Some transformation projects start with a mandate. This one started with a question: why were two divisions of the same public service (child support and education teams in Poitiers and Ivry-sur-Seine) having the same struggles to work as one organisation, on paper, in 2024?
The short answer given at the outset was “communication issues.” It rarely is.
Starting with immersion, not a survey
Instead of sending out a satisfaction questionnaire, the default move for most reorganisation projects, we started with a sociological inquiry: on-site presence, one-on-one interviews, direct observation of how teams actually worked day to day, across both sites. Not to confirm a hypothesis, but to find out where the real friction lived: between which roles, at which handoffs, around which decisions.
A survey sent from a distance tells you what people are willing to write down. Sitting in the room tells you what they’ve stopped saying out loud.
What immersion surfaced
The tensions weren’t primarily about the different teams disagreeing on strategy. They were structural: unclear ownership at the boundaries between roles, informal go-to people who had accumulated responsibility without formal authority to match, and a management layer caught between two sets of expectations that had never been reconciled since the reorganisation was first announced.
None of that shows up in an org chart. All of it shows up in a room, over a few days, if you’re listening for it rather than presenting to it.
Co-constructing the new structure
The second phase moved from diagnosis to design, but not design handed down. A series of workshops brought staff and management together to co-create the new organisational structure directly: what belonged together, what needed clearer ownership, what the new handoffs should look like in practice, not just on a chart.
This is the part of the Pulse Method we call “give a role”: not asking people to accept a destination someone else designed, but having them design it, test it, and carry it. The commitment generated in that kind of workshop doesn’t need to be enforced afterward, it was built by the people who’ll live inside it.
Roll-out, and staying past the kickoff
The final phase covered the practical mechanics of change, communications, event organisation to mark the transition. But the part that mattered most was what came after the launch: continued presence to monitor how the new structure was actually being taken up, and to catch friction early rather than waiting for it to surface as a formal complaint six months later.
What it produced
Staff who are genuinely committed to their new organisation, not merely compliant with it, and greater fluidity and communication between departments that, on paper, had already been “reorganised” once before without much changing in practice.
The lesson that keeps showing up across missions like this one: the org chart is rarely the problem. The gap between the org chart and how people actually cooperate, day to day, is where a reorganisation either takes root or quietly fails.
If you wish to be supported during your reorganisation, we invite you to schedule a meeting with The Change Society Office.
