We’ve all been there. The “new broom” wants to “sweep clean” and reorganise. Next thing you know we are into a reorganisation. How often do you here people say this is the [Insert Number In The Gap] reorganisation this year and nothing has improved? Politicians love reorganisations and, be afraid, there is an election coming up in both the UK and USA . Promises of reorganisations prior to the election will be followed by lots of reorganisation by whoever wins. Let’s reorganise the NHS, Education, Transport, the list is endless. For decades, organisations, countries and even individuals have reorganised at every opportunity. Now is the time to ask, “how effective have these reorganisations been?” Answer – given that almost every reorganisation is followed reasonably quickly by another reorganisation they are rarely if ever effective. So what is the reason why reorganisations aren’t effective? The problem is too many “big ideas” and not enough small continuous improvements If You Want Major Change Then Forget Big Ideas
Reorganisations fail because they almost always look to solve a short term problem and ignore the ultimate goal. Before contemplating any change please read Start With Why by Simon Sinak. Once you know why you are doing something you can begin the change. We can point everything in the direction that moves us toward our “why”. Then little by little we can improve things. If we accept that the only competition we need to worry about is ourselves Effective Organisations Only Have one Competitor and work on continuous improvement or Kaizen Little Things Mean A Lot then we can move forward consistently. If you don’t believe me then simply ask “how many times have you reorganised your office, or laptop, or email in box, or kitchen drawer only to find that a couple of weeks later you are back to square one? Instead of simply reorganising, if you had set the objective – to have an organised whatever and keep it organised and then put in place methods and systems to achieve that you would be much more successful than if you simply reorganised and then carried on in the old ways.
We need to avoid the continual reorganisations that everyone except the reorganiser hates and instead move toward our objective in a way that everyone can understand and to which everyone can contribute. Beware of big ideas that lead to big reorganisations. History tells us, it will not end well.
If you want to know more or want help to effectively improve rather than reorganise then please Contact us.