How to get better at re-orgs

Goal of a re-org

When the business/product goals change, management resorts to re-orgs to re-align personnel in the organization to the newer business/product goals.

Classifying re-orgs

1. Management churn : happens when there is a leadership change, some manager leaves the org. This is often the final symptom that is visible to engineers. The root cause is often different, most likely due to disagreement over direction/strategy which may not come out clearly.
2. Business changes : if some part of the business/product gets de-prioritized over other. 
3. Early stage organizations : Early stage startups or organizations have often not figured out product market fit. Hence, they are frequented by strategy changes because of new learnings that invalidate some of the original assumptions.
4. Dying organizations : Dying organizations go through re-orgs often too. A dying organization often has declining talent pool, losing business which leads to a vicious cycle. They try out strategies, which don't work out and the business keeps declining, leading to more iterations and more re-orgs. These are the re-orgs that lead to death by a thousand cuts.
5. Followups from a bigger re-org. These are like aftershocks from a big earthquake. 

How to better anticipate re-orgs

1. Engineering managers and directors should anticipate the dimension of change that might be coming : business, product, life-cycle, leadership change. 
2. Strong and early networking along with good organizational understanding can help them anticipate re-orgs. 

How to execute re-orgs better

1. Re-orgs : Organization = Refactoring : Code
2. Similar to code, there are anti patterns in an organization, some of which are listed above. 
3. Before executing a re-org it is important to list all the options, all the people and project tradeoffs.
4. Often times, there is no right answer. The key is to reduce the blast radius and setup the organization for future success.
5. Hence, it is very important to clearly outline the goal of the reorg, what a short term/ medium term success state for the organization looks like. 
6. People are a key part of the re-org and it is important to involve as many stakeholders as possible. The key here is to neither over-index or under-index on people. It involves them so make sure people are comfortable. At the same time, don't over optimize for a handful and lose track of the original goal.