During one of my first Re-orgs, the new GM at the time told the following joke before introducing the changes:

A new executive gets hired as the GM of a large corporation. During the changing of the guard, the old GM tells the new GM that he prepared 3 envelopes and put them in his desk.

The old GM says "If you get stuck, use these envelopes. They will help."

Things went well for the first six months. Then, a Q3 sales slump hit and things were getting rough. It started heating up for the new GM and he started losing sleep. He woke up in a cold sweat one night and remembered the envelopes. He quickly got dressed and raced off to the office in the middle of the night. The contents of the envelope read "Blame everything on me." After reading the message and not seeing a miracle, he trudged out to his car to drive home. On the way though, he started thinking about message. Maybe it could work. The next day, he decided to try the old GM's advice. To his surprise, it worked beautifully! Things were going well.

A few months later though, trouble started again. This time there were product delays and quality issues. Again, the pressure quickly built. Pretty soon the next envelope was opened: "Reorganize." This time, he didn't even question it. He went straight to work shifting around the organization. Soon enough, the quality issues cleared up and delivery was back on track. All was right with the world.

After a year of great performance, the market took a serious dip. Sales were down and costs were up. Again the war drums were sounding from the board room. The GM tried a few things but wasn't sure what would help. He decided he needed the help of the final envelope. He went into his office and locked the door. He pulled out the envelope and slowly opened it. His face went ghost white as he read the last message. "Prepare 3 Envelopes."

In addition to software development, one of my interests is organizational design. I like to think about designing and enabling effective teams in an organization. I like to read about how some organizations are trying to flatten out and build self-organizing teams. I think that empowering the people who work directly on products and with customers is a winning recipe for success. As someone trying to advocate this approach, I find myself currently in an environment that reorganizes very frequently. Frequent org changes are not necessarily bad, I take it as an indicator that change isn't too scary for our senior leadership.

In my 10 years as a professional developer, I'd say I've probably been part of at least 20 re-orgs. I would say that 1 in 3 of those re-orgs had some direct impact on my role or team. Here are some of my observations from those experiences across different organizations:

The Good

• Most re-orgs seemed aim at addressing some set of problems. Taking action to correct problems is good.
• Common sense items often get addressed.
  • Example:Team A and Team B often need to work together. Before, they had different managers and directors. This caused strife across the teams. Now, they report to the same manager and director to provide more consistent direction.
• They are change. Change can help give fresh perspective and find new motivation.

The Bad

• They are heavily messaged to be positive changes. They usually offer no accountability on the heavy messaging of their predecessor re-org.
• They cause a lot of drama. Most of the re-orgs I've seen are "closely guarded secrets" that are leaked like crazy. This often causes fear, uncertainty and doubt.
• All action is progress. Sometimes re-orgs seem to happen for the reason the opening joke suggests. "Just shake things up."

The Ugly

• They are sometimes used to relegate people to help "manage them out" of an organization. These types of moves usually come with heavy messaging. They often result in an announcement 3-6 months later of the departure of a person from the organization.
• Sometimes they come with layoffs or fun events like "everyone gets to re-apply for their job."
• They often make people feel like they have no ownership for their job or work. "I’m gonna have to ask you to go ahead and move your desk again, so if you could go ahead and get it as far back against that wall as possible, that would be great"

What I Would Like To See

• Let teams organize organically or at least let them suggest changes. It may be surprising to see what teams develop ("dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!").
• Roll changes out inclusively rather than exclusively. The more secret it is the more stress it causes.
• Talk about accountability. It's okay to admit mistakes were made in the last set of changes or that we learned something somethings we didn't know before.
• Deal with people who are underperforming or not the right fit directly.