#104 from R&D Innovator Volume 3, Number 6          June 1994

Reinventing Restructuring
by Harvey Gittler

Mr. Gittler, of Oberlin, Ohio, has been writing and lecturing on management issues since he retired a few years ago as a manufacturing executive.  He swears he’s a person who believes everything he reads.

Not a day goes by without a self-important notice by this or that company about how it is restructuring or "reinventing" itself.  Yet no matter how many notices we see, restructuring is never defined.  Readers are left with the impression that it has something to do with financial maneuvering or downsizing.  But its exact nature remains a dark secret--the corporate equivalent of alchemy.

I think the concept of restructuring, whatever it actually is, is off to a poor start.  Restructuring, as far as I’m concerned, is doomed to failure. 

To its credit, the movement has a good title: restructuring isn’t part of everyday parlance.  Furthermore, the term implies that an organization has a structure (despite the widespread impression to the contrary). 

On the down side, this management movement lacks deeper lingo.  It has no phrases that give us a sense of what restructuring is.  Other movements have practically patented jargon ("total quality management" leaps to mind) to translate common English into higher-level gobbledygook.

How can any movement survive without its own patois?

Restructuring has deeper problems.  No one has written a bestseller on How to Restructure Your Company Without Losing Your Shirt .

And where are the textbooks?  Before I bet my company on this portentous fad, I'd want to study Principles and Foundations of Restructuring: A Guide for the Perplexed, or The Complexities of Restructuring the Industrial Organization: Mechanics and Dynamics.

Where are the magazine articles documenting how Amalgamated Industries saved gigabucks by restructuring?  True, we occasionally read tantalizing sentences on the results: “Abex expects to save five billion dollars over the next five years by restructuring,” but what about an expensive, longitudinal study?

Does my mail bring flyers for exorbitant restructuring seminars?  Here I sit, obsessed with the desire to restructure, and I can't even figure out how to squander a few thousand simoleons at a meeting on “The Ten Commandments of Restructuring” (in Honolulu, naturally).

Where is the guru of restructuring?  How can a management movement survive without a dozen self-proclaimed "world-class experts"?  Something is desperately wrong with a movement that has no consultants.

Why haven't the Institute of Industrial Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or the American Management Association established restructuring subdivisions?

When U.S. industry was first accused of losing productivity, different states set up productivity centers.  Why no statewide restructuring centers?  Why no national structure to stabilize the restructuring movement?

Which company officials are responsible for restructuring?  Would a Vice President of Restructuring please take a bow?

Restructuring is so new that software remains to be written.  You can’t cram your organization into a computer, run a restructuring program, and print out a restructured company, complete with bold lettering and pie charts.

Perhaps we know so little about restructuring because the muckety-mucks believe mere mortals are too dumb to understand this great movement. 

But I see a silver lining.  Since no one knows what restructuring is, how it’s done, or what it’s supposed to accomplish, even we mortals should have a free hand to reinvent restructuring.

If your company hasn’t joined the restructuring bandwagon (in other words, if it’s trapped in the dark ages), why not march into the chief's office and offer to restructure the company yourself?  There's no standard for comparing your actions, and you may end up a hero. 

Just don't restructure yourself out of a job.