Clearly you do not have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to restructuring. Given the propensity for restructuring that most organizations have, you and your colleagues will have a reservoir of knowledge as to what has worked before. You will also know quite a lot about what has not worked! Now is the time to check back to see what the learnings are from previous change projects. If your organization has not formally retained this knowledge, a requisite variety of managers and staff can quite easily generate such a list. We include an example list (see box). The headings are the central themes that emerged during the session. These were the most relevant issues for the organization under review. Yours might well be different.
In terms of best practice there are many resources: this article for example, a wide range of literature, professional bodies and consultancy firms. It is important to get the right balance between what has worked elsewhere and what will work in your organization. And there is no guaranteed formula for that.
LEARNINGS FROM PREVIOUS CHANGE PROJECTS
Change management/project management
Preparation
Utilize previous learning from projects.
Check for false assumptions.
Always, always do a potential problem analysis.
Look for design faults at an early stage and throughout.
Significant top-level commitment.
Communication
Induction for all in the change.
Ensure earliest possible involvement of stakeholders.
Take the board with you.
Ensure cohesion across organization.
Harness energy and enthusiasm across organization.
Objectives
Lack of focus produces failures.
Link the hard and soft interventions and measures.
Have clear objectives.
Differentiate between the what and the how.
Specific behaviour objectives help.
Implementation
It helps to have people who have been through similar projects before.
Network of people and resources.
Dedicated project management.
Multidisciplinary approach.
Build the change management team.
Monitoring
Build in a process of automatic review.
Always evaluate, financially and otherwise.
To ensure sustainability have follow-through.
Leadership and strategy
Vision, mission and values need to be overt, obvious, communicated and followed.
Ensure alignment to strategy.
People
Don’t let line managers duck the issues – build responsibilities and accountabilities into the process.
Requires involvement of people – as part of buy in, and they can actually help!
Requires communication with people.
Be honest with people.
All the new teams need to be motivated and built.
Get the right people in the right jobs.
Profitability
Always cost the initiative.
Be clear where the value is added.
Separate infrastructure investment from return on investment.
Check for false assumptions.