New methodology links organizational structure to revenue growth, operational efficiency, synergy capture, AI, automation, and measurable business outcomes
Stonehill, a consultancy specializing in strategy and innovation, today unveiled its MODERN™ Organizational Design Methodology—a proprietary framework created to assist CEOs, private equity firms, and management teams in shaping organizations around how work actually flows and the value the business aims to deliver.
This new methodology broadens Stonehill's Organizational Design Consulting capabilities and departs from the conventional approach to org design, which typically begins with reporting lines, org charts, and span-of-control benchmarks. Instead, Stonehill starts by identifying how the business generates value, establishing clear accountability and quantifiable performance targets, and then crafting the organizational structure needed to achieve those results.
The framework is outlined in Stonehill's latest white paper, “Earning the Org Chart: A Value-Creation Approach to Organizational Design.”
“An organizational chart ought to be the outcome of organizational design, not the origin point,” said Doug Pace, CEO of Stonehill. “We think you must first grasp how the business operates, decide who owns the results and how those results will be measured, and then build the organization around those needs. Once you have that design, you can leverage AI, automation, and process improvements to refine it, and quantitative modeling to test whether it can truly produce the expected outcomes.”
The Stonehill MODERN™ Organizational Design Methodology is composed of six interconnected phases:
MAP — Chart the operational journey and comprehend how work, decisions, and value move throughout the enterprise. Stonehill's broader Process Improvement capabilities support this work by examining workflows, handoffs, bottlenecks, and opportunities to enhance how work gets accomplished.
OWN — Establish cascading ownership, responsibilities, decision-making authority, and measurable KPIs that link enterprise objectives to performance at the functional, team, and individual levels.
DESIGN — Develop the roles, capabilities, organizational structure, reporting lines, management layers, spans of control, and matrix responsibilities needed to carry out the work.
ENHANCE — Elevate the organization through process redesign, artificial intelligence, automation, and technology to boost productivity, scalability, and operating performance. Stonehill's Technology, Analytics & AI practice collaborates with organizations to identify and deploy technology and AI opportunities tied to quantifiable business results.
RENDER — Construct a quantitative model of the organization and stress-test it against revenue, workload, capacity, headcount, cost, synergy, and EBITDA assumptions.
NAVIGATE — Roll out the future organization through leadership alignment, talent decisions, communications, governance, training, technology adoption, and Change Management.
The methodology is designed to directly connect organizational choices with enterprise value. For growth-oriented firms, the framework can help assess whether commercial and operational capacity is adequate to meet revenue targets. For companies involved in mergers and acquisitions, it can identify overlapping duties, redundant capabilities, and opportunities to speed up synergy realization. For firms seeking margin improvement, the methodology evaluates where work can be eliminated, simplified, standardized, centralized, automated, or augmented through AI.
These concepts are especially relevant to Stonehill's work with private equity firms and portfolio companies, where organizational design, synergy realization, and operating-model improvements can directly affect the value-creation thesis.
A standout element of MODERN™ is Stonehill's Render phase, which uses operational KPIs and business assumptions to quantitatively stress-test the proposed organization.
Rather than depending solely on organizational benchmarks, Stonehill can model the connections between business performance and organizational needs. Depending on the business, this may involve translating revenue and demand into workload, capacity, automation requirements, roles, FTEs, management load, and organizational cost.
“We want management teams to be able to show why an organization ought to be structured as it is,” Pace said. “If a company expects substantial growth, we should be able to assess whether the organization has the capacity to support it. If an acquisition includes a synergy commitment, we should be able to see where those savings are accounted for. And if AI and automation are anticipated to boost productivity, those assumptions should ultimately appear in the organizational model and financial results.”
The MODERN™ methodology is especially suited for rapidly expanding companies, private equity portfolio firms, acquisitive businesses, post-merger integrations, corporate restructurings, operating-model transformations, and organizations aiming to improve management effectiveness and scalability.
For acquisitive companies, MODERN™ also enhances Stonehill's Post-Merger Integration capabilities, helping organizations connect future-state organizational design with synergy capture, process integration, technology consolidation, and long-term value realization.
About Stonehill
Stonehill is a nationally recognized strategy and innovation consultancy serving Fortune 1000 companies, private equity, and government clients. The firm specializes in helping organizations address their most complex and sensitive challenges, blending design thinking, business strategy, and advanced analytics to identify opportunity, drive change, and accelerate growth. Known for handling its clients’ boldest ideas, Stonehill has facilitated billions of dollars in mergers and delivered solutions that have impacted millions of lives. For more information, visit stonehillinnovation.com.
##
Julie Stollings
Stonehill Innovation
+1 813-444-1984
email us here
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Facebook
