If you’ve worked anywhere long enough, chances are you’ve been through more than one re-org or team shuffling. If not, when it does happen, it can be quite a disorienting experience, trying to map out what all the changes mean: ‘are my projects still important’, ‘who’s my new manager’, ‘what will I be working on now?!’ , ‘what’s going to happen to my career?’ … it can be exhausting and overwhelming.

In my mentorship sessions I’m frequently asked how to navigate these types of large changes, here are some approaches that can help you reflect, process and take action.

Photo by Steven Ramon on Unsplash

Mental Gymnastics

There are many forms and types of re-orgs / team changes—they can happen for so many reasons, many of which are not or cannot be communicated. In the absence of clarity we often make up our own stories, truths, or pickup rumors & gossip. There are likely many truths and realities, new VPs want to mix things up or create new efficiencies or optimize a function for a different focus, or re-prioritize an existing effort, toxic leadership may be managed out, business is not going well, sometimes ‘fresh eyes’ are needed, the list is endless…

“Try not to think too hard”
… or as Andy Budd writes—“One of the challenges of coaching is getting people to focus on the things in their control rather than fixate in the things that are outside of their control. However it’s amazing how good people are at steering conversations way from them and towards external factors.”

In the absence of concrete information or facts, try not to deliberate too much about the reasons behind these changes—some good and some bad. Performing mental gymnastics to grapple all of the changes and implications is really challenging, your energy is probably better spent elsewhere.

Remember that the only constant is change

Many medium & large companies reshuffle frequently, often annually to align with new business objectives and goals for the year ahead. This can and should be anticipated, you’ll often see the tail end of Q4 full of exec reviews and planning to get a picture of what is promising, what needs resourcing and what doesn’t.

Try to cultivate a growth mindset where you are looking for the opportunity to grow rather than taking changes personally or being your own worst critic, it can be difficult in the moment of uncertainty and change, but it’s important to take a step back and reflect.

Step 1: Reflect

Take a moment to document everything you’ve done and achieved to date, I often advise creating a doc or deck summarizing achievements, launches, bonuses etc, nice quotes from leadership etc. This is a well-known tactic, often called a brag sheet or brag document, this useful because:

• Outlines your goals and achievements
• Use it to walk new managers & leadership through accomplishments
• Enables you to reflect on everything you’ve achieved
• You are busy, memorizing everything you’ve accomplished is very difficult
• You can use it to walk new managers & leadership through accomplishments and it allows others to advocate for you

Example brag sheet template from Julia Evans

Were you happy in the previous team? Was it what you wanted to be working on? Did you have good relationships? Were you growing and learning? These are all good questions to ask yourself and help with mapping options out and taking next steps.

Step 2: Look at the opportunity objectively

If you are changing teams, managers, focus area, projects etc the chances are you will have a different role in the new organization / team structure. Try to get clear on exactly what your new scope is, what the problem space is, and who the team members are—this will help you get a picture of what the new opportunity in front of you is. In some ways treat it like a new job that you are interviewing for:

• Are you excited by the new setup and new problem area?
• Are you setup for success?
• What will be challenging and exciting to you in the new role?
• Do you have room to grow yourself and your career, opportunities for advancement?
• What are the pros / cons of the new setup?

Remember it will take time for the dust to settle, and for the implications to come clear, it may take many months until people really know and understand the new structure and setup.

Step 3: Pick a path

Now you are armed with some more information and learnings on what you have achieved, and details of your new situation—you now have several options in front of you. You can give it a shot and thrive in your new team and setup, or considering moving on and finding success in a different role, team, company etc.

Grow where you’re planted

Choosing to thrive with the new start and fresh challenge can be immensely rewarding. It also allows you to try and clear some of the ambiguity, accepting the new reality and being proactive with an open growth mindset. Some tactics & activities to try:

• Meet everyone on your new team, and come prepared with a set of questions
• Actively participate in Q&A, come with a open and curious mind
• Do some research in your new space, audit a similar competitor app/experience/product—form some opinions of your own
• Read up on your new space/team, go through past UxR learnings and insights, metrics, get to know the sets of user problems
• Draft rough plans of action from your perspective and get feedback from leadership, new managers, XFN teammates
• Tie up any lose ends in your previous work, summarize, write it up—you never know who might benefit or remember you and your work in the future

Judging when to move on

Sometimes your situation may not be right for you, maybe you’ve lost a team or many teammates, you might be experiencing burnout, or it could be that you’re just not set up for success or want a totally fresh start.

“Would I apply to this job?”—one core question to ask yourself

Figuring this out is really tricky, thankfully, a lot of great minds have thought about this. I like the framing of Andy Johns (via Lenny’s newsletter) writing, he offers several helpful processes, beginning with creating a couple of lists:

1. List of intolerables: Things to completely avoid. Think of experiences you’ve had that have produced a strong emotional response that sent you into a downward spiral, or things that you know are bad for your well-being.
2. List of boundaries: What are the boundaries that help your overall health and well-being. Think of these as defensive tactics to avoid the intolerable, i.e keeping an active gym membership to encourage you to work out.
3. List of things that make you flourish: What are the things that make you feel good or ‘happy’, think of these experiences or behaviors that make you feel healthiest and at your best. These are the things that, when you commit to them, make you more resilient against situations that test you.

You can then map this to a ‘tolerance target’

Tolerance target with Andy Johns’ targets applied as an example

If you find that your situation only allows you to exist in the zone of intolerables then this is a good sign to make major changes. Sometimes you can make the tradeoff for rapid career growth, or starting in a new role, but if this gets out of hand or prolonged it can have a serious impact on your health and well being.

“The purpose of life isn’t to sacrifice our well-being. The purpose of life is to flourish.”—Andy Johns

The Wait By Why author Tim Urban also has an interesting take here.

In summary

Take a moment to reflect, plan, and take action. These scenarios—whilst extremely challenging—can also offer you a unique moment to take a step back and re-assess your relationship to your career.