REMITS · REPORTING LINES · STRUCTURE
Shape before staffing.
Organisational and function design.
A function that is badly drawn cannot be rescued by the person hired into it.
Architecture is the work done before a search opens: what the remit actually contains, where it reports, what it owns, and whether the structure around it can hold a senior operator for more than eighteen months.
It is often the shorter engagement and the more consequential one. Several mandates that arrive as searches leave as design work instead.
The remit fails before the person does.
THE WORK
What gets drawn.
REMIT · LINE · OWNERSHIP
The remit — What the seat is accountable for, stated in terms that can be judged at twelve months.
The reporting line — Where it sits, who it answers to, and which decisions it does not need permission for.
Ownership — Budget, headcount, and the specific authority without which the remit is decorative.
Span — How many direct reports the seat can carry before the role becomes administration.
Adjacency — Where the function abuts others, and which boundary disputes are already predictable.
THE METHOD
How it proceeds.
DIAGNOSTIC · DESIGN · TEST
DIAGNOSTIC
What the structure currently produces, including the failures it produces reliably.
DESIGN
The function redrawn. Remit, line, ownership and span set out as a single document.
MARKET TEST
The redrawn seat checked against the market. A remit nobody credible would accept is not a remit.
HANDOVER
The design is written to be used — by the board, by an internal team, or as the basis of a search.
THE BOUNDARY
Where it stops.
WHAT THIS IS NOT · WHO IT IS FOR
WHAT IT IS NOT
An org chart exercise. Boxes and lines are the output, not the work.
Change management. SLG designs the structure; implementation belongs to the organisation.
A precondition for a search. Architecture is taken as a standalone engagement and frequently is.
WHO IT IS FOR
Founders scaling past the point where everyone reports to them.
Groups integrating an acquisition where two structures now overlap.
Boards that have replaced the same seat twice and suspect the seat is the problem.
ENQUIRY
Entered by referral.
RETAINED · CONFIDENTIAL
Engagements are taken directly. A first conversation establishes whether SLG holds anything useful on the question before terms are discussed.
