How To Anticipate and Come Out Ahead In Reorgs

Re-orgs are an disruptive and inevitable: new strategy, new leaders, or just a new year. With any change comes opportunity to change your own status quo. Here's how!

When I was at Thumbtack, we had a re-org every 6 months. I thought it was because we grew the team quickly, from 20 to 50 to 200 then 500 in just a few years. I bought into the change: more people means we deliver more impact faster! I’m growing my role with it! Eventually, after five years of shuffling, I grew tired of the constant change. I left for Meta, where I sought stability with a mature company.

At Meta, we did reorgs every 6 months.

It was even more work because each reorg impacted even more people and layers of management. The murmurs about a potential reorg would start 4-5 weeks before the event, and the change management would last 4-5 weeks after. Of the 6 months, at least 2 were spent reorganizing ourselves.

At Meta, I saw reorgs creating winners and losers in the career lottery. Some people would get stuck in change management, working hard to restabilize the team. Others would get a huge boost to their scope or role, seemingly by being in the right place at the right time. I realized that if I wanted to move up in my career, I needed to stop complaining and dreading the inevitable and learn how to predict and use them to boost my career.

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What’s the Rules of the Game?

To win the game, I first need to learn the rules of the game. I started to ask my teammates, leaders, and mentors three simple questions:

• What leads to reorgs?

• Who initiates them and why?

• How are the final organizational structures determined?

When you ask executives directly how re-org happens, many will dodge the question. Some lament with you about how reorgs are disruptive and cause large amounts of stress, and they don’t like it either. Some handwave it away: “Oh, it’s out of my control. And we don’t know when the next one is.”

I was getting told nicely to keep my head down and focus on the work. Most leaders were trying to protect me from unnecessary stress, but in reality, it was creating more stress to not know how to predict large shifts in my work environment.

Over time, having been through a dozen reorgs myself, quizzed enough well-natured mentors, and coached clients through many more, here’s what I learned about how to anticipate reorgs and best position yourself to come out ahead.

New Company Priorities

One of the most common goals (excuses) for a re-org is to accelerate progress on (newly) important company priorities.

Let’s say your company has one main product line. There’s a CEO at the top, w

ith various functional teams reporting to their own C-level executive. As the company plans for the next year, they want to launch two new product lines. However, these initiatives don’t fit well within any existing team, because it requires a small group of people across various functions to get it off the ground. And so, a re-org is done to create an incubator team, or two small teams dedicated to each new product line.

In another example, you’re working for a mature company. Suddenly GenAI becomes the top priority for the executives. Each team races to incorporate GenAI technology into its product or function. However, it’s soon apparent that most of the work requires a common level of infrastructure and data, with a foundational knowledge of models and APIs. There is efficiency in having a centralized strategy and leadership, rather than individual teams solving similar challenges. And so, a re-org is done to create a VP of GenAI.

A goal or strategy based reorg is fairly common and can happen at any level in the organization. A shift in team priorities leads to team-level reorgs. A change in company strategy leads to entire functions being reinvented and disruption in the executive team itself.

This is also why reorgs tend to follow planning cycles where large new initiatives are given formal consideration and resourcing. Leaders then want to give the new initiative the highest chance of success, and initiate org structure changes as a result.

New Leadership

The second most common driver of reorgs is to solve existing challenges within the business. One common example is when new leadership is brought in to do transformations. A previous executive is let go by the CEO for underperformance. A new executive from a brand name company joins. Or, the company is growing quickly, and the Board of Directors (and Investors) bring in more experienced executives to scale the organization.

Every new executive promises they will not do a reorg.

Every new executive does a reorg ~6 months after joining the company (if not sooner).

Change is coming.

How do you know what kind of change and how to best set yourself up for it?

Three primary aspects shape the team changes a new executive will eventually make:

1. What mandate are they given by their manager (e.g. the CEO, the Board of Directors?) What is expected of them?

2. What prior work experiences and work cultures shape who they are as leaders? What are the talk tracks in their heads about who they are as a leader and “this is what works”?

3. Who has their trust early on at the company? With which teams and people are they spending the majority of their time? What ideas, strategies, and projects are they likely to promote?

Depending on your level in the organization, you may or may not be able to get a first-hand account of the new executive’s mandate. However, it’s possible to make educated guesses based on the state of the company, what is said at all-hands and earnings calls, and contrasting the profile of the new executive with the previous one.

Then, get to know this new leader. Set up time for a one-on-one if they’re doing a listening tour. When you hear them speak in group settings, what problems do they seem to care more about? What ideas do they get excited about? If you get the chance for a 1-1 conversation, ask them about what problems and challenges they see (not what they plan to do— they don’t know yet).

There are a few other similar drivers that focus on trying to solve a set of challenges exacerbated by org structure: a growing team (bandwidth constraints of the manager), attempts to break down silos between teams (collaboration), or executing a consulting firm’s recommendations.

How to position yourself well?

To get ahead in reorgs, focus on skating to where the puck is going. Anticipate where new investment will go for your organization, and align yourself with those initiatives. Put your CEO hat on. What projects are gaining momentum? Where would you consider increasing investment? Where is collaboration difficult but valuable to make better?

Much of this requires making friends on other teams and relationship-building. As you go about your day-to-day work, keep an ear to the ground. Ask your researcher or analyst what is happening in the industry. Chat with your sales team on news about your competitors. Ask your skip level about key priorities at the company.

You don’t need weekly updates. Instead, aim for a coffee or a walk once every 4-6 weeks, or just a quick chat on a Friday afternoon to swap updates and stories. Get out of your bubble, and build mutually beneficial relationships on information-sharing.

When you feel the winds shifting towards new investments, double down on projects or areas that you think will gain additional investment that you are personally excited about or can bring unique assets.

• Throw your name in the ring to support projects or initiatives.

• Volunteer your time to leaders driving these initiatives.

• Do your homework and become a thought partner to those working on the project.

As the initiatives get additional investment in the “next planning cycle”, you’ll be in a position to make the official shift.

On the flip side, when you see organizational challenges and renewed interest in solving them from new leadership, align yourself early with the change. Similar to getting your name considered for new projects, figure out where in this new world is most beneficial for you to be, and build the relationships that will enable you to get there.

Anticipating the outcome of reorgs is an art. The stronger your relationships and your intuition on what the business needs, the better you’ll be able to predict where the investments will go. The most important reminder is to lift yourself out of your day-to-day work and spend a few hours a month listening, observing, and thinking through where the company is going and how it will affect your role.