Monitoring and review

Monitoring and review is not something just to be done at the end of the process and written up for the next time. If you have adopted the machine approach to restructuring, perhaps you might think that once the plan is in place, all it needs is a robotic implementation. Of course organizations are not entirely mechanistic, and individuals and groups going through change can react in all sorts of ways. The restructuring plan needs to be monitored constantly to see how both the task and people aspects of the plan are progressing. Feedback loops need to be built into the plan so that senior managers and those responsible for implementation have their fingers on the pulse of the organization.

In our discussion of individual change (see Chapter 1) we remarked that a certain amount of resistance to proposed changes is to be expected. Just because people resist change does not mean to say that you are doing it wrong! It is a naturally healthy human reaction for individuals and groups to express both positive and negative emotions around change. Managers can help this process along by encouraging straight talk.

Also, just because people resist change it does not mean to say that they have got it wrong! They might well see gaps and overlaps, or things that just are not going to work. Listening to the people who will have to make the new structure work is not only a nice thing to do, it is a useful thing to do and constitutes effective use of management time.

The process of monitoring and review should begin at the planning stage and be an important part of the whole process, right through to the point where you evaluate the effectiveness of the new structure in the months and years after implementation.