Org design guide: Plan a restructure

 

Where do I begin? Start with strategy

There needs to be a compelling reason to embark on an organizational restructure. Without one, designning the best structure to solve the problem will be hard to achieve, and stakeholders are likely to waste time in discussions about their view of what's needed. Most reasons for planning a restructure revolve around a change in strategy brought on by:

• Reducing costs
• Refocusing product or service offerings
• Changes in leadership
• External market conditions
• Internal issues stifling execution, like communication silos

If everyone agrees on the problem, then it starts to become clearer where the organization's north star is for fixing it is.

So, make sure you're clear on the reasons why you need a restructure or re-org.

 

Steps:

1. Analyze your current state scenario

2. Make copies of your current state scenario

3. Invite other stakeholders to collaborate on the process

4. Move people and teams to change the structure visually

5. Accurately and clearly tell the story of changes

6. Forecast how your compensation and headcount will change

7. Get a list of all of the changes for your restructure

8. Export your restructure in a variety of formats

 

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1. But in Functionly, where do I begin?

Visualize your current state scenario and start analyzing

When doing a restructure or re-org, starting in Functionly with your current organizational chart provides a clear understanding of existing roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships. It identifies gaps, cracks, and overlaps, ensuring that changes align with your organization's strategic goals. Visualizing your org structure

Add groups to segment your org structure and show the headcount, aggregate FTE, and total compensation for those groups. It also means you can set operating goals for each group when you start to draft changes in your restructure.

 

 

Clicking on any position in Functionly provides real-time data about that position, including calculations on the headcount and aggregate compensation of its subsidiary structure. This, at a glance view, allows you to see where a manager may be overworked or have the capacity for an increase in headcount in their team. Why does someone have a span of control less than five? Is it due the complexity of their role or are they under utilised? Do reporting lines need to be consolidated? If a manager has a span of control greater than ten, are they overworked or is it just a team with roles that are typically more self-suficient?

 

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2. How do I visualize potential future structures? Make copies of your current state scenario

Functionly empowers you to make unlimited copies of your current state scenario and those copies act as a sandbox, where you change your structure and org data without worrying who can see your work. The new versions will remain private until you're ready to share them, so you can feel safe to make any change you want and not cause alarm. Whenever you copy a scenario from your current state, it creates a two-way relationship between them that allows you to easily integrate changes from the prospective future scenario that represents your restructured version, into your current state, once you're ready to roll out the changes.

 

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3. Invite other stakeholders to collaborate on the process

While restructures are obviously highly sensitive processes, it's vital that they don't happen in a vacuum. Involve other stakeholders early to provide input, propose changes to their own areas or the organization, or even make copies of the current state org and propose entirely different approaches. Our self-service plans come with three user seats included, and we strongly advise utilising these to foster the necessary buy-in needed to ensure the process is successful and everyone is pulling in the same direction. There are a variety of different access levels you can grant each user in any scenario, depending on what you want them to be able to do and see.

 

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4. Move people and teams to change the structure visually

You can quickly test how new structures will look by simply dragging and dropping positions or groups of positions to new locations in the org.

If you make a number of changes and decide to revert them, you can easily undo or restore an older version using the scenario's history.

 

 

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5. Show the whole org beyond the structure

There's a story to be told beyond the organization's structure, such as who does what and where they do it. Mapping your executive accountabilities as they are today will let you view more than just the car, it lets you look at the engine of your org.

 

Allocate executive accountabilities to show where they sit in your proposed new structure, use color to indicate different criteria such as positions impacted by changes, create cross-functional reporting to more accurately portray your structure, and add custom properties to provide detail on any position.

 

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6. Forecast how your compensation and headcount will change

The forecast sheet lets you look at headcount and compensation changes over time, so you can use data to help inform your decision when narrowing proposed future options to just one. Any filters you set for the forecast sheet can be exported to CSV.

 

 

 

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7. Get a list of all of the changes for your restructure

Once your team has narrowed potential restructure options down, you can compare them to your current state scenario using the change plan to gain a deeper understanding of the merits of each. The change plan provides a full list of all the changes needed to take your organization from A to B, and can be exported to CSV.

 

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8. Export and share your restructure in a variety of formats

Sharing the details of your restructure and having flexibility in how you share it and in what format is crucial. Every view and most objects in your scenario can be exported in various formats, whether it's to PNG for a presentation; filter data on the people and positions view, then export to CSV or export job descriptions to Word to provide greater role clarity.

 

 

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