Organization Redesign: Is the Cure Worse than the Ailment?
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Organization Redesign: Is the Cure Worse than the Ailment?

Organization Redesign: Is the Cure Worse than the Ailment?

According to a popular management joke, new executives should blame their predecessors when facing their first crisis.  When facing their second crisis, they should reorganize everything.

Jokes are funny when they’re seen as plausible. Reorganizations show action, produce change, and create opportunities for new leadership. Unfortunately, they also tend to paralyze the workforce while the change is being planned, and then confuse or confound them as the reorganization is implemented.  Are reorganizations worth the disruption?

Certainly, organizational redesigns are sometimes necessary to align the organizational structure to new mission needs and realities. Often, they cause more damage than they solve because the underlying challenges have nothing to do with organizational structure. Without a clear understanding of how current challenges relate to mission and capability needs, or a more sophisticated understanding of how to build capability, many executives turn to this blunt instrument that is often seen as a commitment to rapid change.

New organizational structures bring new relationships and identities, but they don’t necessarily address key leadership or process shortfalls, and they do nothing to address underlying culture, skill, or technology needs.

Many executives reorganize to try to improve collaboration, but employees collaborate when they are motivated and able to do so (with the proper incentives, skills, processes, and tools) regardless of whether their colleagues happen to share the same box on a PowerPoint slide.

At Arc Aspicio, we take a holistic approach to organizational improvement. We apply the appropriate improvement action from a toolkit that includes strategy, process improvement, culture optimization, training, hiring support, leadership development, technology support, and (yes) organization redesign methods, accelerators, templates, and techniques. 

We agree with those executives who believe that the correct action to take in a crisis is one that will deliver tangible long-term improvements rather than just show a flurry of activity.

About Arc Aspicio
Arc Aspicio is a management, strategy, and technology consulting firm that takes a mission-oriented approach to complex client challenges. As a rapidly growing company, Arc Aspicio has a bold strategy for 2016-2018 that drives growth through new capabilities in strategy, design, human capital, data analytics, information sharing, cybersecurity, and strategic communications. The company is known for a strong, collaborative culture that values gratitude – for its clients and its great team. And, #welovedogs! Follow us on Twitter @arcaspicio or learn more at www.arcaspicio.com.

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Contributors

Dave Stahlman |

Dave brings over 20 years of experience in helping government agencies, non-profits, and commercial organizations improve mission performance and organizational efficiency.  Dave has focused his consulting career in developing solutions related to business strategy, organizational analysis and improvement, and performance-based decision-making. He is adept at identifying the key issues facing organizations-- whether they be must-have mission capabilities or internal organizational pitfalls-- and designing holistic, integrated, and effective solutions to address them. A certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Dave links approaches for structured innovation with extensive experience in making innovative ideas practical and actionable. Before joining Arc Aspicio, Dave spent more than 18 years with Accenture’s Federal practice leading strategy and organizational improvement efforts while also guiding large transformational programs. Dave has also served as a civil servant for the Department of Defense and in uniform as a Surface Warfare Officer in the US Navy.

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