RE-STRUCTURE - THE INEVITABLE MESSY STUFF

We have witnessed the transformative effect of being brave enough to pay closer attention to endings and in doing so create brighter beginnings.

The first of the four pillars we offer you as leaders to equip yourself to navigate the Endings in your organisation is Reality. But we can stumble at this first hurdle. Recognising and acknowledging reality might sound simple and obvious, but it is often entangled in all sorts of messy stuff.

As an example, think about being the architect of a re-structure.

You have worked with HRD for months and are now informing a team of a re-structure that will cause pain for some, and opportunities for others. Some people are promoted, some leave the business with immediate effect, some experiencing little change to their role while witnessing the swirl around them.

The messy stuff here for your team includes:

o   Differing impacts

o   Your transition and processing happening at a different time from your team

o   Differing rates of processing and transitioning within the team

o   Differing levels of agency

o   Differing levels of buy in to the changes

o   Compromise agreements, secrecy and some people leaving without saying goodbye

o   Managing their teams feeling a version of all this as it is experienced live by the rest of the organisation and it’s stakeholders.

Unacknowledged messy stuff can stop us moving onto the next pillar- emotions.

Where to start?

Here are two useful starting points:

1.     A way of mapping choice and agency that can be a useful insight into the range of individual experience.

2.     Using metaphor and standing in someone else’s shoes to uncover the full extent of the reality beyond your own and the obvious.