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Re-structuring a growing team
Recognizing the need, planning, and executing to level up your company
“Ugghhhhhhhh my team is going through a reorg”
You’ve probably heard something along those lines. We all have. But we can probably also agree that team structure needs to change as a company adapts and scales — unless you’re a proponent of a completely flat organization, in which case I can’t help you. What worked for 2 people won’t work for 5, what worked for 5 won’t work for 15, and what worked for 15 won’t work for 50. But when’s the last time you heard someone say “I’m super excited about the structural changes happening at work”? So what’s going on — why are reorgs so dreaded?
Some predictable things that go wrong with a reorg:
- People don’t know or understand the reasoning behind it
- Team leads find out from people on their team
- Pods of people who work well together are disbanded
- Too much change all at once (structure, process, people)
- People managing the reorg don’t know the status of it
An easy scapegoat is believing that people don’t like change, but that’s kind of a cop-out. Sure, there is an inevitable dip and re-grouping that needs to happen as people rebuild their implicit support structures at work. But just as people don’t join startups to dial it in, they also are not inherently averse to any level of change.
Reorgs don’t necessarily have to be ill-received, I know this because I’ve observed and led ones that have brought clarity and enthusiasm to people and their work. Let’s figure out how we can increase clarity and focus instead of just doing damage control.
Phase 1: Identifying the need for a reorg
Many reorgs happen when high-level strategy shifts, but for simplicity, this post will focus on reorgs related to scaling a team. So let’s assume that the mission of your team remains the same, but through hiring or internal transfers, your team size has increased.
Develop an ideal team size for each stage of growth — but don’t treat it as a hard-and-fast rule. Some people work better…
