IT Organization Restructuring
Change always forces change. When your organization experiences any type of change—a new employee, a new competitor in the industry, an economic shift —your organization has to adapt. Sometimes it’s one department and sometimes, it’s the entire organization.
What Is IT Organizational Restructuring?
Restructuring an IT organization is the act of changing the business model to change it for the better. A restructure can take place for different reasons, and a change as major as a restructuring can have various implications for the organization. Restructuring can be necessary for a variety of reasons, including a changing organizational environment, new methods of operations (i.e. remote work), and heading in a different direction to solve performance and productivity issues.
Regardless of the size of your organization, as a leader, one of your responsibilities is to pinpoint specific changes in your organization, understand the conditions for those changes, and be tactical about how you choose to adjust. An organizational restructuring must be attempted with awareness, a plan of action, and attentiveness. If you’re planning to restructure the processes of an entire organization, you must have effective planning and communication.
IT organizational restructuring has all the simplicity of reorganizing an entire city. It’s no surprise that, without proper planning, your IT organization’s restructuring process can go awry fairly quickly. It’s not unheard of for upper management to reorganize the entire organization on paper with only brief input from human resources, deliver an announcement about the restructuring in an upcoming meeting or email, and then, when hesitancy follows, act surprised about the responses and reactions of the employees.
What’s the Best Way to Restructure an IT Organization for Maximum Productivity?
An effective IT organizational structure can help teams perform better than you would expect from the individual parts. Before shaking up your organization, leaders should be clear about what their current and desired organizational structure involves in terms of goals, duties, and processes used to structure the flow of work. This includes the central relationships required to get work done on a day-to-day basis.
Restructuring an IT organization can produce a short-term loss of productivity while new organizational responsibilities and alignments are formed. New relationships and collaboration guidelines must be established to achieve maximum productivity. Establish a framework that provides your organization with clarity, driving the path to performance in a new environment. Reestablishing focus is essential to your organization for achieving maximum productivity and effectiveness after the dust settles.
Change the Tools and Processes
Tools have a crucial yet understated impact on how work gets done. Tools can not only define the work but make work more efficient. In the early use of new tools, there’s a blend of a huge projection in benefit, along with a slight dip in productivity. Even with improvements, all tools can hamper productivity as the tools become the end, rather than the means to an end. This is an evolution of organizational systems and processes, and productivity tools are no exception. Productivity tools are things that every team must watch.
Things will eventually return to normal or, preferably, a “new normal” with effective tools and well-defined processes. New tools are offering new ways to work. These new ways are not only different — this is not about creative reports, maintaining the old habits but doing them faster, or longer spreadsheets. Rather, these new tools and processes should be designed to solve the complex challenges that today’s organizations are facing. These tools and processes take advantage of common and uncommon patterns.
Today, data is stored in the cloud, collaboration takes place in real-time, and work coordination is seared into the tools. Work can be accessed from a range of computing devices. Many of today’s tools are built on the Software as a service model, so they are easy to obtain, and come with the security of cloud-native applications.
Choose Powerful KPIs for Your Organization
Productivity is simply output per unit of time. Metrics are systems of measurement. By definition, productivity and metrics are how organizations measure productivity. KPIs and productivity metrics can often act as associating categories. Key performance indicators (KPIs) allow you to increase productivity. You don’t want your teams focusing on the wrong things.
Establishing powerful KPIs allows you to determine whether your team is working toward the right goals and what changes need to be made to maximize productivity. Your key performance indicators must be critical and relevant to your organization’s success. KPIs should measure performance toward the objectives that you have established as part of your organization’s performance plan. It is necessary that your KPIs effectively measure the most crucial factors in achieving success.
If your teams cannot influence the outcome, you will find it challenging to gain their buy-in. When it comes to choosing powerful KPIs for your organization, consider your main objective is to determine how to drive business performance and maximize performance. Even if you choose the right KPIs, you must have the right tools so your ability to increase your business’s performance and maximize productivity will not be hindered. In order to ensure you’ll be maximizing productivity on all levels, you should utilize tools that can display your KPIs and distribute reports amongst your teams.
Avoid Cybersecurity Hurdles
Today’s cybersecurity threat landscape is ever-changing. The cyber threats and attacks are outrunning the defensive tools and skillsets of most organizations –meaning many organizations are falling victim to attacks by bad actors. The way organizations conduct business is also changing. Cyberattacks and security breaches can lead to a loss of clients and customers in the blink of an eye.
An IT organizational restructuring process should consistently be effective at Identifying, Protecting, Detecting, Responding, and Recovering from persistent cybersecurity threats. Your organization should be able to assess threats and vulnerabilities, identify risks, and implement solutions to secure the environment and critical assets from advanced cyberattacks.
Many organizations do not view their cybersecurity capabilities as strategic. Cybersecurity capabilities should always be viewed as things your organization needs to have to do business and things that are necessary to include when restructuring. Oftentimes, an IT organization can aid in key business decisions by designing an effective plan for potential cybersecurity issues during a restructuring and implementing mitigating controls.
The continued evolution of organizational threats has made organizational leaders seek better opportunities and strategies to defend the interior and exterior and drive change. Informed leaders capitalize on every opportunity to mitigate threats by optimizing their organizational restructuring in an effective manner where processes are streamlined. Organizations can uncover a comprehensive organizational structure that identifies and responds to risks properly and consistently.
There is no “one-size-fits-all” IT organizational restructuring model. There are too many elements, conflicting interests, and guidelines to identify just one IT organizational restructuring model. However, there are a few key questions that you must address when designing a restructuring model that will address your cybersecurity concerns:
- Which activities are essential to your organization’s integration with the industry?
- Will your current resources welcome change and transformation?
- What are your core objectives?
- How can your existing strategies drive positive outcomes?
Change is not always easy. Some organizations handle change better than other organizations. There are many organizations that do not consider the different reactions they may receive from their teams and the impact the restructuring can have on their ability to do their jobs. Cybersecurity can be a strategic advantage for organizations that truly recognize its value. It’s critical that cybersecurity leaders have a voice in the restructuring process to help navigate organizational changes for maximum productivity and continued success.
The Bottom Line
While changes are not easy, they are always crucial for an organization. We’re sure after understanding the key points mentioned above, you now know that IT organizational restructuring is no different. While a restructuring may be difficult, a restructuring can help organizations survive, gain a competitive edge, and thrive in their industry.
You know your team, their skills, and their goals. You know what they are aiming to achieve on a day-to-day basis and you should be able to help them define their role in achieving your organization’s objectives. The right IT organization structure and placing the right teams into that structure will deliver positive results quickly. In times of restructuring, in the midst of changing alignments and responsibilities, secure your initiatives. If you have a clear and well-defined plan, take the right steps, and stay focused on how your organization wants to operate, you have an organization that will be a competitor in the industry for years to come.
Prepare your organization for resilience and adaptability with a strong strategy and execution plan based on your core objectives and KPIs. No organizational change should be attempted without clearly defining and understanding the goals and being fully prepared. Don’t impede performance and productivity by ignoring the basics of successful change management during a restructuring.
Adaptability is one of the crucial attributes of organizations in the IT landscape today. To sustain the changes, you must be able to adapt whenever things go left.
Are you ready to build a new structure and implement it? For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact GiaSpace.
