I still haven't cracked the issue that when managers talk about organisation design or structure, for the most part, what they have in mind is a traditional organisation chart. They want to know who will report to whom in their 'territory' and they want to know that in the next couple of days.
The trouble with this request is that it doesn't factor in anything about organisations as a complex system with multiple interactions, feedback loops, and components which affect and are affected by the behaviour of others. In this form of systems thinking the structure might 'include the hierarchy and process flows, but it also includes attitudes and perceptions, the quality of products, the ways in which decisions are made, and hundreds of other factors.' These 'systemic structures' are not, as authors of the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook point out, necessarily built consciously. They are also built unconsciously out of the choices people make over time.
I'm trying various ways of tackling this perception that the 'chart' is the structure (design). Some of them are personal, some of them are with colleagues in my team, some of them are with experimentation in the work we are doing.