If you were founding your company from scratch today, would you design the same organizational structure you have now?

After asking this question, maybe we should all pause for a moment and think about it.

The CEO, executive vice presidents, directors, managers...

Departments for every function, countless people, consultants...

In many organizations today, people are still:

• gathering information,

• preparing reports,

• cleaning data,

• writing meeting notes,

• creating presentations,

• trying to get work done through endless email chains,

• waiting for managerial approvals... waiting, waiting, and waiting,

• checking and reviewing work that has already been done by someone else.

And when the workload starts piling up, our instinctive response is usually the same:

"Let's create another position."

I believe it is time to look at things from a different perspective.

Should a human do this work?

Should AI do it?

Should humans and AI do it together?

Or is it possible that some of these activities are no longer necessary at all?

I do not believe the companies of the future will simply add AI on top of their existing organizational structures.

I believe everything will be redesigned from the ground up.

Roles will be redefined.

Decision-making mechanisms will be reimagined.

Management layers will be challenged.

Teams will be organized not around functions, but around their ability to generate outcomes.

And perhaps most importantly:

Organizational charts will no longer show who reports to whom.

They will show how work actually flows.

Today, the real strategic question is not:

"Should we use AI?"

The real question is:

"If we were building our company today, how would we design our people, roles, teams, and decision-making processes?"

I believe the most valuable leaders of the coming years will be the ones who dare to ask this question first.

Because while some companies will simply add AI to their current structure, others will redesign the organization itself.

And the difference will not be limited to efficiency.

The difference will be about which companies are truly ready for the future.

(While writing this, I was reminded of a scene from Back to the Future Part III, where Dr. Emmett Brown explains that automobiles will one day replace horses in the Wild West. The contrast feels surprisingly relevant today. Link: Back to the Future III - funny old man's laughing)

If you were starting your company from scratch today, what would be the very first thing you would focus on?

Many entrepreneurs and corporate leaders I have spoken with gave the same initial answer:

"Headcount."

I do not think that is the right focus.

The real question is:

How is the work getting done?

Perhaps now is the time to challenge that assumption.

See you in the next article.

T.T.

There is no objection to the use of this article across different channels and platforms, provided that prior permission is obtained from the author. Upon approval, I would be delighted to grant permission for the article to be published and shared with proper attribution to the original source.