Most restructurings are announced with energy and a clean new chart. Four months later, many are quietly stuck. The boxes have changed, but the way decisions are made has not.
The chart is the easy part
Drawing a new structure takes weeks. Changing who decides what, who is consulted and who simply gets informed takes much longer. When decision rights are left vague, people fall back on old habits and the new structure becomes a layer on top of the old one.
Three things that keep a restructuring moving
- Write down decision rights for the twenty decisions that matter most, before the announcement.
- Name an owner for each handover between old and new units, with a date.
- Review it at month three, openly, with the people living inside it.
A structure is only as good as the decisions it makes easier.
None of this is complicated. It simply needs to be planned as carefully as the chart itself. Leaders who do this find that month four is when the new organisation starts to pay off, not when it starts to stall.