A Practical Guide in Five Steps Most executives will lead or be a part of a reorganization effort (a reorg) at some point in their careers. And with good reason—reorgs are one of the best ways for companies to unlock latent value, especially in a changing business environment. But everyone hates them. No other management practice creates more anxiety and fear among employees or does more to distract them from their day-to-day jobs. As a result, reorgs can be incredibly expensive in terms of senior-management time and attention, and most of them fail on multiple dimensions. It’s no wonder companies treat a reorg as a mysterious process and outsource it to people who don’t understand the business. It doesn’t have to be this way. Stephen Heidari-Robinson and Suzanne Heywood, former leaders in McKinsey’s Organization Practice, present a practical guide for successfully planning and implementing a reorg in five steps—demystifying and accelerating the process at the same time. Based on their twenty-five years of combined experience managing reorgs and on McKinsey research with over 2,500 executives involved in them, the authors distill what they and their McKinsey colleagues have been practicing as an “art” into a “science” that executives can replicate—in companies or business units large or small. It isn’t rocket science and it isn’t bogged down by a lot of organizational theory: the five steps give people a simple, logical process to follow, making it easier for everyone—both the leaders and the employees who ultimately determine a reorg’s success or failure—to commit themselves to and succeed in the new organization.

Corporate Reorganisation Law argues that corporate reorganisation law is seen by market participants as a tool they can mobilise and adapt according to practices, logics, and identities in the of the financial and non-financial corporate markets. Thus changes in market practice, in the participants in the process, or in how the participants view their objectives, can significantly change the ways in which corporate reorganisation law is mobilised and adapted, even if the law has not undergone any reform. This book argues that corporate reorganisation law cannot be evaluated using a theoretical model in isolation from the wider institutional context in which corporate reorganisation law is mobilised and adapted by the participants to the process. In establishing the new methodology, the book undertakes a detailed analysis of six key changes in market practice, logic and identities in the financial and non-financial corporate fields. A comparative US/UK approach is adopted in analysing both the process of institutional change and the implications for law. This provides a fascinating lens through which to see how different institutional environments in the financial and non-financial markets in different jurisdictions are drawing together, and interacting with very different legal systems which were adapted to the distinct, original institutional environments in which they were developed. From this analysis important lessons for legal harmonisation efforts in Europe and in non-European jurisdictions are drawn out. The work emphasises the need to look at formal legal rules in combination with other, non-legal and legal institutions and argues that current reform debates in both the US and UK have suffered because scholars, practitioners, and policy makers have not started their evaluation of the case for reform by placing corporate reorganisation law in this wider institutional context. The book aims to fill this gap, and to provide a methodological approach for the future.

Promotions are among the most significant rewards a manager can receive. They are also important events for an organization. Yet little is known about what goes into the actual promotion decision. This report documents a study of how the promotion decisions of senior-level employees in three Fortune 500 companies were actually made. A clearer picture is gained through interviews with those involved in the process and through access to performance appraisals and succession-planning documents.