Recently, we worked on a reorganization of a business with several thousand employees. The company was splitting itself into smaller organizational units. Our team didn’t set the business strategy or the change plan. But we were the arms and legs to help the project team get the work done.

At the end of the project, the team documented their learnings and some will be shared over the next couple posts. We share them for a simple reason – it is highly likely that other reorganization teams will face similar challenges. The challenges themselves aren’t “secrets;” what created the challenges, where the challenges occurred and how they were addressed are. In any case, here are some real live challenges to plan for as you work on a reorganization.

#1 – Crystallize the Vision and Case for Change

While there were several important themes supporting the reorganization (like “accountability” and “customer focus”), these themes didn’t effectively crystallize into a clear and compelling picture of the envisioned future. Because the vision wasn’t clear, the team struggled throughout the project with several issues:

• Decision making became more complex since there were no clear “stakes in the ground” on which to base priorities. Everything was an ad hoc decision. Nothing was principle based.
• The team was left in a reactive and responsive mode vs. being proactive with a clearly defined strategic goal.
• The team was unable to effectively communicate an appropriate understanding of management’s vision of the future. (The team wasn’t quite sure themselves). When the team did communicate, there were conflicting messages:
  • “This is not a cost-driven exercise,” and “Design an organization that reflects some level of reduction,” or,
  • “Business process management and execution is critical to our long-term success,” and “We can design our processes after we set the organization;” or,
  • “Do it right,” vs. “Do it fast.”

The team’s #1 lesson: “When considering large-scale change, nothing should be more important than crafting an iron-clad and understandable case for change and an engaging vision for the outcome of the change. This includes creating specific examples of how employees would experience the change as enhancing their work lives. Use focus groups to test the vision for how understandable and engaging it is.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Change Management, Leadership, Reorganization.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.