Most organisations are operating in increasingly tough conditions. While there is no shortage of consultancies offering advice, MDC focuses on providing pragmatic, grounded support to clients on performance management.
We have previously summarised the MDC service offering. Here, we offer a timely reminder of the four principal areas in which we advise clients — and more importantly: what can be done in these areas when times are challenging.
Our advice centres on four areas:
Talent Auditing & Benchmarking
The topic is well understood, but five recurring issues are worth highlighting:
- Avoid simply replicating existing practices. Strengthen them with greater rigour and science.
- Define clearly “what good looks like” in each role, aligned with business priorities.
- Focus not only on individual capability but also on collective team levers to drive performance.
- Prioritise the “potential wiggle room” within your talent and plan ahead to maximise it.
Prevailing Attitudes & Culture
There is often confusion over where attitudes end and culture begins. Both matter — but addressing attitudes is typically more straightforward than attempting to shift culture. We recommend attention to:
- Ensure that feedback leads to sensible, actionable outcomes.
- Apply root cause analysis and avoid “fiddling around the edges”, which can be worse than inaction.
- Include quick wins, but stay aligned to medium and longer-term objectives.
- When addressing cultural issues, be prepared for longer timescales and deeper-rooted influences — sometimes requiring generational change.
Organisational Improvement through Change & Development
This is one route to organisational improvement. While distinct from structural change, similar principles apply. In any change initiative:
- Be clear about the desired improvements, commercial impact and evaluation timescales — and be prepared to compromise.
- Acknowledge the backfilling and extra resourcing required. This is challenging when pressures are already high.
- Prioritise human factors and commitment over purely HR-led processes. Change fatigue is real — and significant.
- Look for valuable spin-offs as change progresses, while protecting focus on the primary objectives.
- When people believe the changes are complete, review again — further benefits often remain.
Organisational Improvement through Restructuring
As noted, many points above are relevant to restructuring. In a previous article (REF to last article on restructuring) we stressed three themes:
- Adopting a risk-based perspective
- Emphasising risk assessment
- Seeing the process through “beyond the end”
Additionally, we encourage attention to:
- Build consensus — a “coalition of the willing” matters, and its absence has major consequences.
- Anticipate dips in productivity and morale — they will come, and are not always visible early.
- Assess skills required for the new structure and how transferable capabilities can be strengthened.
- Expect and actively manage confusion — even when communication efforts are strong.
- Do not become overly internal. Consider how restructuring will be perceived externally — by investors, suppliers, customers and competitors.
And finally…
A quick online search shows that each of the four areas is vast. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by advice, frameworks and checklists. We have simply highlighted a small number of practical points grounded in experience.
Our aim is to help clients reduce the noise and focus on simple, sensible actions that can be implemented and managed effectively — especially when business decision-makers are already under pressure.
About The Author
Dr. Steve Sloan is an acknowledged leadership expert and consultant who has over 20 years’ experience advising clients globally.
He can be contacted via email or by calling 07585 548420
