The Restructuring-Fear Cycle: II

Last time we began exploring the Restructuring-Fear Cycle, which shows how the fear induced by restructuring can create a need for more restructuring. In effect, organizations can become addicted to restructuring. Here's Part II of our exploration.

Credibility erosion

When employees notice a pattern of restructuring, many assume that their own performance, and that of their business unit, will affect decisions about their job security. Correct or not, this speculation can lead to withholding bad news, or worse, creating fictitious good news. As status reports travel up the management chain, some recipients, anticipating this shading of the truth, doubt the veracity of the reports.

When what we say to each other becomes unreliable, managing the organization becomes truly difficult. Enterprise performance is at risk. In this way, restructuring events can degrade enterprise performance, which increases the need for further restructuring. Top-to-bottom management replacement, as in a spin-off or acquisition, is sometimes the only way to end this cycle.

Getting things in under the wire

Among managers who recognize that further restructuring lies ahead are those who undertake so-called game-changing projects that promise a brighter future. They're hoping, in part, to enhance their own job security. Because they typically believe that the opportunity for initiating new projects is short-lived, they tend to oversell the attractiveness of their initiatives by representing them as better developed, lower-risk, more important, and more urgent than they really are.

This dynamic can lead the enterprise to undertake too many new efforts, many of them too disconnected from its core mission. The problems inherent in development are often understated, and the downstream costs of supporting new offerings are often underestimated. Many of these efforts come to nothing. The resources invested are wasted, which leads to enhanced necessity for further restructuring.

Roster padding

Within most Among managers who recognize that
further restructuring lies ahead
are those who undertake so-called
game-changing projects that
promise a brighter futureenterprises, we can usually find a most-politically-powerful entity — a brand, a business unit, or a constellation of smaller entities exploiting a single market position. To employees who fear job loss as a consequence of restructuring, the most-politically-powerful elements seem like possible havens of job security.

Managers within the politically powerful elements thus sometimes experience a flux of jobs seekers from other business units. Before the restructuring began, some of these people would not have been obtainable at the rates being offered, or not obtainable at all. Some managers succumb to the temptation to make internal hires. When external hiring is frozen, but internal transfers are still permitted, politically powerful entities can find themselves bloated with employees and projects. Their expenses climb, and soon there is need for yet another round of restructuring.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Restructuring breeds fear, fear lowers margins, and the cycle continues. First in this series   Top    Next Issue

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[1] Weinberg, Gerald M. Quality Software Management Volume 1: Systems Thinking. New York: Dorset House, 1989. Order from Amazon.com

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