Managing yourself in times of a re-org

Saswati Saha Mitra
Jul 22, 2017 · 7 min read

If you work in a tech company, you will be familiar with re-orgs. Every once in a while, a re-org is waiting around the corner to take you by surprise.

For those of you who haven’t gone through one, a re-org is when a company decides to close a business unit, merge it with another or just distribute the skills of one unit across the whole company due to business needs. In my 4 years between Google and Uber, I have gone through four re-orgs- three as a researcher and one as a manager.

As a moment of change, a re-org can be either painful and uncertain or it can also be a moment of reflection and taking charge. It depends on how you decide to interpret the situation.

Going through a re-org right now, I wanted to pull together my view on how to deal with this unsettling moment both as an individual and as a manager.

Some of what I have proposed here, come from my own experiences as well as from observing my team. This is dedicated to my team for attempting to be great at managing the changes that have and will come their way.

Coping with a re-org as an individual contributor

Process the change

One of the biggest mistake we make in the face of a re-org, is to fume and fury for too long. Change is hard. We all need some time to process it. The question is how long should this be? Take a few days, take a week but if the fury and sense of organisational betrayal continues way beyond that, running into weeks and months, that is when you need to stop. Time spent in this negative frame of mind, is precious time lost from starting to formulate your next steps. The business decision has been taken and no matter how you feel about it, the chances of it being reversed are almost none. So you now have to start thinking about your next steps.

Ask for details

Much of the anxiety around a re-org comes from the fact that as an individual contributor, you have little to no control over what is “really” going on in the company.

Instead of rehashing what you know with your immediate peers, a better use of your time is to start talking to your manager and their manager and similar folks in other teams about what this new future may look like. Constructive questions lead to useful information. The more you know about what the future should look like, the more leverage you have in defining your future role, telling people about how you can be helpful to them and what you are looking forward to as well.

When you go on this information seeking journey, it is really important to not expect much. Why? This change may have sprung up on others as much as a surprise as it did on you. Don’t be angry, don’t be pushy, don’t be frustrated. Keep the conversation open. Even if they may not be able to help you on day one of this change, they may in a week’s time, when they have better visibility.

Think of re-org as the moment when you have to network with grace, calm and composure.

Trust yourself or your leadership team

A significant aspect of dealing with a re-org is to know where to place your renewed faith. In most cases, the choice is pretty binary. You either trust your leadership to do what is best for you- find you a new team, make you a part of their new plans, tell you about internal opportunities or recommend you to look outside the company — or you take control of your own future.

If you trust your leadership, then you have to give them time and space to think. You have to manage your emotions and let them know you are there to help. Overt negativity and repeatedly asking the same things force managers to spend more time managing you than focus on what they should be doing — building what that new future will really look like, so you can get to a place of reasonable stability soon.

On the other hand, if you are a person, who either does not have that rapport with your leadership or you just prefer to feel in charge of your destiny, then get up and do some small things.

Small things that have worked for me include looking up opportunities on the company’s career site and meeting these new teams, meet seniors and mentors to chat about how they survived re-orgs and if there are part time opportunities that you have been thinking about, then doing some work on these as your regular work flow is less.

While I was going through my second re-org at Google and there was a slow down in work, I decided to help the Google Jigsaw team with a product they were building — Montage.

Montage is a video analysis tool that is used by journalists, war investigators and civil rights specialists to analyse the progress of war in Syria, human rights violation and other critical issues.

The decision to contribute to Montage, kept me focused and allowed me to work with a different part of Google than my regular work would have permitted. It was not only fun to get to know this new team but in the long run, Montage received good recognition as well. It was nominated in Fastcodesign’s Innovation by Design Awards 2016 under the Social Good category.

The bottomline here is, take small steps that do not unsettle an already unsettled boat. This is not the time for that million dollar project.

Those of us who are able to keep ourselves busy in constructive conversations, planning and contributing to smaller initiatives in a time of change, come out of it more connected and full of new ideas than those who stop working in the face of an unknown future.

Share information

What I am going to say next may seem strange. When things are uncertain and changing, our primal instinct is to hold on for dear life to what we have. While this may work for actual possessions, information, however, works differently.

In a time of re-org, if you have any positive news or know about new opportunities, it is important to share it with your peers. Who knows how this information may help them?

Sharing information is especially valuable when it is about open roles. If you are a prolific networker and come to know of many opportunities, be generous and share these with others. Sometimes our peers may have a harder time networking due to their introverted nature. Your openness can make all the difference between a person being forced into a role versus them choosing something. This is also a great way for you to test your own insecurities. Can you rise above yourself in a moment of collective challenge? Can you help others before yourself?

Keep it real for yourself

Setting realistic expectations with yourself is a big part of surviving a re-org. It is important to let yourself know that work will slow down for a month or two. Instead of entering a new team in negative frame of mind, this could be a great time to take that well deserved holiday. It is a great time to put together a summary of what you know to help a team get up to speed. It’s also a great time to wrap quickly your ongoing project, so you are ready to start on a new assignment when it comes along in a few weeks.

Similarly, you also need to be realistic around how welcome you will be in a new part of the business. Focus on gaining trust. Think about the small ways in which you can help your new team. Role up those sleeves and get some work done. Over communicate your plans and ask for feedback from your new peers. This is a great way to learn about a new area, the people in it, showcase your strengths without making others feel threatened.

Change is messy but it is in your control

To end this first part, I quote Victor Frankl — “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Frankl survived the concentration camps. In his later life, he proposed that although life can be absurd, painful, and sometimes dehumanized, it still has potential meaning. Even when one suffers, there is meaning to life, if one knows how to look for it.

A re-org is painful, it disorients you for several months but it is nothing quite as terrible as death.

The secret to surviving a re-org is whether you can look for that greater business meaning when your smaller pieces are falling apart. This is not easy to achieve. It takes years of practice to manage your own emotions, imagine a new future, start making small plans and be helpful to others along the way.

All of this begins with you. It begins the day you hear about the change for the first time. It starts with you deciding to complaint a little less and focus a bit more on what actions you can take. A re-org is all about not giving up your agency in the face of change.

Footnotes

If you are interested in Change Management, a few resources:

  1. Kotter, John. Leading Change. 2012.
  2. Pfeffer, Jeffrey and Sutton, Robert. The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action. 1999.
  3. Image Credit: http://www.insurancedefensemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/bigstock-A-diagram-of-an-organization-c-17121701-270x267.jpg

Saswati Saha Mitra

Written by

UX Research Manager at Uber. Past life Googler. Scope and scale of global tech innovation excites me.

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