During the week, I was contacted by someone I used to work with – I'll call him Bill - asking for help on a piece of work he'd just been asked to manage. Briefly his manager had asked him to develop a Business Plan for the Unit (comprising around 4000 people) along with an overarching narrative on proposed design changes.
This was no blank page. Bill told me that there's much work going on but in disjointed pockets. He mentioned: one piece looking at the core Unit functions, another at business processes that traverse his Unit and other Units, a third looking at a wide-reaching re-design of a different Unit but one that his Unit is interdependent with, and a fourth piece aimed at ironing out some overlaps and inefficiencies looking at a newly formed group within the Unit. Additionally, there are some small bits of redesign work in discrete work areas. The Unit as a whole has to make a headcount reduction, control costs, drive value, and manage any potential operational risks.