In typical organization design engagements, we spend most of our energy getting very clear on roles and responsibilities. We draw the structure, define decision rights, tighten accountability and work hard to remove confusion, specifically around roles. Role clarity is important. It creates confidence. It helps leaders assign work, manage performance and delegate decisions more effectively.
But anyone who has spent time inside an organization knows that role clarity alone doesn’t guarantee results. Organizations don’t run effectively because every box on the org chart is perfectly defined—they run because of what happens between the boxes. Value lives in the handoffs, the dependencies and the moments when someone must collaborate across a boundary. That’s the reality of how work moves.
And yet, those interdependencies are often the part of the design that gets the least attention.
We can all think of examples: Product can’t move without engineering. Finance can’t plan without reliable input from operations. HR and IT touch nearly every function in some way. No team delivers value alone. But many design efforts stop after adjusting structure and roles, hoping collaboration will simply fall into place. In practice, it usually doesn’t.
Designing for Ambiguity
Most performance challenges that leaders deal with—slow decision-making, rework, duplicated effort, confused handoffs—aren’t caused by unclear job descriptions. They’re caused by unclear interdependencies. When teams don’t know how to work together, the system bogs down. People fill the gaps themselves, and eventually the organization transitions to “shadow work” just to get things done. Workarounds appear. Side channels become the norm. Duplication of work and resources increase cost. And leaders wind up wondering, “Why aren’t we operating the way we intended?”
Ironically, this often happens because we overcorrect on clarity. Leaders understandably want clean lanes: this is your job, that is mine, never overlap. But real work doesn’t operate in perfectly separated lanes. Some overlap is not only acceptable, it’s necessary. Cross-functional outcomes require shared ownership. Customer experience, quality, cost, growth—none of those sit neatly within one function.
Over-structuring clarity can be a blessing and curse. Teams start optimizing for their part instead of the whole. Priorities collide. People dig in their heels because “It’s not my job.” And everything slows down.
A better approach is to recognize that ambiguity will exist—and then design it on purpose. Instead of trying to eliminate every gray area, we identify where interdependence is required and define how it should work. In other words, we move from role clarity to relationship clarity.
Relationship clarity forces us to answer different questions:
- Who do we depend on to deliver this outcome?
- What information has to move between teams?
- Which decisions must be made jointly?
- Where are handoffs likely to break down?
- How do we resolve trade-offs when priorities compete?
These questions surface the reality that structure alone cannot solve. And this is where the concept of linkages becomes so powerful.
The Power of Linkages
At AlignOrg, linkages are the intentional mechanisms we put in place to connect parts of the organization that rely on each other but don’t sit together structurally. If structure is the skeleton, linkages are the connective tissue. They might be recurring touchpoints between leaders, shared planning routines, a cross-functional council, a common intake process or joint KPIs (key performance indicators). Linkages turn collaboration from something informal and personality-driven into something predictable and designed.
When linkages are missing, organizations end up relying on heroics: the one person who remembers to communicate, the leader who constantly steps in to break ties or the informal relationships that carry the weight of coordination. When linkages are present, ownership becomes shared and sustainable. The system becomes less dependent on individual effort and more dependent on designed routines.
Relationship clarity lives at three levels: structure, processes and behaviors. Without structure, teams don’t know who to go to. Without process, work falls through the cracks. Without the right behaviors—trust, transparency, follow-through—everything becomes a negotiation. You need all three. And when one is missing, the other two strain under the weight.
Think Simple Shifts vs. Complex Redesigns
The good news is that designing for interdependencies doesn’t have to be complex. Many organizations start by mapping where value actually flows, instead of simply redrawing reporting lines. Others introduce interface charters that spell out what one team needs from another and how they’ll hold each other accountable. Some begin with shared success measures so teams can stop fighting for their functional KPIs and start fighting for the enterprise result.
And once those pieces are in place, the differences are noticeable. Escalations decrease because people know how to work things out. Decisions move faster because teams understand how trade-offs get made. Collaboration stops feeling like a favor and starts feeling like part of the operating model.
One leader said it best after going through a redesign:
“We stopped asking who owns it and started asking who we depend on.”
That simple shift—from ownership to dependency—changes everything. It moves the organization from a collection of boxes to a connected system. It turns structure into performance. And it reminds us that while role clarity matters, relationship clarity is what actually makes the system work.
