Case Study
In 1989, the new Chief Executive of TSB Group's retail bank, Peter Ellwood, launched a massive reorganisation of the bank's operations that resulted in the Bank's operating profit more than doubling over a period of two years. The cornerstone of this effort was the "branch network redesign" project, a "process reengineering" effort conducted before the term BPR became fashionable. This project, like the other four components of the transformation, was managed by a dedicated team of full time change agents, based on Peter Ellwood's strong belief that "the only way to bring about large-scale radical change is to divorce the action of change from the day to day process of management. Responsibility for delivering change should be given to dedicated, focused project teams using rigorous project management methodology". The network redesign team was very successful, but the company found it difficult to reintegrate the team members into "normal operations" at the end of the project. As a result, most of them left the company shortly thereafter.
