Prioritize people to help organization redesigns succeed

Designing new organizational structures is inherently challenging, but the true test lies in its implementation. Leaders often underestimate the effort required to effectively implement a new structure and how crucial this phase is to the overall success of the organization structure transformation. Success is bigger than simply creating and implementing new roles. For organization redesign to work and achieve its potential, leaders must also foster the right mindsets, attitudes and behaviours if their people are to embrace the change and flourish.
 

Prioritizing people at the heart of transition plans and change management strategies drives greater success overall
 

Leaders who take a human-centric approach and prioritize the emotional side of change stand the greatest chance of generating lasting value from any organization redesign initiative. When leaders focus on employees’ emotional journey, good things happen. Why?
 

It’s not enough to simply design a new organizational structure and move people into their new roles. Leaders must think beyond processes, resources and technologies to create the right emotional conditions for this kind of change to take hold and endure.
 

In fact,  EY–Oxford Saïd Business School research has shown that when organizations master key organizational transformation drivers, they improve success rates by 2.6x. Those levers include:
 

•       Purposeful vision

•       Adaptive leadership

•       Psychological safety

•       Purposeful technology

•       Disciplined freedom

•       Collaboration
 

The real question is: how do you take action to address these areas once a new organization model is ready to be deployed? At EY, we recommend leaders consider these six areas, and double down on four key actions to successfully build the emotional conditions required to set progress in motion:
 

1.   Engage people in a compelling shared vision

Why did you initiate a change in structure to begin with? During large-scale transformation, with so many moving parts to consider, it’s not uncommon for leaders to lose sight of the problem they’re really trying to solve through organization redesigns. But that grounding purpose should be the compass that guides every step taken during the redesign phase and the instrumental change enablement process that follows.

Leaders must help people understand, relate to and embrace that purpose if they’re going to willingly consider change. Everyone knows change can be difficult. Folks need a compelling reason to embrace it and move through the process.

Leaders who put humans@centre can prioritize a shared vision of success by:
 

• Showing up. Be a visible agent of change, accepting, listening and leading their people to navigate the journey.
• Communicating a clear and relatable case for change. Whether you’re offering a new product, evolving service delivery, entering new geographic markets or implementing advanced technologies, people need to understand the motivation behind an organization redesign.
• Acknowledging employee realities. You need to be empathetic about where challenges may arise and support people at every stage of transformation.
   

2.   Establish collective ownership for success
 

Which ways of working, behaviours or attitudes must evolve for transformation to succeed? Designing a new organizational structure isn’t necessarily a collective activity. But assuming shared ownership for its enduring success is.

For people to adopt a new model, they must feel educated and engaged around how to do so. That might mean taking down silos between functional teams so people can collaborate more freely. It could entail new communications channels to get innovation or governance practices flowing between different teams.

Because organization design touches so many aspects of how we work, employees need a firm grasp of what, specifically, they must do for the structure to deliver on its intended outcomes.

Leaders who put humans@centre can prioritize collective ownership by including teams in:
 

• Designing how work will flow through the organization. Consider which shared key performance indicators (KPIs) span functional teams, who collaboration partners will be and how everyone will take collective accountability for outcomes.
• Determining which behaviours must start, stop and continue to succeed in the new structure. This means thinking about how people will need to behave differently going forward — which behaviours will remain necessary in the future state and which must be stopped so they don’t stall or hinder progress.

3.   Ground corporate culture on trust and psychological safety

How can organizations prevent uncertainty and stress from creeping into the change enablement process? Organization design changes almost always feel uncomfortable. As people, we wrap a lot of emotion up in our daily work and careers. It’s only natural that if our team structure, reporting relationships, functional responsibilities or day-to-day operations change, worry can take hold.

Leaders who want to succeed with a new organization design must consider how change feels and take proactive steps to support employees throughout the process. In the absence of information and direction, people jump to their own conclusions. This draws attention away from embracing and implementing change to instead worrying about what’s next, talking up possibilities and detrimental distraction.

Leaders who put humans@centre can prioritize a culture of trust and psychological safety by:
 

• Fostering open and transparent communication. Saying what you can, when you can, helps people cope with change. Providing directional information and being honest about what you know for sure — whether that means recognizing possible headcount reductions or acknowledging changes to specific roles — counts for a lot.
• Demonstrating empathy and support. Carefully consider the channel, timing and language of communications and make sure the right resources are in place to help people adapt.
• Encouraging risk-taking and learning from mistakes. Approaching change enablement through a continuous improvement lens keeps you agile and allows people to adjust course based on how things are progressing.

4.   Tune in to the turning points.
Even successful transformations encounter moments when programs go off course, and leaders must intervene. We think of these as turning points. Important: the way you navigate turning points with consideration and empathy for the people involved is essential to transformation success.

In fact, EY-Oxford research has shown successfully reading the workforce’s emotional context — and navigating these turning points well — makes a transformation program 1.9x more likely to overperform on target KPIs.

For example, if there’s a lot of noise in the system after a given communication, leaders will want to get involved and steer people back on course by engaging with the team and providing clarification. If a certain stage or initiative veers off track, you’ll want to consider how people are feeling and take steps to either communicate better, ease concerns or even alter an action plan that didn’t pan out as intended.

Leaders who put humans@centre can prioritize turning points by:

• Listening actively at every stage of the change. You need open, transparent channels for two-way dialogue and an always-on approach to gauging employee emotion, sentiment and reaction.
• Engaging quickly when things go wrong. If something isn’t working, never sweep the initiative — or the emotions that come with it — under the rug. Tackle challenges head-on with a spirit of humility and show people that you’re willing to take action when something isn’t working as well as it should.
• Thinking about the team’s emotional health and energy and applying that lens to every decision made. We are all human. If something is bothering a leader, chances are that same decision or action may be worrying employees. Continually gut check your emotions and the team’s to address concerns and build trust.

What’s the bottom line?

When leaders prioritize the emotional aspects of organization redesign, the change itself becomes more likely to succeed. Putting people at the heart of organization redesign is critical to generating lasting value and teeing up the organization — and its people — for future success.