What have been your positive experiences of departmental change/work restructuring?

[Mrscog]

I'm about to launch a time of change and restructuring within my team. I'm fairly well versed in good quality change management and have designed a collaborative/consultative approach to the changes I want to implement, but I just wondered if anyone had experience of little practical things/approaches which really eased the process for them during a period of change.

I'm keen to ensure that people feel as positive as possible about changes (there are no redundancies on the cards so that should help).

The group I work in has had lots of changes in the last 5 years, and I think the hardest bit has been that the senior people in the group have done very well out of it (where their roles were going they got better jobs outside the group), but others have found that things got worse as the promised benefits of the change didn't pan out - think losing dedicated financials resource as it would be provided by the main group, but that group didn't get anyone extra so pushed back on doing the work. Or were effectively demoted and could plainly see that they would get demoted again when the obvious next change happened.

So, for me, what would have made it positive would have been honesty from management about what the medium term strategy was likely to be, and a culture where everyone felt empowered to say 'hey, exactly what is going to happen about x' - and honest answers were given.

Thanks CMOT - that's helpful. I think there are a couple of awrkward questions which relate to how this affects JD's and therefore potentially future salary which I need to get realistic/honest answers to. Partly because until we've done the work I can't possibly say exactly what those implications might be.

I'm keen to ensure that people feel as positive as possible about changes

You can’t please all of the people all of the time - you are already adopting good CM practices, presumably clearly articulating what the changes are, what the implications are and what they mean to your team.

Beyond that, you will always have those who welcome change and see it as a new opportunity, and others who push back. So I can’t see what more you can do than being there for your direct reports, able to give answers to their questions and concerns - and treating them as intelligent people, avoiding too many platitudes (a common problem that people become cynical about)