Where should a customer education team sit in a typical corporate structure? Should it be part of customer success? The product team? Perhaps it belongs to professional services, or even marketing. This is a very common discussion among customer education leaders, with quite a range of opinions. Nearly every survey or poll on the matter shows that these education teams are found across all departments, with no primary design standing out. So then, what factors should be considered when creating an organizational structure that best supports the business? Let’s discuss!

What is Organizational Design?

“Organizational design is the discipline of shaping an organization to better achieve its business strategy and objectives by aligning its people and the skills they have with the work they do. It involves designing how jobs, roles, and responsibilities are distributed throughout the organization, how information and resources flow among different units and levels, and how decisions are made and executed.” ~Hacking HR Lab

Organizational design is directly linked to the execution of business strategy, yet “only 10% of organizations are successful at aligning their strategy with their organization design”’ (Harvard Business Review). The reason? Many executives fail to realize the importance of ensuring each department is capable of achieving goals. This is even more pronounced when considering strategic teams like education and training, which are capable of driving a diverse range of goals across the business. This capability can either flourish or flounder depending on organization design and structure.

Types of Organizational Structures

Organizational structure is one element of organization design. It “determines how the organization is divided into units and subunits, such as departments, teams, or divisions, and how they are connected and coordinated, such as through hierarchy, matrix, or network” (Hacking HR Lab).

Functional structure

You’re likely familiar with the functional structure, as it’s one of the most common types. In this structure, employees are typically grouped by their role or function, region, or type of services they provide. Depending on the size of the organization, there may be multiple business units, each with its own functional departments.

There are some clear benefits to functional org structures. According to Indeed, this type of org structure establishes clearly defined roles and expectations, facilitates improved performance and productivity, and allows for skill development and specialization. However, it also creates barriers, or silos, between function, limits communication with and knowledge of other departments, and inhibits collaboration and innovation.

Circular Structure

A lesser known type of organizational structure is the circular structure. Interestingly, though it looks quite different from functional or hierarchical structures, this structure is still hierarchical. The higher-level employees, or typical leadership roles, sit in the center of the circle, while lower-level employees are found on the outer rings. The primary difference, though, is that leadership shares the vision outward, rather than downward.

Hubspot notes the advantages of this structure as promoting free-flowing information throughout the business, keeping employees aligned and encouraging collaboration. Downsides may be lack of clarity on reporting structure.

circular org structure — Source: Signpost

Choosing an Organizational Structure

Of course, there are many other types of organizational structures outside of these two, and it’s beyond the scope of this article to dive into each one. (Check out Forbes list of 7 organization structures if you want to learn more.) But, it is important to identify the type your organization is leveraging today and consider how it is or is not serving the business strategy. While you may not have direct influence over this decision, it’s good to have these structure types in mind as you make the case for any changes to organizational design. Especially if you lead, or plan to build, an education department.

Structuring the Education Teams

Now that we’ve aligned on the importance of organization design and structure, let’s discuss the customer education and product training teams in question. It’s why we’re here, after all!

Defining “Customer Education”

There’s two school’s of thought around the definition and scope of a customer education team. For some, the team is a branch of customer success, creating scaled solutions to educate, engage, and delight customers along their customer journey. For others, customer education is actually a larger initiative that involves educating prospective customers, current customers, partners, and really any stakeholder that would benefit from education about the company’s industry or product. In this definition of customer education, it’s common to find many teams across the organization that are actually contributing to learning material.

For the larger “customer education” definition, which we often refer to as product-centric education, you may find a team in product development that’s creating developer education and technical articles. Another team in marketing may own an industry certification program or instructional webinar series. Yet another team in customer success or professional services may be creating onboarding materials, custom training programs, and product adoption training. What is true about this concept of “customer education” is that it can drive many different business goals - from growing leads through building brand advocacy.

To Centralize or Not Centralize, That is the Question

When considering this broader context of product-centric education, we must decide whether all related teams should be centralized under one leader, or whether decentralization across departments would yield better results. Many industry leaders advocate for a centralized education department. Organizations leveraging this model see increased efficiency, stronger alignment to strategic goals, higher ROI, and higher employee engagement. Another clear benefit to centralization is its impact on a cohesive learning experience. When teams exist across multiple departments, there is inevitably a variety of learning platforms, portals, and sites that learners must navigate to learn about the company. A centralized department promotes unified learning across all segments, product lines, and department goals.

customer education team hierarchy — A centralized education team can work efficiently across many business programs.

However, this centralized approach may have a serious drawback if the education department is ineffectually embedded in a functional hierarchy. Recall a functional organization structure is one where departments are grouped together by role or functional, such as marketing, sales, product, and customer success. Importantly, these departments aim to leverage their function in propelling the business strategy forward; marketers are aligned in driving business growth and expansion, the product team is aligned around a unified product strategy, and the customer success department executes strategies to nurture and grow the business’ customer base. Therefore, where you put an education team is a very important decision as it will inherit the strategic priority and goals of the department.

What does this look like in practice? An education team embedded within customer success may have the resources to create content for any segment, but strategic alignment rests in promoting the goals of the department. While a Chief Customer Officer may value education, they will often prioritize investment toward driving goals they are directly responsible for. Therefore, education programs that target prospects, partners, or employees are likely to lose traction in this arrangement. The team’s success metrics are more likely to align with customer success metrics, rather than top-level metrics, limiting the impact of education to a smaller scope.

The question becomes, will unifying all education teams within one department allow all education programs to flourish, or will they flounder with limitations? In other words, it may not be advantageous to move a marketing-focused education program out of marketing if it’s not likely to be supported in the new org structure. Remember, org design is not simply assigning who reports to who, rather, it’s at the heart of a business’ strategic execution.

Our Recommendation

At Echtus, we’ll never say that all businesses should manage their education in one standard way. There are factors to consider that will vary within each organization, including the structure type that’s employed. Having said that, we do offer a perspective for consideration. For mid-size and larger businesses using a functional structure, you may consider a centralized education department. Given that functional structures leverage the function of each department to move the strategy forward, it makes sense to form an education function that stands independent of other functions, not within them. Just as the marketing and product departments execute on business-wide strategies, an education department could likewise make a true impact across a broad range of goals.

The benefits of such a centralized, independent education department are:

Direct strategic alignment with cross-functional business strategies
Efficient workflows in content production and delivery
Cohesive learning experiences for the end-user
Single source of truth for outwardly educating the market
Increased visibility into metrics necessary to track ROI

Possible challenges with this arrangement include:

The need for an executive-level education leader
Limited budget (until ROI is demonstrated)

Not Ready for an Education Department?

What if an independent education department is not quite right for your organization at this time? Is it better to centralize the team within another department to start? Again, this comes down to the strategic pillars across the business, and the goals and priorities of the department in question. Consider any limitations the education team would have within that department. Are all segments prioritized? Are all phases of the customer journey, from awareness through advocacy, part of the department’s scope?

It may be that you centralize a large part of “customer education” within one department, yet leave other product-centric training teams in other departments (such as channel partner enablement, or developer education). In this scenario, it’s even more essential to implement a unified strategic framework across departments. This will bolster the performance of education programs, reduce redundancy, and help build the case for a future independent education department.

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Organizational Design Strategies for Effective Customer Education