About ODI
Organizational Design, Inc (ODI) was founded by Dr. Stephen Clement in 1985,
to assist Corporate CEO’s (as well as their Executives) in enhancing profitability
and productivity within their respective organizations. Since its inception, ODI has transformed into a “world-class” consulting firm reaching clients around the globe.
A cornerstone of ODI’s approach is the systematic application of a comprehensive set of organizational design principles to an organization’s existing operational structure. The underlying premise of ODI is that organizations must be structured around the complexity of their work. Building an edge in today’s markets means a company must establish a requisite organizational structure (e.g., properly designed), define clear roles, assign competent people to those roles, implement lean systems and processes, establish a supportive work culture and develop 21st century leadership competencies
ODI employs a detailed organizational assessment process which leads to the identification of non-value adding work, including dysfunctional work related processes, fundamental defects in an organization’s existing structure and counterproductive working relationships. Elimination of the aforementioned organizational inhibitors is central to the process of “freeing-up” existing organizational energy to concentrate on implementing core business activities.
For over 25 years, ODI’s consultative approach to design has impacted hundreds of thousands of employees and managers worldwide. Spanning every continent; dozens of different industries ranging from government, to Fortune 500, to non profits, even churches and schools. Our client size ranges from a handful of employees to the world’s largest organizations. Simply put, we believe our principles can have a positive impact on any organization.
In 2009 the firm completed a total readiness and restructuring of the Headquarters, Department of the Army. Several high level staff organizations have been totally redesigned into smaller, more efficient organizational elements. One staff section was re-organized from numerous stand-alone elements into a single large shared service activity reducing staff size from 2,400 personnel to approximately 450, producing an annual savings of $70 million dollars. A second $12 billion dollar organization was similarly restructured into a smaller consolidated headquarters structure, producing annual savings of $140 million dollars. Dollar savings was then transferred to warfighting units around the globe.
The genesis of our principles is the research and findings of Dr. Elliott Jaques. Over a 50-year period of research and publishing, Dr. Jaques developed what is known as Requisite Organization Theory – an all encompassing systems theory focused on designing, staffing, and managing work in organizations. Dr. Stephen Clement founded Organizational Design, Inc. in 1985 when he and Dr. Jaques were collaborating together on the book Requisite Organization and its follow on book Executive Leadership. In the ensuing years Dr. Clement and his team have subsequently tailored a number of the concepts of Requisite Organization Theory. This tailoring process has undergone rapid change in recent years to keep pace with the changing nature of today’s organization. It is supplemented by decades of real-life application experiences. This led to the development of the organizational design principles espoused in our work today.
