Disorganization...fine...but how to implement it?

As a consultant for about a decade and a half, I have been an avid reader of business management and have seen numerous references to how companies have restructured their businesses successfully. Its always a big question for me as to how did they actually go about implementing the change.

Take this example:

In his book ‘Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations’, Tom Peters talks “Beyond Decentralization … Disorganizing to Unleash Imagination”. He introduces us to the case of Oticon, a company manufacturing hearing aids. To regain its sagging market share, its president, Lars Kolind, dramatically did away with the existing organization structure (and everything related to it) and created a 100% project directed entity where the employees were expected to decide the tasks that needed to be done and physically organize themselves as they think fit to get those tasks done.

Interestingly, this radical move helped Oticon make record profits, regain lost market share and shorten its new product introduction lead-time by half. Kolind attributed this astounding turnaround to the new configuration of his organization.

As a consultant, this particular case raised several practical questions from an implementation perspective, the most important one being: "How would one manage such a disorganization and explain the source of its success?"

As major components to a possible comprehensive answer, I would like to evaluate these:
• People expertise remains irrespective of the organization structure
• Project driven matrix structure draws upon the necessary expertise from the profit centers (ensuring customer needs are met) and competency centers (ensuring delivery of expected customer needs) for achieving business results.
• Use of projects as the organizational building block.
• Realignment of HR framework to motivate people, enhance ownership, promote innovation and suitably reward the performers
• And most importantly, redefining the business process framework using a black box approach: move back from workflows to guiding principles

To summarize, I must say there is more to it than meets the eye!