From hierarchy to agility: which structure fits your strategy?

Over the last years, “agility” has become one of those words that almost everyone nods at and very few people define.

CEOs say they want a more agile company. Leadership teams talk about agile ways of working. Boards ask for faster execution and more adaptability. But when you look at how many SMEs and scale-ups are actually organised, you often see something else: structures that still rely heavily on hierarchy, vertical escalation and tightly held authority.

There is nothing wrong with hierarchy in itself. The real problem starts when companies use structures that no longer fit what they are trying to achieve.

In 100 Days to Make Your Mark as a CEO, I keep coming back to one principle: your organisational structure should serve your strategy, not your habits. That sounds obvious, but in practice many businesses still run on inherited models that were built for a very different chapter.

Why this tension shows up now

Most companies did not start with a philosophical choice between hierarchy and agility. They evolved into their current structure through history.

A founder kept decisions close because the company was small. Then growth created managers. Then complexity added layers. Then maybe international activity, new services or digital channels arrived. Before long, the structure became a patchwork of old logic and new demands.

At that point, leaders start feeling the tension. The market requires more speed, more responsiveness, more collaboration across functions. Customers expect faster answers. Teams want more ownership. Yet the organisation still behaves as if every meaningful decision needs to move up and down a ladder.

The friction is exhausting because the company is effectively trying to execute a new strategy through an old system.

Agility is not the absence of structure

One misunderstanding I see often is that moving “from hierarchy to agility” means becoming loose, flat or informal.

It doesn’t.

Agility is not organisational chaos with better branding. It is not removing accountability. It is not pretending every decision should be made by consensus.

A truly agile structure still has:

• clear priorities,

• clear ownership,

• clear decision rights.

What changes is how close decisions are kept to the work, how quickly information flows, and how easily teams can coordinate without everything having to travel upwards first.

In other words, agility is not less structure. It is often better-designed structure.

Which structure fits which strategy?

This is where the CEO’s judgment really matters.

If your company competes on reliability, regulatory precision, operational consistency or tight cost control, then some elements of hierarchy may still be essential. You may need clear standards, strong central oversight and tightly defined processes.

If your company competes on speed, innovation, customer intimacy or adapting quickly to market shifts, then a heavily layered structure will start to suffocate you. In that case, you probably need more delegated authority, simpler decision paths and cross-functional collaboration closer to the customer.

Most companies sit somewhere in between. A manufacturing business may need tight control in production and more agility in commercial development. A professional services company may need strong quality standards and much more autonomy at team level. A scale-up may need to reduce founder dependency without creating bureaucracy too early.

This is why I prefer the question “What structure fits our strategy?” over the much vaguer “How do we become more agile?”

Signals that you may need to shift the model

You don’t always need a full redesign. But you should pay attention if you see patterns like these:

1. Decisions that should be local constantly move upwards.

2. Cross-functional topics take too long because nobody feels truly responsible for the whole.

3. Managers spend more time reporting than leading.

4. Your best people become frustrated because they feel trusted verbally, but not structurally.

5. The organisation reacts slowly even though the strategy requires speed.

Those are all signs that the structure is no longer helping the company do what it says it wants to do.

The 100-day lens

A 100-day period is useful here because it gives you enough time to observe the structure as it actually behaves, not just as it is drawn.

In the first phase, you watch where decisions travel, where friction appears and where the CEO is still acting as a bridge between teams. You listen to how leaders talk about responsibility. You notice which issues repeatedly get escalated and which ones never seem to land cleanly.

Then you start making a few sharper choices. Which decisions should stay central? Which should move closer to the teams? Where do we need stronger cross-functional forums? Where do we need fewer layers and clearer ownership?

The goal is not to copy some fashionable model. The goal is to reduce the gap between your strategic ambition and the way the company is actually set up to execute.

What CEOs often underestimate

One thing I’ve learned is that structural change is not mainly a drawing exercise. It is a behavioural one.

You can redraw boxes in an afternoon. Changing how people think about power, responsibility and coordination takes longer. If leaders still behave as territorial heads instead of enterprise leaders, the new structure will quickly start behaving like the old one. If the CEO says “I want more ownership” but continues to pull every meaningful decision back upwards, agility dies before it starts.

That is why structural evolution requires consistency from the top. Your calendar, your meetings, your interventions and your tolerance for ambiguity all signal what kind of company you are really building.

Fit matters more than fashion

Some companies need more looseness. Some need more discipline. Most need a smarter balance of both.

The right question is not whether hierarchy is old-fashioned or agility is modern. The right question is whether your current model gives your company the best chance of executing its strategy with enough speed, coherence and accountability.

If the answer is no, then structure is not a side topic. It becomes one of the most important CEO topics of your next 100 days.