Happy Friday,

Sometimes you do something you know you shouldn't. For me that means trying out Clojure. If you don't know what Clojure is, it is a LISP with a die-hard following. It is so different than any other language that I'm really having to work hard to figure things out.

Before you ask, no, I don't have any purpose for this. I just sort of felt like it.

Now, a quick bit on how it's going: Normally, when I do my little exercise to try something, I can do my standard vending machine project with TDD in a few short hours. I spent about six hours yesterday getting just one of three basic things done.

Don't underestimate the hit you'll take when you shake up your tech stack.

I was catching up with an old friend who has had a really interesting career that in a few short years brought him from a guitar instructor to software developer, and is now under consideration for a vice president of an engineering department. I asked him what had puzzled him as he transitioned from writing code to managing folks.

He said his biggest puzzle is that the company went through a very impactful reorganization and there are roles that are highly duplicated with unclear responsibilities and are expecting promotions and pay raises but are already out of balance with the rest of the department.

No simple answers here, I'm afraid, but I'll share some thoughts. If you want to see a longer article on this, let me know.

1:1s

I'm a big advocate of 1:1 meetings. Most leaders emulate the 1:1 meetings they experienced which is a style of performance-based meetings. There are other styles, and one in particular is to ignore the jobs and roles and focus on them as a person. What are they experiencing, what are their hopes and fears, and what specific situations are challenging? It's this second type of 1:1 that will give a leader tremendous insight into the stresses and opportunities. Performance-based 1:1s will yield very little benefit in a reorg like this because nobody can perform when there is little direction and everything is changing.

Set the course

As a consultant, I get excited in times of turbulence and chaos. They are times when everyone is searching for answers and a way forward. As a leader you have similar opportunities to work with peers and the folks who work for you to decide what good looks like and start doing it. So for my friend who has unbalanced staff, they can work to set up a more ideal way to work and that might help naturally balance things while also addressing operational and strategic issues.

Skill liquidity

It might be easy to see there are too many folks with not enough work, but it is far less easy to know the right mix of what you need. The people who might seem redundant may only seem that way because of the skills they applied in their previous role, and they may be exactly what you need going forward.

Once you know how your groups should work, identify all the skills required to pull that off. Include the soft skills too. Then on a scale of 0-3 have people rate themselves on those skills.

Now you can see the gaps in your organization, and where otherwise redundant people can still contribute.

Be honest and as transparent as you can

Want to know a good reason re-orgs are disruptive? Its because for many companies and individuals, knowledge is a currency. That means that the folks making decisions about the re-org only have a limited set of information, as many others withhold it, or operating at a certain level of detail would be overwhelming.

So the re-org will not address nearly as much as folks hope because it is impossible to have enough context to account for everything.

What you can do as a leader though is be honest about how hard this is, your own concerns and doubts, and what is under consideration. Many leaders don't take this approach as they feel that discussing what is uncertain will lead to people quitting. My response is that is true when people do not trust you or the company.

As for the example, I told my friend a story of another friend who made raises and bonuses a decision made by the people themselves and not a leadership decision. While that isn't a flat recommendation that everyone should do that, as there are a lot of prerequisites to pulling something like that off, it does speak to a level of honesty and transparency that most people can't dream of.

In the meantime, you can and should have a conversation about the reality that roles will change, and that even if they didn't the compensation as it exists is way off balance. It isn't an easy conversation, but when you know what they're dealing with and they trust you to advocate for them, your chances of doing right by your people go way up.

Sincerely,

Ryan

PS: I wrote an article on a technique to trace issues with communication in groups that especially applies to a re-org. Also, if you want to streamline how your teams work, improve quality, and achieve business outcomes, schedule a call.