Faced with a rapidly evolving competitive marketplace, the chief executives of many of today’s leading companies have embarked on major change initiatives. The goal is twofold: to challenge the existing ways of conducting business and to drive step-level improvements in operating performance. The method is two-pronged as well: cut costs significantly and build capabilities to better serve the marketplace. These initiatives, then, often involve the radical redesign of the very systems and processes that the companies rely upon to develop, deliver and service the products they provide.
Trying to remake the organization to compete more effectively while continuing to serve customers thus presents a significant management challenge, one of the key reasons behind the widely cited 70 percent failure rate of major re-engineering initiatives.
This article explores a novel way to meet that challenge, by driving significant companywide change through the use of an innovative transforming vehicle, the “temporary organization.” Small in size yet acting with the full authority of the C.E.O.’s office, such organizations are set up and staffed with the sole goal of revamping the status quo as quickly, painlessly and thoroughly as possible. They accomplish all this by acting outside the normal boundary lines of the existing corporate structure and by being liberated from the day-to-day agenda and concerns of the business.
Editor’s Note: I found this article to be poorly written (unusual for s+b) and lacking in many areas but still there is some value in the concept and some of the points drawn…
Authors: David J. Ortiz, Edith Howle, Gary L. Neilson
Source: strategy+business
Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior
Click to Add the First »