As organizations grow, functions that started as one person’s job get split across multiple organizational units and multiple executives, often without thoughtful planning. Specialization enables experts to dig deep into each job but creates several problems:

• A lack of a single accountable executive (or worse, having multiple executives, each of whom manages part of the process) leads to uncoordinated decisions. These distort organizational focus, leading to over-investment in some functions and neglect of other functions that are equally or even more critical;