Comment by ninjagoo

A tale as old as corporations. Corporate Ladders optimize for Ladder-Climbers, rather than Management Skills or Technical Skills.

Organization Design is tough. And gets even more challenging with size. Unfortunately, Org Design over time falls to those folks that rose up the ladder, rather than folks dedicated to understanding and designing orgs.

Switching from a Traditional org to an Agile one doesn't eliminate the need for thoughtful org design, it just changes the structures and incentives, and understanding and leveraging the interplay of various factors still requires unbiased organizational skills.

Mature companies will often send executives through training around organization design, but separating out the incentives that apply personally to the executives, from what they do for the company, can be challenging. So larger companies will tend to have a org design or operating model team, and very large companies will formalize this as CoE or Transformation Offices.

Still, getting that balance right can be tricky. Looks like MS failed badly in this instance. Maybe they learned from it, maybe they didn't. Judging by the way things are going with Win11, and the lack of response from the EVP, CEO and Board levels, maybe they ignored their internal folks that help with alignment, or more likely, simply laid them off!