The reorganization of your company doesn’t come lightly. This is something that is only done when something isn’t working, and you’re being held back from your growth potential. Business growth naturally brings about growing pains. Today’s business atmosphere moves fast. If you’re going to survive, you’ve got to be willing to troubleshoot your company – seizing every opportunity to improve, innovate, and optimize.
When you’re driving progress, you’ve got to employ savvy cost-reduction strategies. And that may mean turning your company upside down.
Reconfiguring versus Reorganizing
Restructuring is a larger undertaking than reconfiguring. Restructuring is best when you need sweeping, large-scale changes. In other cases, particularly when a strategic pivot is urgent, reconfiguring is more appropriate. Restructuring addresses the structures where resources and work are coordinated. That could mean your technology platform, physical location, workflow, etc. Reconfiguration leaves the underlying structure of your business alone while shuffling the moving parts to create innovation and push performance.
A full restructuring is best reserved for smaller businesses or those facing significant industry disruptions. Reorganization encompasses both processes! Whether you’re looking at small-scale changes or a total organizational overhaul, these steps guide any airtight action plan.
6 Steps to Effective Reorganization
Step 1. Line benchmarks up with the analytics
The first step is to identify where your business is falling short. This is done by comparing your goals and benchmarks with your performance analytics. If you’re not meeting your KPIs and other key metrics, it’s time to implement change. Of course, you also must know from the outset what your goals really are and what metrics are worth measuring.
Don’t overwhelm yourself with data – prioritize the numbers that make a real difference. Once you make this assessment, you’ll be better able to identify organizational strengths and weaknesses. This, in turn, means you can address those weaknesses without compromising the strengths.
Step 2. Solicit real feedback
Organizational changes, whether a small reconfiguration or a full-scale restructuring, will cause upheaval among your team members. From the very beginning, prioritize employee and leader input. While you may not want or need to take every complaint and suggestion into account, you will have a fuller picture of how proposed changes will impact your team.
Step 3. Outline a SMART Plan
And by that, we mean: Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Realistic. Timely.
These are the essential criteria for a successful reorganization effort. This should encompass both plans to course-correct, cut costs, and reduce weaknesses as well as those that let your strengths shine and take advantage of opportunities. Don’t hang your hat on a single plan, either. You’ll want to develop SMART contingencies to anticipate the unexpected.
Step 4. Identify key team members
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One of the big reasons companies call for reorganization is when a key player leaves the company. That power vacuum creates problems as a lack of leadership and direction causes the whole team to suffer. You’ll want to identify key company team members that have drive and potential. These people should be able to speak the truth to you as key advisors. They may head up your departments, fill managerial positions, or be part of the top leadership.
Step 5. Communicate clearly
Throughout any type of company reorganization, communication is paramount. The upheaval in this process can make your team uneasy, particularly about their job stability. Your plan should be clearly outlined to your employees and leadership team – not just what you’re going to do but why you’re going to do it.
Uncertainty brings unease and can fuel harmful rumors. Get it all out in the open so that you can move forward as a united front.
Step 6. Evaluate year-end moves
After you’ve developed your plan, selected the right people to help implement change, and communicated with your whole company, it’s time to make it happen. Both structural and configurative changes may take some time to bear fruit. You’ll find that the plan often isn’t perfect – so be diligent in monitoring post-pivot performance.
From there, you will be able to assess the effectiveness of your plan. You’ll discover that some things may not work as well in practice as you’d hoped. In many ways, you can then repeat these steps on a smaller scale to correct and refine your organizational changes.
