Re-org

observing management on the sidelines

At Microsoft, reorgs happen all the time. Some are planned well in advance to prepare for new products, others are planned in a hurry due to rapid changing business needs, and some are even poorly planned because politics have set in to play.

Regardless the reason for a reorg - it happens, and you have two choices: (a) deal with it, or (b) not deal with it. If you deal with it, you adapt to the org change and fit in to the new situation. You welcome new management and new policies that entered your work life, and you deal with the people, process, and product churn. On the other hand, if you do not want to deal with it, you can hide, leave, do what you are told, and not give an opinion about the change.

A third choice may be possibe - fight it. This may be possible if you have enough power. But for simplicity that assume this option is not in the cards.

In a reorg, I am sure there are both types of people in a team. You can easily identify them because of how they carry themselves in the day-to-day work. Take for example in a recent reorg that I experienced. In my team, I have a colleague who continues to write code and not let a reorg affect him. He was placed in a new team, working on different things, but other than the project that he’s working on, everything else stays the same, as if the reorg didn’t affect him at all. He chooses to not get involved, or invest emotionally into the ordeal. On the other hand, others have become fed up with the reorg and left the team or retire.

As a manager, how would you manage your team under a reorg when you are also being affected by it?

Let’s begin by setting the context in more detail. Every manager in turn has a manager. That means, what a manager does in some ways is a reflection of how his manager behaves. Every member of the team is expected to manage themselves to an extent.

When changes are being made from higher up, you should make a decision to either stay on the ship or leave for a different ship sailing elsewhere. Once the decision is made, you should devise a new vision and work with your team to make sure everyone is in their place, adapt to the direction of the team.

Rule #1 - be transparent with your team about where you stand in this situation.

I believe this brings the team in unity and focus. When the direction is clear and transparent, those who want to join the new direction stays behind, those who don’t gets off the ship. This keeps people more accountable, collaborative, and focus on the actual work than the org itself. When people know what is going on with the new plan, they do not second guess the work they do, and they can expend energy on executing the direction, but not on guessing what the direction might be.

Rule #2 - Go all in or go home.

Once the new direction is set, the manager should believe it 100%. This is also important because only your total commitment can ensure the rest of the team is productive. Imagine the manager does not quite buy in to the new process or direction of the big picture. The team starts hedging on their work - let’s do this but if this fails we can resort to that. It also handicaps the team in terms of its ability to execute a vision fully, which I believe hurts the team more than anything.

For the manager, his manager probably doesn’t sit well with the lack of commitment. Imagine you tell your boss what you are going to deliver, but you do not quite believe in the work. This doesn’t sound like music to the ear for the manager’s manager.

Rule #3 - Communicate everyone’s role broadly with justification

The final rule is to make sure everyone is aware of everyone’s new role post-reorg. This allows people to direct inquiries to the right people, and allow the transition to happen more crisp. You don’t want people scratching their head wondering who might take over this piece of the project. This lets people to deflect responsibility, hurts the product, and the morale of the team.

Make sure everyone gets the same notice on the new roles. If you only communicate to your directs, and let the information dissimulate downstream, you run into people questioning the authority because multiple versions of the role division can exist when people talk about it in the hallway.

I have seen hires being made without proper justification, PM-dev ratio out of proportion, and reporting structure not making sense. On a larger scale, I’ve seen teams working in isolation without an open plan, and a team making bold statements and accomplishments without the ability for others to validate. These are signs of poor management because roles were not clearly defined nor justified.

A team can function much better when your manager believes in it, and is open to communicating the plan to everyone in the team.