Restructuring

I have been speaking with and working with several organizations lately that are looking at restructuring their organizations or departments. A sensitive issue at best, and an impossible task at worst.

Following the mantra (or is it a cliche?) of "if you want me on board for the landing, you'd better have me on board for the takeoff", we've been experimenting with visually co-creating the future structure of a group with all of the stakeholders. Almost like a Value Networks NetMap exercise. Here's a few of the lessons we've learned:

• Prepare the group for some difficult discussion. Lay out the rules of engagement and encourage people to resist defending their position.
• Avoid using names and identities. Refer to roles.
• Using a tool or method that enables anonymous and candid collection of suggestions for altering current structure can be a good way of breaching the tough issues. Accepting inputs as questions is a good way to avoid threatening. Decision support technology can be a good option.
• Having a visual to follow is critical for some people to process and contribute effectively. The tactility of populating or organizing the visual is also a necessity for some. I hope I don't have to include that this visual is not an org-chart. How people deliver value and interact with other roles is not a matter of who they report to.

There are those that would say that attempts like this at restructuring and reorganizing are futile. People self organize and they way they arrange themselves in roles cannot be engineered, as it is an organic process.

I don't absolutely dispute this, but maintain that this is a collaborative and "facilitated organic" catalytic process.