Restructuring Like It's 1996

Addicted to restructuring.

A Victoria University paper once described New Zealand's approach to organisational restructuring as “almost an addiction”. This was in response to data showing that 65% of public sector employees had been through some form of restructure in the previous two years.

That was 2011, and still no one has fixed it.

By 2024, requests for help with restructures had more than doubled since 2022. McKinsey data shows that success rates for business transformations have sat between 20% and 30% consistently for over fifteen years. It’s just more restructuring with the same old outcomes.

You'd think we'd have updated our approach by now, but most organisations are still running change programmes built on frameworks from the last century (think Lewin, Kotter, and Prosci). Sure, they’re rigorous and well-evidenced, but they’re designed for a world that no longer exists.

It's a bit like still using the Yellow Pages because, well, it worked fine in 1996.

The tools haven't changed. The world has.

Lewin, Kotter, Prosci. If you work in change management, these are the names engraved on the wall.

They share one assumption that made complete sense when they were built, and makes almost no sense now. That change is a project with a finish line. That organisations move from one stable state to another, and the job of good change management is to get there smoothly, and once there, to stay there.

Lewin called it refreeze. Kotter called it step eight. Prosci shouted “Reinforcement!” from the corporate rooftops.

The refreeze never comes anymore. There is no step eight. The reinforcement phase opens another announcement.

These frameworks weren't wrong. They were built for a world where stability was the default and change was the big event. That world no longer exists.

Restructuring the same exhausted people.

Each restructure lands on people who are already carrying the last one.

Gallup reported global employee engagement at just 21% in 2024. The lowest in over a decade. The NZCTU runs an annual Mood of the Workforce survey and in 2025, their president said he had never seen such a negative response. People are in fear for their jobs, their businesses, and their ability to keep their homes.

These are baseline conditions the next change programme walks into, and the frameworks and methodologies these change programmes use assume the room they're walking into is fine.

The room is not fine.

We'll always make it, but we'll be late.

And then there's what's coming next.

AI-driven restructuring is already accounting for tens of thousands of job cuts globally. Gartner predicts that during 2026, 20% of organisations worldwidewill use AI to eliminate more than half of their current middle management positions. That's not ages away. That's this year.

New Zealand hasn't felt this yet, but that’s not reassuring. We have arrived late to every other major corporate digital trend. We always arrive eventually.

The difference this time is the timing. Previous waves landed on organisations that were tired but still functional. This one will land on organisations that are already mid-restructure, already depleted, already running change programmes on people who've been through several restructures within a short timeframe. The workforce carrying the next wave of AI-driven change is the same workforce that's been carrying everything else.

The frameworks were already struggling before this. They certainly weren't built for what’s coming.

Expertly solving the wrong problem.

Here's what makes this hard. It's not that organisations are doing restructuring badly. Many are doing it quite well - they have skilled change managers, solid communication, genuine consultation.

But still. Outcomes haven't improved in fifteen years.

That's not an execution problem, that's a question problem.

The question New Zealand organisations are asking is: "How do we run a better, faster, cheaper restructure?" It's a reasonable question, but it’s the wrong one.

Instead, they should ask: "How do we build an organisation that can continuously restructure without breaking the people inside it?"

Those are completely different problems and require completely different answers.

Organisations need to embed change into the day-to-day operating rhythm rather than treating it as a one-off event. McKinsey found that organisations taking a rigorous, comprehensive approach to transformation achievedsuccess rates nearly triple the average.

It’s not better project management, but a different mental model entirely.

Stability is a myth.

If you feel like you've been perpetually mid-restructure for the last few years, you're not imagining it. The pressure has been real, the causes have been local, and, sorry to break it to you, there is more coming from a direction most New Zealand organisations aren't yet looking.

The honest problem isn't that we've been doing restructuring badly. It's that we've been solving it with tools built for a different era, asking the wrong questions, and handing the next round of change to people who are already exhausted from the last one.

Lewin's freeze-change-refreeze was first referenced in 1947. Kotter's eight steps appeared in 1995. Prosci introduced ADKAR in 1998. All three are still the dominant change management frameworks used across organisations today. In 2026.

The dates matter, not because old ideas can't be useful, but because these frameworks were built on a premise that is no longer true. That stability is the default. That change is the interruption.

It isn't anymore. The interruption is the full-time job. We have to get used to it.

The organisations that will navigate what's coming aren't the ones that run better restructures. They're the ones who stop waiting for the refreeze.