Managing a branch closure programme: an exercise in planning and managing the process of change

The aim of this activity is to explore the issues and choices involved in developing an overall strategy for large scale change.

The scenario

A long-established bank is facing strong competition from new entrants into the retail banking market. The new entrants specialize in the provision of telephone and Internet banking services and have a lower cost base because they do not carry the overheads associated with a large branch network.

A director of the branch network in the traditional bank has proposed a strategy for responding to this competition. It involves closing down 20% of the branch networks in order to reduce overheads and increase net revenue per customer. At this stage, the details of the strategy have not been finalized. For example, the branches targeted for closure could be city center branches occupying expensive properties or small rural branches occupying low-cost premises but with relatively few customers of high net worth to the bank.

Imagine that you are a consultant who has been engaged by the director who initiated the proposal. Your role is to help her to explore the feasibility of the proposal to increase profitability by contracting the branch network.

Actions

You have brainstormed, with the director and her immediate colleagues, a list of possible actions that could provide the basis for a strategy for managing this change. These are listed in the table

You are invited to review the list of actions presented in the table and use your experience to:
• Delete any items that, on reflection, you feel unimportant or irrelevant
• Think about how the actions might be sequenced from start to finish
• Allocate items to the appropriate steps in the change process, by writing in the step number in the space provided next to each