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The first step in achieving organization-wide change is ensuring that leadership is aligned and clear on their organizational direction and expectations. The next step is engaging everyone in the organization so they can have a “direct line of sight” between what they do each day and where the organization is headed.
Restructuring in any organization is a team effort. The leadership comes out with a well thought out restructuring blue print. A team of managers shall then need to be constituted to implement the envisaged plan. The plan needs to be implemented effectively in stages and in a phased manner. Many teams need to make effort and the restructuring plan is brought o fruition. Managers at different levels need to be empowered to make decisions towards effective implementation of the plan.
While senior management can develop the organizational framework, the actual structure is usually best developed from the bottom up. The company should inform employees about its overall strategy and actively engage them in the redesign. The strategic focus of the process, with management continually communicating the competitive issues facing the company, compelled a critical mass of APS employees to participate in the process.
Because information and expertise is dispersed throughout a company, redesign should be approached as a group process. If people are going to embrace the redesign process, they must have a good understanding of how staffing will be handled. Although the process is highly participative, it is not open-ended. Senior management must be visible and accessible throughout. Tight deadlines must also be established and met. The more participative the process, the better the ideas and the higher company morale is likely to be when it is completed.
Successful change in organizational culture requires senior management’s persistence and relentless insistence on learning how to make the strategy operational. Management must use leverage points to create a new culture. These leverage points include organizational systems; managers’ roles; criteria for staffing decisions; education, training, and development efforts for all levels; reward systems; employee involvement processes; operative goals; and modeling leadership behavior. All the levers must focus on the strategic business goals of the company.
