Simplifying an Organization Without Disrupting What Works

Growth can introduce layers, coordination requirements and fragmented ownership while a business continues to perform. The challenge is determining which complexity is unnecessary and which is performing a function the organization still needs.

Uber recently announced changes intended to create what CEO Dara Khosrowshahi described as a simpler and faster organization. The company is reducing layers, simplifying team structures and consolidating ownership at a time when the business continues to perform strongly.

The situation raises a broader organizational question:

If an organization has grown more complex than it needs to be, how do you simplify it without disrupting what is already working?

A role can disappear without the work it performs disappearing. A layer can be removed without making decisions easier. And fewer teams do not necessarily mean fewer dependencies.

Before changing the organization, I would want to understand three things.

1. What is the complexity you want to remove currently compensating for?

An additional management layer, recurring coordination meeting or intermediary role may appear unnecessary. But it may also be compensating for unclear ownership, conflicting priorities, weak information flows or dependencies between teams.

Removing the mechanism without understanding the function it performs can cause the same problem to emerge somewhere else.

What I would examine

Start with what the existing arrangement actually accomplishes rather than whether it appears efficient.

Where are decisions being mediated? Which teams depend on the role to resolve competing priorities? What information moves through it? What happens when the person or mechanism is absent?

If the complexity is compensating for a deeper organizational problem, the response should address that condition rather than simply removing its visible consequence.

A coordination role compensating for fragmented ownership, for example, presents a different problem from a coordination role that genuinely adds little value. They may look identical on an organization chart. They should not necessarily receive the same intervention.

2. When something is removed, where do its responsibilities and decisions go?

Removing a layer does not automatically redistribute the work performed within it.

Some decisions may appropriately move closer to the people with the relevant information. Others may move across functions or remain with more senior leadership.

The important question is not simply where the responsibility moves, but what its new location requires.

Does the person receiving it have sufficient authority? Do they have the information and context required to make the decision? Do they have the capability and capacity to absorb broader responsibilities?

What I would examine

Map consequential responsibilities and decisions before changing the structure.

Determine where each should reside based on accountability, proximity to relevant information and the consequences of the decision—not simply where there happens to be available capacity.

Then examine what the receiving role requires for the new arrangement to work.

Otherwise, an organization can remove a management layer only to discover that decisions begin migrating upward because the people below it were never given the authority, capability or capacity to absorb them.

3. Is the complexity in the hierarchy—or in how the work depends on other parts of the organization?

An organization can remove management layers and remain difficult to operate.

If several teams remain highly dependent on one another to deliver an outcome, the underlying coordination requirement remains. Flattening the hierarchy may simply expose that dependency rather than eliminate it.

What I would examine

Look at where work crosses organizational boundaries.

Which dependencies exist because ownership is fragmented? Which result from how teams have been structured? Which are inherent in the work itself?

Some dependencies may be reduced by establishing clearer end-to-end ownership or changing team boundaries.

Others cannot—and should not—be designed away. Where genuine interdependence remains, the organization needs an effective way of coordinating it.

The objective is not to eliminate coordination. It is to distinguish coordination created by organizational ambiguity from coordination genuinely required by the work.

What happens after the change matters

The number of roles, layers or teams removed tells leaders what changed in the structure. It does not necessarily tell them whether the organization became easier to operate.

I would also look at what happens afterward.

Are fewer decisions being escalated? Is accountability clearer? Has the number of unnecessary handoffs declined? Does necessary coordination require less effort? Are leaders able to operate effectively with broader responsibilities? Are senior executives becoming less involved in operational decisions—or unexpectedly more involved?

Those are better indications of whether simplification changed how the organization actually operates.

The broader consideration

Simplification is attractive because the visible intervention can appear straightforward: remove a layer, consolidate teams, reduce coordination roles.

The organizational consequences are less straightforward.

Something that appears to be unnecessary complexity may still be performing a necessary function.

The question is whether that function should continue to exist, be eliminated because its underlying cause has been addressed, or be deliberately moved somewhere else.

The objective is not simply a smaller organizational structure.

It is an organization better able to make decisions, coordinate work and execute what the business requires.