If your business seems to have a number of issues, isn’t as efficient as you’d like, or has simply grown in a fairly haphazard way, it might be time to restructure. Restructuring your business allows you to merge and split departments as needed, create new roles to handle certain tasks, and rework processes to get the most out of your resources. While not all businesses may need to go through a major restructuring, it is something a company in any industry and of any size can do. But there are challenges to restructuring, and the largest of those challenges is knowing what you need to change.
Take a different perspective to make restructuring easier for your business.
A Different Perspective
The main reason it can be hard to tell what you need to change during your restructuring is because you’re at the center of your business. You’re so used to how things are done that you may not recognize inefficiencies and other issues because you’ve come to accept that they’re how your company functions. This is why it’s important that you get different perspectives before you start your restructuring. You’re too close to some of the problems that you aren’t able to recognize them. Here are a few different perspectives that can help make restructuring easier, and create a better result.
The Employee Perspective
As the owner or CEO, you’re looking at your company from a top-down perspective. You know how the company runs from being at the top, but how does it look to your low-level employees? What about the middle management? Talking to various employees can give you an idea of what people find frustrating about working for you and what they truly love. It can also help to do anonymous surveys since some people might not give you their full thoughts in person.
An Industry Colleague
Another good perspective to get is the outside perspective of someone else in your industry. These colleagues understand the processes, needs, and challenges that someone in your industry deals with on a regular basis, and they may be able to point out where you’re doing something in an ineffective way. They can also share with you how others in the industry do things. While these approaches may not be right for you, knowing how your competitors do things can help you understand why those competitors are doing better or worse than you.
An Outsider
Finally, bring in a coach or consultant to analyze your company. While they may not understand the particular processes your industry involves, they may bring ideas to the table that you and those familiar with your company wouldn’t think of. A business coach or consultant is trained to look at how businesses can grow regardless their industry. These experts will bring a neutral perspective and can often highlight problems that you didn’t even realize were an issue.
While you can restructure without any outside perspective or by only getting one of these perspectives, by combining all three, you’ll be able to truly get a sense of what works and what needs improvement. Restructuring is time-consuming and expensive—don’t pass up any opportunity to make it easier.
You can find additional articles from Michael Roub at Inflection 360.
Michael Roub
Inflection 360
Michael Roub is an experienced strategic consultant and Managing Partner of Inflection 360. Michael advises businesses and healthcare practices on a wide range of strategic initiatives.
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