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Steps to Organizational Change Without the Drama

35 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

bigbacaloa 5y ago
"Never YOLO the communications plan" - in particular don't use jargony abbreviations that no one understands.
- karatinversion 5y ago
  Counterpoint: Using slang or folksy expressions, like the verb "to YOLO" here, is perfectly appropriate in an informal document.
WJW 5y ago
Good communication can definitely help a lot, but saying that doing communications right will prevent drama from org changes is entirely optimistic. In my experience by far the larger amount of drama comes from the fact that most organizational changes involve changes in the management of people, either because reorgs, because of internal promotions or because some new person is hired above an existing team. Unless you have an exceptionally unambitious team, all of those cases are opportunities from drama of the "X didn't get promoted again" type to spring up and resentment to build. Good communications can only prevent a certain class of drama, it does nothing about (or even exacerbates) the other kinds of drama.
- chromanoid 5y ago
  Did you read the article? It explicity mentions situations where you think drama is inevitable. See the part about the guiding policy.
  - WJW 5y ago
    I did read the article and I just re-read the part you mentioned. That section just mentions that if you manage to get buy-in from the team about some predetermined policy, then they will be bought-in to the results as well. This would be dependent on getting the entire team to accept such a policy without drama, which seems unlikely. There is often too much ego and too much future financial gain involved in promotion decisions to have a low-drama way of telling people that they did not get the promotion and that the position they wanted will likely not be open for the coming few years. I expect that any such policy would also lead to the worst kind of "Goodhart's law" exploitation, where people start optimizing only for the metrics actually mentioned in the policy to the detriment of all else.
chromanoid 5y ago
Great article. I like the mentioned communication patterns very much.

35 points by kiyanwang 5y ago

bigbacaloa 5y ago

"Never YOLO the communications plan" - in particular don't use jargony abbreviations that no one understands.

karatinversion 5y ago
Counterpoint: Using slang or folksy expressions, like the verb "to YOLO" here, is perfectly appropriate in an informal document.

WJW 5y ago

Good communication can definitely help a lot, but saying that doing communications right will prevent drama from org changes is entirely optimistic. In my experience by far the larger amount of drama comes from the fact that most organizational changes involve changes in the management of people, either because reorgs, because of internal promotions or because some new person is hired above an existing team. Unless you have an exceptionally unambitious team, all of those cases are opportunities from drama of the "X didn't get promoted again" type to spring up and resentment to build. Good communications can only prevent a certain class of drama, it does nothing about (or even exacerbates) the other kinds of drama.

chromanoid 5y ago
Did you read the article? It explicity mentions situations where you think drama is inevitable. See the part about the guiding policy.
- WJW 5y ago
  I did read the article and I just re-read the part you mentioned. That section just mentions that if you manage to get buy-in from the team about some predetermined policy, then they will be bought-in to the results as well. This would be dependent on getting the entire team to accept such a policy without drama, which seems unlikely. There is often too much ego and too much future financial gain involved in promotion decisions to have a low-drama way of telling people that they did not get the promotion and that the position they wanted will likely not be open for the coming few years. I expect that any such policy would also lead to the worst kind of "Goodhart's law" exploitation, where people start optimizing only for the metrics actually mentioned in the policy to the detriment of all else.

chromanoid 5y ago

Great article. I like the mentioned communication patterns very much.