Restructuring is a major change that can affect your company's performance, culture, and reputation. It can also create new opportunities to leverage your strengths and gain a competitive edge in the market. But how can you identify and capitalize on your core competencies, assets, and values after a restructuring process? Here are some tips to help you do that.
The first step is to understand the reasons, goals, and outcomes of your restructuring. Was it driven by external factors, such as market shifts, customer demands, or regulatory changes? Or was it motivated by internal factors, such as cost reduction, innovation, or alignment? How did it impact your organization's structure, processes, and resources? What are the benefits and challenges of the new configuration? By answering these questions, you can evaluate your current position and identify your strengths and weaknesses.
Restructuring can go beyond restructuring of loans. It could involve amalgamation, merger, demerger, sale of business, hiving of business etc. It may involve rebranding, repositioning market presence, providing confidence with visible leadership etc.
Usually, performing a SWOT analysis and employing Porter's Five Forces framework assists in formulating the strategy or future direction. Additionally, it is essential to effectively convey the objectives to the entire team and establish well-defined goals. In situations involving collaboration between individuals from diverse organizations or departments to attain a shared objective, clear communication and the implementation of a RACI matrix is important.
Restructuring can also mean contextualizing deeper for better fit, longer relationships and retentive revenues. It can be a leap of change that has its own chances of giving the dividends it was planned for. Irrespective of what causes the initiation of restructure, if its imminent, it is advisable to leverage this as an overall opportunity for critical dispassionate evaluation of all external and internal factors for creating a future ready wholesome repositioning.
The next step is to communicate your vision and mission to your stakeholders, especially your employees, customers, and partners. How does your restructuring support your strategic objectives and value proposition? How does it enhance your competitive advantage and differentiation? How does it align with your culture and values? By articulating your vision and mission clearly and consistently, you can build trust, engagement, and loyalty among your stakeholders and showcase your strengths.
The third step is to focus on your customers and their needs, expectations, and feedback. How does your restructuring improve your customer experience and satisfaction? How does it enable you to deliver more value, quality, and innovation to your customers? How does it help you to attract, retain, and grow your customer base? By prioritizing your customers and their perspectives, you can leverage your strengths to create and capture value in the market.
The need for restructuring reflects a cash flow problem and therefore, loss of customer confidence. The process of winning back customers need not wait till the restructuring is complete. There must be short term and long term strategies that can lead to providing crucial cash during the period of restructuring. This needs leadership, strategy, branding and marketing.
The fourth step is to optimize your processes and systems to support your restructuring and your strengths. How can you streamline, automate, or simplify your workflows and operations? How can you eliminate waste, redundancy, or inefficiency? How can you enhance your productivity, agility, or flexibility? By optimizing your processes and systems, you can leverage your strengths to achieve operational excellence and performance improvement.
The fifth step is to develop your people and their skills, competencies, and potential. How can you empower, motivate, and reward your employees? How can you foster collaboration, communication, and learning among your teams? How can you provide training, coaching, or mentoring to your staff? By developing your people and their capabilities, you can leverage your strengths to cultivate a high-performing and resilient workforce.
The final step is to monitor and adjust your actions and results according to your restructuring and your strengths. How can you measure, track, and report your progress and performance? How can you collect, analyze, and act on data and insights? How can you identify, anticipate, and respond to opportunities and challenges? By monitoring and adjusting your strategy and execution, you can leverage your strengths to adapt and thrive in a dynamic environment.