Operational restructuring

Carefully planned and skilfully executed, these can have as profound an effect on results as a major re-engineering programme.

Restructuring is not just about redesign.  This view underemphasises the importance of establishing a managerial team – albeit a temporary one – with the motivation, clear thinking and willpower to fire radical change and drive it through. Victorious executives in take-overs often imagine that their team of stars is acquiring a set of duffers.  But this is seldom the case.  The most successful restructuring melds the best managers into a stronger team than either part had.  The creation of this team – with a top executive handpicked for the job – can be one of the keys to success in complex restructuring.

It helps to have good managers who can force the pace and get things done. But perhaps most important is to have a clear picture of why you are doing it in the first place – what’s wrong now, where you would like the business to go, and what it should look like when it gets there. If all of this can be represented numerically, so much the better.