Phase 3: Execution

If you’ve done well on the previous two phases, you can still really mess it up with poor execution. Executing a reorg is like project-managing a feature release, except what you’re dealing with is people’s identities and relationships at work, so the stakes are even higher. Mess up, and you’re dealing with feelings of resentment, retention issues, and distrust in leadership for months to come, at the very least.

Prep

Just like a product release, your re-structuring needs a launch coordinator. Let’s assume that’s you, but if you’re working with a few peers, make it super explicit who is the point-of-contact.

Make an extensive checklist, detailing every single little thing you can think of that needs to happen.

Put the checklist on a shared google doc or somewhere your collaborators can see progress. It might look something like this.

Friday

Mention upcoming changes at a high level at a team meeting, highlight pain points

Monday

Meet with EngineerA, confirm she wants to Tech Lead

Meet with Engineer C, confirm he wants to Project Lead

Meet with Engineer B, see if she wants to work with new people

Tuesday

More 1:1 conversations to figure out preferences and who should be on what teams

Wednesday

Team leads meeting — finalize staffing for sub-teams, split up some clean-up tasks

Thursday

Send email to the team with final changes and staffing, clear focuses for sub-teams, and the timeline for reorg

Finalize seating chart

Create a calendar event for moving seats

Friday

Send email to rest of company about changes and reasoning

Move to new seats

Ask team or sub-team leads to reschedule standups and update calendar events

Ask sub-team leads to schedule kickoff meetings

Schedule 1:1s with new sub-team leads (if they don’t exist already)

Go time

Create a private slack channel (or email thread) to coordinate with others as the plan is executed. Over-communicate. By being methodical and communicative, you can minimize the risk of basic communication whoopsies that plague most team changes. Make sure you communicate high-level changes to the relevant people who need to be updated, and to the entire company if appropriate.

Follow-up

Check in with your team to make sure things are going well, and be flexible. Ask for feedback so that you can tweak things. Small changes to dynamically steer are better than big re-structuring, though those are sometimes necessary. In 1:1s, highlight the opportunities for people to step up or delve into areas they’re enthused about. Change, when managed well, is exciting.

If it’s someone’s first time as a project lead, or tech lead, or manager, make sure they have enough support from you, their peers, and/or an external coach. Things that seem basic to you may not be to them. Empower them to kick off their new teams with a clear purpose and creative brainstorms.

Moving some people into explicit leadership roles, even if temporary, will cause anxiety and distress in other people. Help them see where they can be impactful (maybe being the point person for a few-week project, reviewing technical design decisions, or mentoring more junior engineers).

Figure out what went well so you remember for next time. There’s great joy in taking a team that’s outgrown its structure and processes and finding something that is more optimal.

But please, don’t do it all again in two weeks.