There's nothing wrong with a corporate structure. There's nothing wrong with deciding that your corporate structure is centred around 5 pillars, or 4 or even 1.
The 5 pillars that City decided on were met with derision because they were 1) overplayed 2) coincided with a very bad time.
SL has remedied the first problem, by removing Jnr from being in such a public position. From being a rigid framework constantly being the reason behind every decision, flexibility was shown under Cotts in terms of the approach, this also helped.
As for the second point, many of the culture changes behind the scenes have already been implemented, so it won't seem such a massive change right in the middle of a huge relegation battle.