If You Were Queen For A Day
Turns Out You Know Exactly What Needs To Change
One reader did manage to recall the TV series that ran from 1956 to 1964. (You know it’s from those times when you read in the IMDB summary;
Usually, each contestant asked for a merchandise prize, such as a washer and dryer.
But that wasn’t the question.
Turns out that one member of our community had a lot to say on the subject (Thankyou Leah). You can see her comments here and to save you the click-through - were I to reduce our conversation down to the essence, it would be ‘reorganization’ and ‘grading’.
Reorganization
This was a hot topic that ran through the comments and many of the emails received. To summarize;
Maintain The Annual ‘Reorganization’. The word ‘annual’ is the key. A complete moratorium on new leaders coming into a company and ‘changing for change’s sake’.
“Great leaders know they need a period in a new company to evaluate and watch the existing org prior to blowing it up with changes.”
John’s corollary - on that basis, we don’t have that many great leaders!
Stuart - also in the comments section weighed in with personal experience. By his count, he has been part of three and managed two ‘full on’ corporate reorganizations. Out of those, he counts two successes and one failure. 1 (Footnote below, comment here). Yes, the two successes were under his management - but that wasn’t the missing ingredient in the third. What was missed in the failure is to involve the people, up the chain, down the chain, across the chain, around the chain - every single person. Who would have thought that a People First policy would have worked!
He recommended the book; Structural Cybernetics, by N. Dean Meyer
Assessment
Scrap what some of us call ‘Forced Ranking’. If you have 10 duds - call it out. If you have 10 rock stars - call it out.
I know through experience exactly what Leah is talking about. At best it is insidious. At worst it can destroy a company.
To conclude, one email reflecting their present personal experience;
On the positive, there are so many changes at my present job that I couldn't tell you what to change, unless it was staff. I'm learning to appreciate working with people who are both creative and can be clear.
Update To Last Week’s Newsletter
Last week the topic was ‘Why Do You Work’. There were a few links that I shared that appeared in glorious synchronicity as I was writing the newsletter. What I didn’t share was a podcast that I knew I had - it just wasn’t published, until today.
If you are a photographer, you will likely know ‘TWIP’ - ‘This Week In Photo’. But trust me, even if you aren’t a photographer, it is a great podcast. The owner, host, editor, and producer of TWIP - Frederick Van Johnson - came on to my show to talk about his history, how he came to be running the show at all, and whither next. There is a section in the middle that is so pertinent to the conversation of …
“If didn’t have to work - what would I do”
… well worth a listen. Hope you enjoy it, you can listen here.
Thank you for your attention.
If I have not quoted the source, my assumption is that when people don’t respond in the comments they are wanting to keep their heads below the parapet. And I respect that. You can see the live public comments to this question here.
Please do keep the comments, emails, calls, and carrier pigeons coming. This is only the start of the conversation. We will come back to it.
WOW - I totally got that wrong - see Stuart’s comments below that restores the truth of his experiences. It actually makes for much more interesting reading!
John, thanks for mentioning me in the newsletter, always flattering and fun, but I’m inclined toward this modest correction:
I was not involved in only 3 reorgs (managing two). Rather I have been impacted/involved in 16 re-organizations during my 30-year career, directing 2 of them. Sixteen? It seems beyond belief, even as I look back over those years, until we realize that 10 or so were driven by acquisitions and most for two companies (Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys) during highly-acquisitive periods of growth.
14 failures? The implication deserves explicit emphasis, because I can confidently assert that 14 failed, some of them in stunning fashion with many negative outcomes: more chaos, less trust, and often, diminished revenue (compared to executive projections at the time). Two significant factors that led to these failures might serve as cautionary tales for any of your readers who are heading into “strategic realignments” in their post-Covid returns:
1. Management’s decision to combine the necessary re-structuring caused by M&A with disciplinary actions (hiding the firings of problem staff behind the phrase “operational efficiencies.”). Sure, sometimes layoffs are a sad requirement of M&A (two competent people filling one administrative role) – driven by financial limitations; the flaw occurs when managers who have not addressed “problem staff” in their departments use the reduction to rid themselves of an employee they should have coached/disciplined long before the merger.
2. The second “failure factor” resides in the grandiose promises made (to employees, shareholders, the Board of Directors) at the outset of an acquisition – improved products, higher customer satisfaction, etc. I’d rather an honest message without unrealistic promises about life hereafter, and at TriNet, we insisted upon honestly acknowledging the coming turbulence, stating explicitly that it's going to be difficult for everyone (including customers): increased stress, missed deadlines, upended routines, broken processes. We kept a very public list, and addressed the list often.
One final comment: 16 might still seem uncomfortably high, but I always tried to keep a bit of perspective. At least I wasn’t Roy Sullivan, struck by lightning on 7 different occasions (a Guinness record). Or think of Tsutomo Yamaguchi, an engineer who survived the Hiroshima atomic blast and, though injured, struggled to return to his home in Nagasaki only hours before the second blast. Amazingly, he lived until 2010.
Whenever I hear myself complaining – about a job, or another reorg, or even the recent lockdowns – I try to remember the amazing Mr. Yamaguchi.