Resizing - structures and red pens

A day doesn't pass at the moment without a reference to another business making a reduction in their employee numbers. The stock market, boardroom and consumer confidence continue to be variable as lockdown measures are relaxed, but nervousness about a 'second spike' means we're far from 'normal' and using the phrase 'the new normal' is commonplace.

HRD's and senior leaders have to make some tough choices when faced with declining revenues and costs still at the level they were at the start of the year; the doors to the virtual boardroom close as the structures and red pens come out to work through 'what do we keep and what do we let go'.

Resizing is a large and complex transformation activity; trying to design the future busienss to 'do more with less' within boundaries of financial health, variable consumer confidence and ambiguity in government policy.

If the change from the current state to future state for the organisation is to have some likelihood of successfully delivering the immediate financial health through lower costs priority, and allow for a future-fit structure and capability to trade out of the current position; a new structure with less capacity isn't sufficient.

Purely focussing the resizing activity on organisation structure and staffing levels will lead to the reduced capacity of employees doing 'more for less'. Employees will be incredibly busy doing work that hasn't been redesigned or reprioritiesed. The activity can become frantic, hand to mouth day to day, as the mindset is the immediate term 'do this now' and not on the medium to long term 'better, quicker, more'.

My tips for facing into a resizing exercise are:

• start with what will be different in the Processes. Review the future business model, business processes and operations of the functions first. Determine what the business will look like and how it will work; are their external market influences that you should face into now?
• then review your Technology for the future business model. Include your physical buildings, IT systems, tools, machinery and equipment. Ask yourself - is this static, is it needed 100%, what could be different for our future state?
• then review your Organisation structure, staffing levels and roles. Ensure you balance immediate role needs with medium to longer-term, so you have the capabilities to do more than just survive this week. Consider your culture and how this will be different in the future state.
• understand the Information and data that will be required for the future state; do you know what you need? do you know where it is today? is it documented/recorded?

Resizing effectively spans organisation design and organisational effectiveness. It should be 'root and branch' in defining what is to be done, so that it can be delivered as a programme of transformation to set the future state business up for success.