Org Chart Plastic Surgery

Playing musical chairs on the deck of the Titanic

Lauren Dixon writes about reorgs.

“So you've just been through a re-org. Now what?
It's time to start paying attention to organizational effectiveness.”

If you want a rational and structured approach to how you do reorganizations then Stephen Heidari-Robinson and Suzanne Heywood have written a book on this topic that’s absolutely fine. They are both ex-McKinsey consultants but don’t hold that against them.

But I don’t want to write about what reorgs should be like, I want to write about what they are like. And rather than taking the View From Nowhere of the management consultant, I want to write about them as a participant - as both a perpetrator and a target.

As an employee, reorganizations are very much like hurricanes, earthquakes, heart attacks or U2 albums. Natural disasters over which we have no control that are potentially the work of a malicious and arbitrary higher power. Pre-modern myths are full of stories of luckless humans getting caught up in the machinations of the gods. Things rarely end well for them. As the curse goes: “May you come to the attention of powerful people”.

You know that something is going on. There is a new senior executive. There are dark mutterings of cost cutting. There is an acquisition or some structural change. Meetings are called. Reports and data are asked for. Some people stop looking you in the eye.

He's making a list
And checking it twice,
Gonna find out 
Who's naughty and nice.

N.B. The list is not always checked twice - or even once.

At the very least, some people will have new job titles and report to different people. That’s happened to me a fair bit. Some people may not be around any more. That’s happened to me as well. You may have to apply for your job. I was once put in the position of “applying for a new role in the structure” or taking the money. Reader, I took the money.

The feeling you have is that of powerlessness. It is a reminder that you do not control your own destiny and that you are ultimately a pawn in someone else’s game. It is particularly galling in organizations that like to delude themselves that they are families.

“Hi Jean! Yes it’s me. Now, for the last 6 years I have been your brother-in-law, but there’s been a bit of shake up here and now I’m your mother. If you could start referring to me as such, I would be much obliged. Yes, I will be wearing a wig. Gregory? No. Sorry, Jean, he’s left us to pursue exciting opportunities elsewhere. Yes I know he’s the father of your unborn child but we all have to positive and forward-thinking here. We can’t dwell on the past. A powerpoint with the new family structure will be distributed on Tuesday. No, I don’t know what’s happened to little Elsie. I’ll see you on Thursday at the tennis club. Can you bring a spare skirt please? I haven’t had time to get my wardrobe sorted yet. Byeeee”

During this time there is very much an in group who know what is going and an out group who don’t - but suspects. The longer this goes on for (and it can go on for months), the more toxic it is. Whispers and hints and guesses. Some good people leave. Some not so good people hang around to see if they can get a dollar. Most people wait. Funny thing but dread can make people distracted and less productive.

One particularly common reorg pattern is the centralization-decentralization pendulum. This is particularly common for “support” personnel (e.g. Finance, HR, IT). If you are in a functional unit then you are deemed “too bureaucratic and distant” and you need to be “moved closer to the business” as a “trusted advisors”. A few years later, it turns out that the “distributed model” has led to “duplication and inefficiencies” and a decision is taken to “create a center of excellence to ensure quality service”. And then a few years later, you are viewed as “too bureaucratic and distant” and…

In. Out. In. Out. Shake it all about. You do the hokey cokey and you turn around. That’s what it’s all about.

So there’s a bunch of meetings where you are called into a room with a manager and an HR person and they tell you your fate. Sometimes you are lucky - you get exactly the job or the payout that you want. Sometimes the rationale for your new position makes it clear that no one has given much thought to this at all.

And then if you stay you decide to make it work. You get on with it. Try to build a relationship with your new boss. Maybe learn the skills that your new role entails. Time passes. Things settle down. Until the next hurricane blows through.

The other thing that reorgs remind me of is communist-type revolutions. These are different to coups. A coup simply replaces the leader at the top with someone else but the underlying social and economic structures stay the same. A revolution attempts to remake society into something new. “Remake” is perhaps the wrong word here because what you actually do is break everything in the near religious faith that you can make something better from scratch. Truly the best exemplar of the “first principles” thinking so feted in Silicon Valley is Pol Pot. This is not the only thing that capitalists and communists have in common.

Now why do reorgs happen? The official line is that the current business structure is no longer functional. And this can be true. Particularly in a business that is growing quickly, the structure you had 24 months may not work now you are four times the size you were. That pair of skinny jeans absolutely needs letting out.

Other reasons are less rational. It may simply be about cutting costs. Despite the fact that the research indicates that layoff tend to have a negative impact on productivity, investors love them. So strong. So macho. Go on a crash diet to get shredded, bro.

They may be about executive vanity. In the same way that a new homeowner wants to repaint the hallway and add some classy blue and white tiling to the bathroom, so a new executive wants to put their stamp on the place. If they haven’t done a reorg then are they really in charge?

The managers below will then seek to get more power for themselves and to get rid of people who have annoyed them for years. And not all of that annoyance is unjustified.

In small organizations, the conversations about who stays and who goes are often brutal, sometimes emotional, but at least informed. In bigger organizations, the culling can have a random quality to it. This is a bad time to either have a reputation for being difficult or to have no reputation at all. This means that quiet people with important roles can be “let go” with disastrous consequences for all concerned.

As Lauren indicates, if only a fraction of the time was spent on job design and organizational effectiveness as on org chart jenga then we would likely be in a better place. But effectiveness is hard to see directly. And you can put the org chart in a powerpoint.

So my advice to you is to keep that CV polished, your network ready to go, and to ignore any exhortations to “family”. And when the music stops, move quick.