Stop Reorganising the People Who Are Trying to Work
By The Paragraph
A new structure can solve a real problem. It can also provide a conspicuous alternative to solving one.
The boxes have moved again. A team has acquired a new title, a manager has inherited another reporting line, and a familiar task now requires approval from somewhere called a directorate. The presentation explains the benefits in confident colours. At the desk where the work is done, someone is trying to discover who can authorise a replacement printer.
Reorganisation is not necessarily folly. Responsibilities can become muddled, duplicated work can waste effort, and an outdated structure can frustrate capable people. Sometimes moving the boxes is precisely what is needed. The question is whether the proposed arrangement addresses a demonstrated difficulty or merely supplies visible evidence that the leadership has been busy.
Change has costs that fit badly on an organisation chart. Relationships must be rebuilt. Local knowledge loses its address. People hesitate because they no longer know which judgement they are allowed to make. During the transition, the public may experience delays that no single team believes it owns. A tidy diagram can coexist with a thoroughly untidy service.
There is an incentive problem too. Announcing a redesign is easier to claim as an achievement than patiently making the existing arrangement work. The launch has a date and a slide deck. Better handovers, clearer instructions and reliable maintenance are less photogenic. Leadership can become attracted to the kind of improvement that is easiest to describe before it exists.
A serious proposal should begin with a concrete account of failure. Which decision takes too long? Which responsibility has no owner? What information fails to reach the people who need it? If those questions cannot be answered, a new structure may simply redistribute the confusion. Staff will learn different names for obstacles they already understand.
The strongest case for change should also include its temporary disadvantages. People deserve an honest estimate of what will slow down, what knowledge may be lost and how essential work will continue. A transition described as costless is not reassuring. It suggests that the costs will arrive unacknowledged, usually on the desks of those with least freedom to refuse them.
Staff resistance should not automatically be treated as proof of either wisdom or obstruction. Some people protect comfortable arrangements; others recognise hazards invisible from above. The useful question is what their objections reveal about the work. Listening seriously means distinguishing a threatened privilege from a threatened capability, rather than flattering or dismissing every objection as a class.
There should be a point at which the promised benefit can be checked. Not another presentation about implementation, but evidence that the original problem has become easier to solve. If responsibility is still unclear or customers still make the same repeated calls, the new chart has not earned its applause. Completing a reorganisation is different from improving an institution.
Continuity can itself be a resource. A member of staff who knows whom to call and which previous attempt failed may save hours without appearing in any efficiency calculation. Before breaking those connections, leaders should understand what they accomplish and how the proposed structure will preserve their practical value.
Good leadership sometimes changes the structure. It also knows when to leave capable people in a stable arrangement and supply what they need. The aim is not a permanent revolution in job titles. It is an organisation whose members can spend more of their intelligence on the work than on discovering where the work now belongs.