Posts Tagged “Reorganizations”

There is a continuum along which organizational changes can be planned. On one end are top-down approaches with planning done by small groups behind closed doors. The organization implements what it is told to implement. At the other end is including as many employees as possible in designing pieces of the new organization, and then tasking those same people with implementing the changes they designed. The former is exclusive, the latter is inclusive.

This company took a more inclusive route as it mirrored their culture. Directors and senior managers designed their organizations, level by level, and were then responsible for implementing the design. This choice was intended to take advantage of line managers’ more intimate knowledge of their areas and people, while at the same time building their buy-in to the change process.

The approach’s down side was employees feeling it was taking too long. Impatience led to paralysis.

The team had underestimated and under-communicated the impacts. At the same time management was dealing with business issues (their day jobs) and counseling their teams through the unsettling period of change (which encroached on their daily job performance), they had an additional burden of intensive reorganizational work upon them (a night job).

In short, the team miscalculated the burden on line management. By being inclusive, they passed a burden on to people ill-prepared to accept the challenge.

On the flip side, a more exclusive approach would have taken just as long, and perhaps longer. (All the kinks associated with any reorganization still needed to get worked out.) But, since employees would have had less visibility to the process and less day-to-day involvement with the work, it may have felt shorter.

In the end, the team concluded, “in the future we must carefully weigh the pros and cons of a range of approaches, choose the one that suits us best, build a fully fleshed-out plan, and then aggressively and continually communicate the methodology and its benefits to all employees.”

In other words, there is no correct answer – but whatever choice you make, set people’s expectations accordingly.