Summary: "A ... practical guide on how to structure a business to support strategy and maximise efficiency. It matters. Thousands of established businesses fail every year because of the way they are organised, or re-organised. Business survival can depend not only on whether its structures and reporting lines meet the needs of the market, but also whether they can adapt in the face of a rapidly changing business environment. Yet managers seldom talk coherently about structuring or restructuring their operations, let alone take a systematic approach. Too often, orgnisations are restructured for the wrong reasons - for example, because a new CEO wants to make an impact, or to work around a new IT system. This revised and updated Economist Guide shows how leaders should think about and implement the design of a company, using five easy-to-use guiding principles: design a company around its strategy and the operating context, not for ulterior or non-business reasons; think holistically - don't restructure just one division without taking into account other operations; consider future markets, customers and trends, not just what works best now; invest time and resources: - a redesign can be complicated to implement and must be done without disrupting daily activities; go back to the basics of how the company operates and its market position - this is not a repair job to fix a short-term problem"--Publisher's description.