Who’s launching a new business strategy next year?

Who’s refining their multi year strategy that was launched last year or the year before?

Who’s got some new executives on the exec team?

Who’s kicking off some new projects that will launch a new part of the business?

Are you redrawing structure charts?

Are you reassessing how parts of the business will need to work together to get things done?

Do you think this is a one off?

Once the charts are drawn and the comms go out do you think that will be enough?

Beyond the top layers who have obsessed about the change do you think you’ve cracked how to penetrate all aspects of the business to get the change to happen?

Are you having to consider how to cascade the changes down through many levels and through hundreds of people managers or few levels and people managers with flat structure and large spans of control?

Do you think everyone will get it?

Do you think people who aren’t in one of the many new roles will realise they too will have a new role for the changes to really work?

How much of what you currently do will still need to stay “as is” as you roll out the strategy and any changes in structure?

Do you really think that having reset the strategy and restructured the organisation, that that will be it until the next multi year strategy is sold to the board?

Are you building in the mindset of being adaptive, being more experimental with how the organisation operates and how the roles work?

Are roles being designed with a broad remit to be adaptable or as fixed, specific roles with rigid RACIs and accountabilities?

Does the way your business works drive rules, processes, rigid policies and management approvals?

Are people in your business looking to the organisational heirachy they are in to get things done or are they looking to the outcomes they are trying to achieve in the business plan?

Is your organisation seeing the annual planning round as an “also ran” running in parallel to the “day job”, a one off annual activity or a continuously rolling perspective.

Do you hear the sentence “we’ve tried that”, “that’s not how things are done around here”, “we can’t look at it in that way”, “that’s interesting but we need to compete what we said we would complete”?

Does every new ask lead to needing more resource rather than a reflection on how the new asks changes what the current resources do?

I’d be fascinated with the discussion we could have around each of these questions.

I wonder if we would uncover new perspectives.

I’m sure it could make us rethink and reconsider what our organisational structure, our corporate governance and our style of leadership and management may need to be.

I’m sure we would come to the conclusion that the questions need to continue to be asked and changes need to continually be made as we refine, reframe and adapt what our business needs to do to get things done.

My thoughts would be ..

1. Never let the ink dry on an organisational structure chart

2. Try not to pigeon hole people into restrictive roles that when change needs to happen results in yet another restructure.

3. Accept that people may need to move around the business to get things done

4. Reconsider effort spent in discussing “secondments” “headcount transfers” and “whether this is a new role” that often consume far too much effort and focus the discussion and effort more on the business outcomes in the changes being proposed

5. Remember there may not be blank cheque books that enable businesses to bring in new resource because there is a more important ask for a team to address

6. That we really have to let go of the obsession in internal organisational reshuffles that often feel like we are moving “deck chairs on the titanic” and obsess more on the outcomes and what needs to get done

7. And finally that none of this is easy, but it’s easier when leaders, managers and everyone else just want to get things done and look to what they want to achieve in the future rather than what they achieved in the past and going with the flow and making change happen is sometimes better than over analysing the if buts and maybes.

Take a look at the many articles on organisational structure and business strategy and how other businesses are embracing adaptive business models, driving adaptive mindsets and unlocking the business from the structures and policies that were fit for purpose in the past but are becoming out dated as we go into the future