When operating models change, new reporting lines, possible impacts to people's roles and the re-allocation of workload, there is no greater impact to an organisation and its people. One would hope that the changes are well informed, and that a transformation specialist is involved. When they aren't, the changes can take years for an organisation to recover from. Employees and leaders become disillusioned and disengaged.   

I have worked on many operating model changes and every time I have undertaken them I have never taken lightly the impact on individuals and their welfare. I have both worked on those transformations and also been impacted by those transformations and boy oh boy! When not handled well it is nothing short of toxic inefficiency. So from both perspectives, make sure that you and your organisation don't do any of the following next time there is a restructure:

1) Don't sit in fear about communicating

There will be times when you or the leaders will be...

So you have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a new IT system only to find that it 'doesn't work' for the business. The operations teams are beside themselves, having to implement workarounds and fast. The project is now in 'crisis management' mode. Heads are rolling as the Executive team are asking the usual questions and looking for someone to blame amongst an operating crisis. 'Where is the change plan?' 'How did we not know that there was a risk with this system?' 'What are we doing to resolve this?'

Now these are broad questions, however it isn't too unfamiliar. Take it from someone who has walked into scenarios like this with a need to 'revisit' urgently a system rollout. Sometimes it takes the 'guise of a system 'improvement'.  Over time as a change expert, but also a program expert, you become familiar with the common weaknesses and mis-steps of poor rollouts. So it becomes easier to identify areas to be changed or revisited and fast. Needless to say the best...