Report Introduction
A few months ago, Booz Allen Hamilton launched the Org DNA Profiler, an online self-assessment tool, that evaluates an organization's relative strength based on individual employees’ answers to 19 questions. Within just a few weeks, the online survey received more than 30,000 hits and approximately 11,000 profiles have been completed across 23 different industries, of which more than 300 have been evaluated specifically for logistics & transportation companies to date.

The results of this diagnostic tool show that transportation companies often fail to capture and unleash the organization’s full potential. Despite external factors, a lot of benefits may also not have been realized, because the company’s organizational design did not support the set strategies and objectives. In this case, it proved to be important to identify organizational dysfunctions to understand how these inherent traits influence and determine each individual’s behavior and affect the company’s performance.

Looking across different industry segments, transportation companies tend towards completely different organizational profiles – with the majority of logistics (73%), rail (68%) and shipping (60%) companies showing dysfunctionalities. Across all transportation companies, survey results demonstrate that businesses that experienced significant growth become increasingly over-managed and less adaptable to market changes. Furthermore, senior management seems to have a very different outlook than that of lower level groups – indicating a lack of vertical communication across hierarchical levels.

Along all four organizational levers - decision rights, structure, motivation, and information - the survey identified evident inefficiencies that lead to an unhealthy organizational structure which inhibits successful organizational execution. Across most transportation companies the survey identified specific levers that are influenced by the organizational DNA and offers some key remedies that might bring your company on the path of improved performance.

Understanding your company’s profile can give you important insights into its internal strengths and weaknesses and help you to highlight areas of opportunity. Click here to download our 70-page summary report that contains all high-level findings, which may enable you to benchmark yourself against other companies within and across industries. Furthermore, you can also download supplementary research material. For further information please contact us at orgdna-transportation@bah.com.