Designing the Organization Structure for the UAE Gender Balance Council
The UAE Gender Balance Council had grown rapidly, expanding its mandate and activities across the UAE at a pace the size of its existing organizational structure could not fully support. With a small, stretched team and an increasingly broad scope of work, the Council recognized that it needed to recruit for new skills and roles, but lacked a clear structural foundation to guide that growth. They needed an organizational design that reflected both their current mandate and their future ambitions, one that would identify the gaps in skills, accountabilities, and positions and provide a concrete roadmap for building the right team.
challenge
Sarah Lakhani Consulting applied a proprietary organizational design framework, beginning with a series of interviews to assess the current structure's challenges and gaps. A central input into the design was a thorough review of the government mandates assigned to the UAE Gender Balance Council, examining what had been achieved, what remained outstanding, and what those gaps meant in terms of skills, roles, accountabilities, and initiatives. From this analysis, skills and accountabilities were organized into clearly defined teams and areas, supported by a high level value chain mapping each team's accountabilities. Two structural options were developed, each with detailed accountabilities for every team alongside current and recommended projects and initiatives. To support implementation planning, a three-year manpower plan was built for each structure, identifying which roles needed to be filled first and how the team could grow over time. The engagement concluded with three use case scenarios, each mapping a core Council activity across the relevant departments and roles, showing who would be involved, in what sequence, and what each would contribute.
approach
The engagement produced a comprehensive organizational design package giving the UAE Gender Balance Council a clear, evidence-based path forward. The two structural options, supported by full manpower planning and detailed accountabilities, gave the Board the information needed to make an informed decision about the organization's direction. The three use cases provided an additional layer of clarity on how the proposed structures would function in practice.
results
The proposed structures were presented to a Board member and the Head of Strategy of the commissioning organization. The recommendations were implemented, with the UAE Gender Balance Council subsequently appointing a General Secretary - a role that had not previously existed within the organization, and a direct reflection of the structural evolution the engagement was designed to enable.
