Bottlenecks, unclear roles, missed deadlines. You’ve likely been part of a team facing these issues. When that happens, it’s easy to start your diagnosis by pointing at talent or performance. But there’s a better first question to ask: Is the team designed to deliver on its purpose? That’s exactly what marketing and creative leaders explored during our roundtable at Illuminate 2025: The Efficiency Effect — AI as the Engine of Strategic and Creative Innovation.

Now more than ever, we’re being asked to do more with less and to prove our strategic value. That means making thoughtful choices about how teams are aligned, what roles exist and how people work together.

With our session, we aimed to get leaders thinking of org design as more than an operational detail. What could change if its strategic value were fully recognized?

Organizational Structure Matters

An effective organizational structure isn’t just a chart on paper. A proper framework allows people to work toward common goals without confusion or redundancy. Done well, structure can:

  • Improve efficiency by reducing duplicate effort and bottlenecks
  • Bring clarity to roles and responsibilities, so people know exactly how their work ladders up to business goals
  • Enable collaboration across functions, keeping work flowing smoothly from strategy to execution
  • Accelerate decision-making, keeping teams agile in a fast-moving market

When everyone knows the role they play and how that role contributes to business goals, organizations thrive.

What Drives Organizational Design?

If org design is a strategic decision, the next question is: What should guide that decision? Whether you’re building a new team or simply evaluating your current structure, you need to understand the drivers that shape the right model for your organization.

Some of the most important drivers include:

  • Primary business goals: Why are you reviewing your org now? To add new capabilities? Gain strategic direction? Reduce spend?
  • Department purpose/mission: Why does your team exist? Do you support agency work, internal comms, product development or serve as a shared service across the company?
  • Internal clientele and footprint: Who are your stakeholders, and where are they located? Different clients and geographies often require different skills.
  • Service offerings/capabilities: What exactly do you deliver, and how does that align to your business model?
  • Work volume and complexity: What’s the mix of strategic, mid-level and production-heavy work?
  • Resource mix: How are you balancing FTEs, contractors, offshore partners and now AI?

It’s important to keep in mind the new layer AI adds to this conversation. Where does it fit in? Regardless of your answer, one principle always applies: keep the human in the loop. AI can augment roles and processes, but it shouldn’t replace human judgment, strategic drive, creativity or governance.

Best Practices for Structuring Your Organization

Once you’ve identified the drivers that shape your org design, the next step is putting that insight into practice. How do you turn goals, missions and service offerings into a structure that works day to day? And how do you, in existing organizations, use data to help you improve your structure? Here are some best practices to guide the way.

1. Capacity

Start by understanding capacity. How much work can your team realistically handle? Knowing this helps balance demand, plan resources and avoid burnout.

2. Functional Alignment

Align your teams around core functions, such as Account Management, Operations, Creative Strategy and Production. This approach builds subject matter expertise, supports coaching and development, and creates clear accountability within each discipline.

3. Cross-Functional Alignment

Pair functional depth with cross-functional delivery. Teams aligned to brands or business lines deliver more strategically while staying connected to their expertise.

4. Supplemental Process Models to Support an Org Structure

For high-volume or fast-moving work, consider fast-track teams with Kanban boards or Agile scrum pods. Dotted-line ties (a functional or advisory relationship) to functional leaders ensure learning and standards are maintained.

5. Creative Strategy and Production

Balance strategic thinkers with production expertise. Layer in channel and AI skills where needed to keep work aligned with business goals.

What Is AI’s Impact on Organizational Design?

AI is changing not just how work gets done, but who does it and what skills are needed. For you, this means rethinking roles and balancing strategy, execution and governance.

  • Strategic work: AI automates repetitive, high-volume tasks like resizing assets, tagging content and generating copy variants, freeing teams to focus on strategic work.
  • Evolving roles: Copywriters, designers and project managers now need AI fluency. New skills (prompt engineering, tool orchestration) and AI-augmented roles (AI integration specialist, copy AI specialist) are emerging. And this is just the beginning.
  • Governance: Teams designate AI stewards to oversee ethics, tools and quality. Legal and compliance functions handle content authenticity and IP risk. Emerging structures like AI councils or brand guardians may appear.
  • Integrated ops: Marketing and creative operations converge to manage AI workflows, maintain agility, reduce friction and close performance loops.
  • Self-serve content: AI portals let stakeholders generate “good enough” content, leaving creative teams to focus on strategy, governance and UX.
  • Talent strategy: Balance full-time staff, specialists and flexible resources. Human oversight remains essential. AI augments, it doesn’t replace.

The net effect? Teams become more strategic, agile and reliant on talent strategies that prioritize AI fluency rather than simply adding headcount.

Conclusion

Organizational design has always shaped how teams perform, but today the stakes are higher than ever. The right structure can eliminate bottlenecks, align teams to business goals and create the conditions for advanced creativity and innovation. AI adds another layer to the equation.

But at its core, org design is still about the same thing: making intentional choices about how people, processes and capabilities come together to deliver value.

We brought this discussion to Illuminate 2025 alongside the other ideas we explored because, for creative and marketing leaders, the real differentiator isn’t just new technology. It’s how we structure our teams to adapt and deliver lasting impact.

Ready to rethink your org structure? Connect with us to start building a structure that powers creativity and strategic value.