Restructuring without regret

Navigating tough times is a problem every leader faces, no matter how seasoned they are.

While ‘tough times’ is a broad category — one that we’ll revisit time and again — one of the biggest difficulties is reshaping and restructuring an organisation without losing its soul.

Mission impossible?

Imagine needing to overhaul the size and shape of your team, because growth has stalled or your structure is no longer in lockstep with your strategy.

Imagine needing to do this when the whole organisation is frantic with the work that turnaround involves.

And imagine needing to do this while retaining team members who are crucial to your operation. It’s essential that they remain committed. No resentment. No additional unwanted departures. No deadlines missed.

At the same time, you must ensure that those who will be leaving don’t feel bitter, because you’re in an industry where everyone talks.

Now imagine you made that happen. It would stand apart from how many organisations handle such situations — or, rather, bungle them.

The good news is this: such an outcome is possible. I’ve helped a number of leadership teams navigate to it.

The question is: how?

Every situation deserves a specific and sensitive answer. But here are three places to start.

1. Understand that values are commandments, not guidelines.

When difficult structural decisions loom, leaders can pursue courses of action that undermine the values they have spent years championing.

This is because values call for behaviours that can clash with how tough times pressure leaders to act. For example, values like ‘care’ or ‘kindness’ might call for the company to go above and beyond its obligations in the support it offers to departing employees. But such support costs money.

In a tug-of-war between values and financial incentives, cash emerges king more often than it should.

But it is your values on which your organisation will be judged: your real values, that is, not your claimed ones. Value money over doing the right thing by your people, and your people will conclude that they matter less to you than profit. They will adjust their behaviour accordingly.

At the heart of this is a human truth: people are naturally attuned to sense intent. You can only achieve a perception of positive intent if your values have your people at their heart and your actions align to those values. This doesn’t mean your people will always be happy or agree with how things shake out. It does mean that they’re more likely to respect and cooperate with it.

Getting to this point might require sacrifice.

Which is as it should be: your values are the things that cost you.

2. Temper efficiency with human engagement.

Over the last few decades, it’s become lore that a successful business is an efficient one. But humans aren’t capital, or machines to be optimised.

People need time to process and adapt to change.

Investing time in proper communication and consultation allows individuals to handle difficult situations. They become more adaptable and eager to contribute. And such contributions are helpful — even essential.

They’re essential because human beings are poor at systems thinking. In a rush to make decisions, we often fail to consider the impact on the wider organisation — and how this might unfold over time. The way through this is to engage people from across the business to build (or rebuild) the system, ensuring it’s fit for the future.

(Clearly there are HR, scoping and timing considerations here, but those factors merit a more specific conversation.)

3. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Making decisions that affect people’s futures can feel uncomfortable for leaders.

When businesses mishandle them, it can be because leaders are trying to escape that discomfort. Speeding up in the hope it’ll all be over soon is an all-too-human response. But this behaviour tends to create far more problems than it solves.

This brings us back to intent. If a leader’s actions are in service of avoiding discomfort, people will sense that the leader’s priority is their own wellbeing. This will undermine trust and confidence in that leader across the business.

The bad news is that, for many of us, reshaping and restructuring a team will always be uncomfortable. (Whether this is actually a bad thing is one to ponder: discomfort can keep us honest.)

But there are ways to get comfortable being uncomfortable. It involves examining the roots of our emotions, unlearning old habits, and unpicking what it means to lead. This can be challenging work, but the scope for growth it offers is huge.

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