Art of effective restructuring

With the global economy in difficult times, companies are restructuring themselves for growth, stability or just plain survival! Mergers, acquisitions and bail-outs seem to be the order of the day.

Strategies are defined, senior management is enthusiastic, and the change effort starts with great gusto.

Nine months later, the transformation is complete - into something no one wants! So how should companies manage their change programmes successfully?

First, define a clear vision of the future - typically 2-3 years ahead. This should include financial forecasts, target customers, process improvements and organisation structure you are aiming for. Don't get too inflexible or unrealistic.

Second, start the change programme by getting the right team on board. Make sure you retain your best talent, transfer or redeploy where needed, and recruit aggressively if you do not have in-house talent. Do this for senior and middle management first.

Communication

Create a senior management committee to oversee the change efforts. Keep all communication channels open.

Invest time getting buy-in, but do not allow current mindsets to delay/derail the change. This stage is critical -from here on your change programme will be led by these people.

Next, communicate all details of vision/strategy to senior leadership, and translate into annual plans/initiatives with clear milestones and accountabilities.

Be clear on expectations from each initiative, detailed steps, review dates and metrics. Focus only on critical initiatives initially; resist the temptation to launch too many initiatives - it just distracts attention and confuses employees.

Fourth, start a company-wide communications exercise talking about the change programme. A series of formal/informal meetings that talk about the future vision, clarify roles and ease apprehensions will help. Issue communication to junior management if there are redeployments/transfers.

The communications exercise is meant to start everyone in their new roles and initiatives. A quick way of getting people to focus on the future is to create project teams.

Review

Now comes the most critical part, which is reviewing progress. This is where most companies fail. Just putting a plan is obviously no guarantee of success. Ensure monthly and quarterly reviews at departmental/corporate levels.

Ensure all initiatives are reviewed for milestones, deliverables and metrics. Assign additional resources where needed. This is also the time to identify people resisting the change - have a separate sit-down after the review and explain the criticality of the change to the company.

Again, do not let resistance go unrecognised. When progress is slow, these reviews should tell you if the problem is people, or if goals are unclear and resources insufficient.

Finally, reward new behaviours with monetary and non-monetary incentives. Remember, what gets rewarded, gets done! Annual bonus plans, sales incentives should be tied to the new vision and goals.

Develop public recognition programmes that put the spotlight on change champions.

- Sanjiv Anand is Managing Director and Kartik Varma is Engagement Manager at Cedar Management Consulting International.