Reorg: the danger of eating too much of your own cake
Restructuring your team, group, org, or company is a fact of life in most industries. Everyone knows this, I know this. Yet a reorg turned my world upside down and it took nearly a year to find balance again.
I use meaningful work to help people grow and to activate creativity. I call this “everyone gets some cake.” If people have work they find meaningful (cake) they will be more invested, productive, and successful. I try to be sure no one on my team goes more than a month without some cake. I haven’t changed my mind about that: not one bit.
What I learned though, is you can eat too much of your own cake.
It’s your passion, not your thing
Helping build the Information Experience (IX) team and helping us transition to Content Design (CD) was (no, is) one of the things I’m most proud of in my career. It was my cake 4 years in a row and I ate it, voraciously. I felt like I was changing the world of technical communications, or at least playing a small part.
If you look carefully you’ll see a leading indicator of too much of your own cake: the use of I and not we statements. I got stuck believing that it was my thing and not our thing.
Not, mind you, my cake but my thing. That is where I went wrong. It was a hard lesson in letting your passion cloud your thinking. I was killing it and was helping others grow which is nearly my favorite thing in the whole world. I had a direction and a strategy. Every decision I made and every action I took was in-line with that strategy. What’s more, it was working. I felt like I was building IX into a thing.
First thought wrong
I looked at the org chart and my first thought was “they don’t believe in me or what I can do.” That, of course, is not the case. I am still here after all. But, honestly, that was my first thought. I felt disoriented, like the world and everything I knew about it shifted under my feet. That might sound ridiculous but it felt very real. What I mean is everything I thought I knew was brought into question in my own mind. So, I didn’t take the news well.
Do no harm
Next, I wrote down how I thought this would help or hinder the people on my team. I did this to get my emotional self in-check and remember this isn’t just about me. I also knew I’d have to get some of the raw reaction out. This helped get the most poisonous of my first feelings and reactions in context.
I’m a leader and I have a responsibility to be honest and thoughtful with my team. I think it’s important to call out the difference between sugar coating and being thoughtful:
- Reality: This is going to be hard for months with some uncertainty about where we’re going or how, exactly, we’ll get there
- Sugar coated: We’re entering an exciting time of change and I know you’ll all embrace what’s coming
- Thoughtful: This is going to be hard but I believe it’s the right decision to get us to our vision
It also means I have a responsibility not to allow my own reaction to become or overtly affect the reaction of those around me. This doesn’t mean I’m dishonest or fake. It does mean I’m going to say: “I’m still figuring out what I think” “I believe this is the right thing for our org, but it’s a little hard for me to digest now” and not to say “Well, this is all fu@$ed.”
Purge the poison
Now that my team was safe from the darker sides of my initial reaction I wanted to understand why I was feeling what I was feeling. Immediate in my mind were these questions:
- How does this impact what I want to accomplish here?
- Am I still seen as someone who is helping drive us to the future of content?
- What does this mean for the strategy I’ve been building?
From those questions, I began finding my way back to a more rational perspective on the changes to my team and our organization. I was able to recognize my value in the new structure even though I could see several projects and people I cared deeply about would be moving to other teams.
It’s important to recognize the unpleasant parts, you’ll be living with them for a while; best to go forward eyes wide open. The world we all live in isn’t made of cake we all have to eat our {food you’d prefer not to eat but is good for you} as well.
Moving on or buying in
I helped my new team start figuring out what our new organization looked like and how we could make an impact. The whole time I felt, distant. I was performing and my team was delivering good stuff across all our products but something always felt like it was missing.
I figured it out not too long ago: I stopped believing I belonged here, that I mattered. So, I turned on the “I’m available” and beefed up my resume and started taking calls and interviews. That lasted until about two months ago when one of my team came to me with some struggles they’d been having.
It is sometimes amazing how a little thing can change your entire perspective. Helping that person work through their struggles I came to my own conclusion about Atlassian: I’m either in or I need to get out. Then, about a month later, I had a really great catch up with the other manager in our direct team and I walked away feeling like I belonged again.
Now, obviously, I didn’t base my decision on those two small interactions, but in retrospect, I can clearly see that’s where the road started to change.
Being honest and the road ahead
The final step I had to go through was a very honest discussion with my own manager. Thankfully, she began the conversation openly and over the hour we found what looks like the road ahead. I’m pretty excited about that road. It might take me back to being an individual contributor for a while but, if it does, I expect I’ll be returning to leadership within a couple of years. I still love nothing more than helping people achieve.
So, there’s a path ahead and the road looks brighter.
PS: During this whole time, I’ve also been learning how to live with depression, but that’s another blog.
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