The most important element of restructuring
The most important element in a restructure is not the expensive consultants or sophisticated models, but rather how you sell the change to the people it will impact. The key to a successful restructure really amounts to one thing – communication. Not communicating effectively can undo all your hard work in terms of organisational design and cost you time and trust dollars trying to regain control of the situation.
If the message is going to get out (and let’s face it – there aren’t many organisations that don’t leak like a sieve), then consider consulting transparently and early on.
- Why is it necessary to restructure (link to this to an actual strategic and organizational objective rather than corporate waffle).
- What is the timeframe around the restructure?
- What will the process be?
Who do people want to hear the message from?
Remember, people want to hear long-term strategy and organisational purpose from their senior leaders, and how it affects them personally from their line manager, so you may need a double pronged communication strategy.
Even no news is news, so if there’s a delay in the planned process, let people know.
Once you’ve embarked on the process and have an organisational redesign, the key here, once again, is communication.
- What is the new design and why (link to organisational purpose)?
- What is the impact on every person within the team ?
- What’s changing?
- What’s staying the same?
- What’s the timeframe?
- What are the nuts and bolts mechanics of the change?
Remember, in the absence of factual communication, rumours start and spread like wildfire.
Maybe, most of all put yourself in your employees’ shoes. What would you want to know? When would you want to know it? Who would you want to know it from?
Change Management
Like most things in life, people can cope with change when they know about it, how it is going to impact on them and what’s in it for them. It’s the absence of knowledge that causes the dissent, the anxiety, the noise.
A useful change management strategy is that advocated by Heath Brothers in Switch:
- Have you appealed to the intellectual / rational arguments?
- Have you appealed to the emotional?
- Have you cleared all the roadblocks and is the path “free” to make the change?
What do you think? Have you seen an organisational structure that has gone really well? What made it so good? And equally, if you’ve seen one go badly, what went wrong?
