How many readers, I wonder, have been involved in a reorganisation in the past year or two? For that matter, how many, like me, are losing count of the number of times they have been reorganised over the past decade? Speaking for myself, my head is spinning with pyramidal structures, flat structures, customer-led structures, structures in the shape of a wheel, and the breaking open of departmental silos, to say nothing of missions, strategies, business plans, key tasks, targets and medium term outcomes.
Now, I am not going to argue that any of this was unnecessary. Even organisations not directly affected by globalisation have had to adapt to changes in markets, customer expectations and technology. But too often there seems to be a gap between promise and reality. The process which starts with much enthusiasm about meeting the challenge and new ways of working can end in disillusion, running repairs, or even a return to the drawing board. So what happens? I don't claim to have the answers, but I can at least ask a few searching questions.
The first is whether reorganisers always fully understand the organisation they are redesigning. The current popularity of the term "re-engineering" must tempt some to treat an organisation as if it was a machine, and the organisation chart as a wiring diagram which can simply be reconnected in a different sequence.
But an organisation is not a machine; it is a complex social organism. The people who work for it may start with just a structure chart and a job description, but they create networks, take initiatives and develop skills. Organisations have cultures, traditions, tensions, even jealousies. A reorganisation which does not take account of all this may do a lot of unintentional mischief.
The second question is whether reorganisation started as a necessity but has become a fashion. There seems to be a widespread assumption that constant change is, of itself, essential to rejuvenate an organisation and keep it fit and healthy. Candidates for senior management sell themselves on their Vision for Change. Boards and interview panels seem to expect it. How far would you get, these days, with a Vision for Leaving Things More Or Less As They Are and Not Meddling?
Just as there is a time for change, so there is a time for letting an organisation consolidate and recuperate. People need to settle down, develop working patterns and relationships, acquire experience. Organisations need to retain corporate memory. I suspect that one reason for the modern emphasis on making a company a "learning organisation" is the realization that companies were losing vital knowledge and expertise every time they shed another contingent of experienced staff.
The final question is whether managers are putting too much reliance on reorganisation alone. My boss of twenty years ago - a highly distinguished man with a national reputation - used to say that people worried too much about structure. If your staff were good, he argued, the structure would, to a great extent, take care of itself. He practised what he preached. He tweaked the structure from time to time, without changing it radically. But he had a remarkable nose for talent and management potential, and it enabled him to build a highly effective department. The converse must also be true. A brilliantly and thoroughly designed structure will not make up for an ill-chosen, ill-trained workforce. Or for a third-rate product.
If I suggest that organisations should be thought of in terms of trees or gardens, I will risk sounding like Peter Sellers as the gardener-turned-guru in the film "Being There." But perhaps reorganisations would be more sensitively done if reorganisers thought in terms of transplanting, pruning and nurturing rather than retooling and rewiring. They might even yield better fruit.
This article was first published in the April 2002 People Matters