Three Things People Need To Hear Before A Reorg
Hello Learners,
This is Learn Leadership. Every issue takes one thing that quietly goes wrong between managers and their teams, shows it happening through a real story, and leaves you with something to try this week.
Today it's the reorg you can't fully talk about yet and the three questions your team are already asking each other in the kitchen. You'll leave with a five-line message that covers all three, including the parts you can't answer yet.
The slide on Thursday and the rumors by Monday
Amelia runs a nine-person finance operations team. At Thursday's all-hands, the COO puts up one slide: finance ops and procurement become a single "business services" group on 1 January. Questions at the end, please.
Nobody asks one. Amelia has three Slack messages before she's back at her desk, all some version of "Do you know anything?"
She knows a little. Her team moves under Oliver, who runs procurement. She doesn't know the timing, and HR has asked her to hold the reporting line until it's signed off. So she says nothing.
By Monday her team has decided two roles are going: Oliver rates nobody in accounts payable, and that month-end close is being outsourced. None of that is true. Every piece of it grew in the four days she stayed quiet.
That gap has a cost you can measure. In a UCL study on uncertainty and stress, volunteers facing a 50% chance of a mild electric shock reported more stress than volunteers who knew the shock was certain. The coin-flip hurt more than the bad news.
Reorgs run on coin-flips for weeks. McKinsey's global survey on redesigns found that fewer than a quarter of large-scale efforts fully succeed. That number belongs to the whole program. Your piece is smaller and more useful: what your own team hears this week. It comes down to three answers.
Who they'll report to
The first question is always about a person. People want a name, because the name tells them who writes their next review and whether anyone above them knows what they do all day.
When Amelia finally got clearance, she told her team on a Tuesday call: "From 1 January you report to me, and I report to Oliver. Your line doesn't change." Two people unmuted only to say thanks. One of them admitted later she'd updated her CV over the weekend.
If you can't name the line yet, give them the part you can. "Your reporting line is being finalized. It won't change before 1 January, and I'll tell you the day I know."
A partial answer with a date holds people steady for weeks, and it costs you one sentence.
Then listen for the follow-up nobody says out loud: does my new boss know who I am? If the answer's no, set up a twenty-minute intro before the change lands. Oliver met all nine of Amelia's people in one afternoon, one at a time, and the accounts payable rumor died that week.
What happens to the work on their desk
This one gets skipped because it feels operational. It's also the question that decides whether anyone does real work between the announcement and go-live.
Noah is a developer on Amelia's team who was halfway through automating supplier invoice matching. After the all-hands, he stopped. Nobody told him to. He assumed procurement had its own tool, and eight weeks of his work were headed for the bin, so he spent the next fortnight on small tickets that felt safe.
Amelia found out in a one-on-one three weeks later. The project was staying, and the merged group needed it more than finance ever had.
So go through the work with each person and put every item in one of three piles: keep going, pause until a named date, or stop. Say the pile out loud for every project, including the obvious ones. "Keep going" is news too.
When Leadership IQ surveyed 4,172 people who'd kept their jobs through a layoff, 74% said their own productivity had dropped since. A merger like Amelia's is gentler, and the stall still starts in the same place: people stop believing today's work will count.
When they'll know
The third question is about time. It's the one managers dodge, because "I don't know yet" feels like failing in public.
It's also the easiest to answer honestly. You may not know the outcome, and you can still name the date of your next update. "HR confirms the structure on 14 November. I'll message you that afternoon, even if the message says nothing's moved."
Then keep the date. Lena, a team lead on the procurement side, sent hers at 4 p.m. on 14 November with two lines in it. Her team told her later that the two lines mattered less than the timestamp. They'd started to trust her dates.
If a date has to move, say so on the original day and give the new one. A moved date with a reason still counts as keeping your word, as long as it arrives on the day you promised.
Saying it when you don't have all of it
Put the three answers in one message and send it within a day of the announcement. Here's an order that works:
- Who you report to, or the date that gets settled.
- What happens to each piece of current work: keep, pause until a date, or stop.
- When you'll hear from me next, with a day and a time.
- What I don't know yet, named plainly.
- Where to ask questions, including a private option.
Read it aloud before you send it. If a line could have come from HR to the whole company, rewrite it until it's about your team.
This one's awkward, because you're committing to dates inside a process you don't control. Do it anyway. Your team already knows you don't run the reorg. They're watching to see whether you'll tell them what you know.
One thing this week
If a reorg is anywhere near your team, draft the five-line message tonight, even if you can't send it yet. You'll find out which answer you're missing while there's still time to go and get it.
Amelia sent hers a week late. The Monday rumors were gone within a day, accounts payable kept every person, and Noah's invoice matching went live in February. She still thinks about those four quiet days. So do two people on her team.
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