-A manager at a loss how to solve his productivity problem
Corporate reorganizations are a great way for executives to impose their will when they are struggling to solve productivity problems. Unfortunately, these expensive “grand initiatives” rarely pay off. They give the illusion of “doing something positive” to address poor performance, but in truth a reorganization is often one of the greatest destructive forces known to business. It has gone by many names over the decades (restructuring, reengineering, reinvention, you name it) but the results are often, painfully, the same:
- Disastrous for morale (the opposite of its intention)
- Destructive of initiative
- Guaranteed to drive talent out of the organization
Reorganizations fail because they treat the symptoms of poor performance instead of the causes. Employees are not unproductive because they are untalented or in the wrong job. They are unproductive because:
- They don’t understand their role within the organization
- Or, they understand it but don’t buy into your corporate philosophy
- And/or they have simply lost the drive to succeed, worn down by fighting bad corporate habits and processes that sap energy.
None of these issues are best solved by “moving deck chairs around.”
Always resist reorganizing. If you have hired well, great people who are properly engaged and motivated will naturally and organically reorganize your company from the ground up:
• Engaged line workers actively seek to improve their performance by improving the processes and procedures that drive their day. Over time, these ongoing, day-by-day improvements build into an avalanche of improvements.
• Engaged supervisors encourage such behavior, and push good ideas up the line and around the company. Executives must stop shooting messengers, and instead reward them for quickly addressing problems and “issues.” Then, lingering problems are addressed instead of being swept under the carpet. Engaged executives unleash their people by building greater trust (read: true delegation of responsibility and authority), and actually start letting their peoples’ true talents emerge.
We have seen this happen within every firm which truly commits to creating an engaged mindset. Our own work in the challenging conditions of Alaska’s North Slope oilfields shows us the power of everyone engaging successfully:
A field manager in an energy company’s drilling division was asked to double the number of rigs under his supervision. His old “command and control” style did not translate well into this new situation and productivity was falling, so he went to a new approach of “delegate and trust” (part of an approach we call “Communication that Counts”). Without changing a single thing in his organizational structure, he and his subordinates were outperforming a similar team who had half the rigs to manage. The results were quite positive:
“In trying to assign a dollar figure to being more effective and productive at work the best example to use is the fact that in (our business) a workload of 6 rigs is normally shared by 2 superintendents, so we can readily see savings in the order of $250,000 per year” by eliminating one supervisor.
This manager did not start out with the idea to permanently manage six rigs instead of three, but working with a motivated team, he ended up with that solution. This is what happens when you let your organization change organically from bottom up.
Your managers have the power to encourage staff-driven “reorganizations” that productively happen over time, reap a ton of bottom-line impact, and keep you ahead of competitors who still think top-down change is an effective reengagement technique.
“Engagement” and “empowerment” are clichés, but they will “reorganize” your enterprise the right way. Neglect them at your peril.
David Tighe has been helping companies resist the horrors of reorganization for twenty-three years as a principal for Bovo-Tighe, LLC. Bovo-Tighe helps organizations solve leadership, productivity, and hiring challenges using its MINDCHANGE™ and Organizational Transformation processes, which have been market- tested in hundreds of real-world business situations. Contact Dave at dave@bovo-tighe.com.
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