How not to restructure
It would seem that the trend in a company close to me and in others is to change a company culture by parachuting more and more managers in and replacing/removing the old ones. It does smack rather of uncoupling the lead loco and leaving the train behind and still expecting the train to move. By removing management and bringing in a new set one risks having two cultures: that of the management team and that of the teams they manage. To me this gives too much credit to senior appointments in changing structure; what role they best suit is in convincing investors and watches that the company is sailing in a new direction. Leave cultural change to those that are in the culture – win the “hearts and minds”.
In a wider scale we can see the evidence of this approach in the fiasco of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The removal of the government head did nothing to change the lot of the people below and it’s been argued elsewhere that it actually got worse for the people in those countries. For the role of chief executive Khasi fits the bill in that for a good few years he convinced the west that things were OK, when of course they weren’t. We now see efforts to win “hearts and minds”.
Moving back to financial services : for the customer the experience will change in that they will now experience a schizophrenic delivery: a bit of the old and a bit of the new (which is resented by those who deliver the service)
Change must be from all levels – up and down
