survey, more than 80% of reorganizations did not deliver their intended value in the time planned, and fewer than a quarter of redesigns are judged a success. The causes were always the same ones I watched play out in the room: teams rush to a new org chart before diagnosing the real problem, they disconnect the design from strategy, and they announce the change without ever embedding it.
The DEFINE Framework is the method I built to stop that from happening. It is not theory. It is the structured, repeatable, six-phase process I refined engagement after engagement, distilled into something you can pick up and use. It takes you from "why are we redesigning?" all the way through to a 90-day health check, with a tangible, client-facing output at every stage. I wrote it for the HR and OD practitioners and consultants who, like me, need a professional, ready-to-use process they can trust across different organizations, industries and scales of change.
DEFINE is the six phases: Diagnose, Engage Strategy, Frame Options, Institute Design, Navigate Transition, and Embed & Sustain. Each phase gives you the purpose, the key questions to ask, the step-by-step activities, the defined outputs, and the common pitfalls to avoid, the ones I learned the hard way so you don't have to.
A three-part system, built to be used in real engagements
Practitioner Guide (Word/PDF) – the full methodology. Every phase in detail, with purpose, key questions, step-by-step activities, outputs and pitfalls, plus a one-page quick reference.
PowerPoint Workshop Deck – 41 professionally designed, ready-to-facilitate slides. Walk a leadership team through each phase, share the key questions, and capture outputs in real time. Consulting-grade design, ready to brand as your own.
Excel Toolkit (5 working tools) – the calculators and templates that turn the method into deliverables:
Tab 1 – Organisational Diagnostic Scorecard: weighted scoring across six dimensions.
Tab 2 – Design Decision Matrix: score 2-3 structural options against weighted design principles.
Tab 3 – Span of Control Calculator: model spans, layers, headcount and cost, current vs target.
Tab 4 – RACI Decision Rights Matrix: allocate decision rights across 20 key decisions.
Tab 5 – Transition Tracker & Risk Register: track people impact, conversations and risks.
Who it's for
HR and OD practitioners leading or supporting an organizational redesign.
Management and boutique consultants who need a repeatable, client-ready design process.
People and transformation leaders running a restructure, integration or operating-model change.
Anyone who has to turn "we need to reorganize" into a defensible, well-executed design.
Why it works
It is field-tested, not academic: every phase, tool and pitfall comes from real redesigns.
It covers the full lifecycle, from diagnosis to embedding culture, not just the org chart.
It produces a tangible, client-facing output at every phase, so you always have something to show.
The working Excel tools do the maths for you: scoring, spans, cost and risk.
It is ready to facilitate and ready to brand, so you can use it in a live leadership session from day one.
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Source: Best Practices in Organizational Design PowerPoint Slides: DEFINE Framework: Organizational Design Toolkit PowerPoint (PPTX) Presentation Slide Deck, Fox Consulting
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