Predicting the future

My boss's boss is just trying to protect his own ass. This was my realization as I was running through a fancy neighborhood with huge houses (way too close together) this morning. All signs point to this strategic refresh resulting in an organization along the lines of our brands. The people who run my group are actively trying to prevent that kind of fracture. The kind of things we do can't get done if you break the groups into tiny pieces, at least that's their take on the situation. They haven't really thought about what it would take to make that kind of organization a reality. (Writing that sentence gives me some ideas, this could finally be the chance to split the routine regulatory kind of work from the innovative product development stuff.) They're only looking to protect their role and position. Breaking things up would definitely diminish their influence. That's all they see. They're not looking at what this whole refresh is trying to accomplish and looking for the best way to make that happen. And that's why this refresh will likely fail.

The whole point of this reorganization is to expand the business. The targets are not small incremental steps. This is an effort to get things growing now. You can't keep doing business as usual to make the new revenue targets. The business needs to be reshaped, reoriented, and rebuilt. The culture has to change. To make this happen, it looks to me like our new president is making an effort to cut back on the bureaucracy and oversight to give the brands space to innovate and grow (that's the kernel for one tough question). The culture of going up every rung of the ladder to get approval must be replaced by people taking accountability for doing what they feel needs to get done to make projects move forward.

That is so opposite of the way the culture works now, I just don't see how a culture of doing whatever it takes to move a project forward replaces the need to get approval at every single step. I would love to see the governance of my building get eviscerated, but nobody would be able to function without some kind of organizational coverage. I've realized over the last year and half that the primary role of a manager in my building is to take accountable for other people's decisions. Nobody wants to be wrong, which makes them uncomfortable doing what they know needs to get done. They want permission, which shifts the accountability for the action to the person who granted permission. This is not the mindset of a nimble organization.

Culture isn't the only problem. I also struggle to see how the company grows revenues without taking a hit on profit margins. Margins kill so many of our projects. How much a hit to margins will we be willing to take to grow revenues? If the goal is grow revenues and preserve margins, that dictates a big part of what kind of projects we'll be able to pursue.

Senior staff protecting their turf, culture, margins, these are big company problems. If this refresh is an effort to get a big company to think and act like a small company, there is no way it will work.