These words spoken two millennia ago might be very familiar to some of you. They certainly are to us, and we believe they are as insightful now as they were then. However, even though these words have been much quoted, organizations do not necessarily take any notice of them!

Although some managers are now getting this process right, most people’s experience of restructuring is negative. People often roll their eyes and say ‘Not again’, ‘It failed’, ‘Why didn’t they manage it better?’, and ‘Why can’t they leave us to just get on with the job?’

Restructuring as a theme for change might seem a little strange because restructuring as a key strategic objective is not particularly meaningful. Surely we should be looking at the reasons behind the change. There are a number of important points here:

• It seems that restructuring becomes the solution to a variety of organizational issues, and in that sense we need to look at the restructuring process itself as it impacts on so many people’s lives.

• Given that managers and staff are restructured so often, it is important to understand the dynamics of restructuring, what typically goes wrong and what a good process looks like.

• In our view restructuring should be the last option considered by management rather than the first option. It is often a method for not addressing the organizational issues that it seeks to resolve.

This chapter looks at:

• the reasons for restructuring;

• the restructuring processes:

  • strategic review and reasons for change;

  • critical success factors, design options and risk assessment;

  • learnings from previous projects and best practice;

  • project planning and project implementation;

  • monitoring and review;

• restructuring from an individual change perspective – the special case of redundancy;

• enabling teams to address organizational change.