How to tell when it’s time to bring things back together.

Because every structure eventually swings too far apart.

There’s a natural tension in every organization:

The need to bring things together — and the need to push them apart.

Early on, you organize around people.

Then, as you grow, you shift to a functional structure — sales, marketing, product, finance.

That works — for a while.

Until it doesn’t.

Because as growth continues, functions begin to bottleneck each other.

So you push decision-making closer to the work.

You create business units, GMs, or regional P&Ls.

Everyone gets more autonomy.

Problem solved.

At least for a time.

But here’s the catch:

Every gain in autonomy creates a loss in alignment.

Products drift apart.

Standards erode.

The company begins to feel less like one organism and more like a federation of tribes.

Then, the environment changes — say, a platform shift like AI.

And suddenly, the decentralized model struggles to adapt as one unified system.

Each unit experiments independently. None build deep, shared capability.

The startup you once outpaced now passes you by.

This is when it’s time to bring things together again.

Back into a functional structure.

It’s not regression — it’s evolution.

Apple did this under Jobs.

Block (formerly Square) is doing it now.

And you’ll see this pattern repeat in every era of scale.

The question is:

How do you know your company is ready to come back together?

Here are 3 signals it’s time to re-centralize:

  1. The environment has shifted.

    Your structure must serve your growth strategy — not your past.

  2. Fragmentation is creating drag.

    If your products, code bases, or markets feel more like competitors than collaborators, it’s time.

  3. Throughput is down.

    When decisions slow, resources scatter, and momentum stalls — greater cohesion restores flow.

When you make the shift, keep one rule in mind:

Flatten the top.

The CEO must have clear visibility into all critical functions — the four quadrants of the business.

Otherwise, you’ll rebuild the same bureaucracy you were trying to escape.

In the end, structure isn’t a problem to solve — it’s a polarity to manage.

The best organizations learn to breathe: expand and contract, decentralize and reunify — in rhythm with strategy and scale.

If your team feels stuck, the Entropy Survey will reveal what’s really going on:

👉 https://organizationalphysics.com/entropy-survey

– Lex, your CEO coach

📌 P.S. Every structure eventually creates its own friction. The art is knowing when to shift — before it forces you to.