The Familiar Knot of Annoyance
My stomach twisted itself into the familiar knot-not fear, but pure, acid-tinged annoyance. I was staring at the slide titled “Project Chimera: Streamlined Synergy 4.0,” and the only synergy I felt was the collective dread radiating off the 46 other people in the virtual meeting. The CEO was already onto the new org chart, a colorful spiderweb promising “dotted lines and solid performance,” as if line thickness dictated reality.
We had just, finally, nailed down the new process flows from Re-org 3.0, maybe 6 weeks ago, and now this. They call it optimization. They call it agility. What it actually feels like, down here in the engine room where the actual work gets done, is executive-level anxiety dressed up as decisive action. We’re witnessing the fourth major structural shift in three years.
Survival Instinct Microcosm
I criticize the constant churn, but a part of me leans into the chaos because it buys me time; nobody expects clarity when the entire reporting structure is dissolving and reforming like saltwater taffy. It’s a terrible, self-defeating survival instinct, and one I hate that I’ve mastered.
The Political Chess Game
This is the reality of the Reorganization Fetish: It is not a strategy to optimize output. It is a high-stakes political chess game played by a few people at the top, which succeeds in making them look busy and responsive to the market, while simultaneously creating months of paralysis and institutional trauma for the hundreds or thousands beneath them. It’s an expensive performance.
The Cost of Motion vs. Stability
(Institutional Trauma)
(Knowledge Retention)
Consider the hidden cost: the erosion of institutional memory. When a team gets dissolved and its members scattered across three new silos-Finance-Embedded Marketing, Product Strategy Enablement, and Customer Experience Delivery 6-the memory of *why* things were done in the first place doesn’t transfer neatly in a bulleted list. The tacit knowledge, the shortcuts, the specific errors learned in that painful 2018 rollout, the names of the three people who actually know how the legacy system works-that evaporates.
Shredding Informal Connections
The leaders announcing these shifts often frame it in terms of necessity: “We must break the silos.” But the real problem isn’t the silos; it’s that the informal networks, the relationships built on consistency, are what truly connect the organization. When you tear up the formal chart, you shred those delicate, effective informal connections too. The result is that crucial information-the thing that moves the business forward-slows to a glacial crawl, processed only through mandated, painfully bureaucratic 236-step official channels.
“
If the rules of the platform change arbitrarily, constantly, and without notice, they stop trusting the platform itself. They stop investing energy in performing well within that ecosystem. They start looking for loopholes or, worse, they stop engaging entirely.
– Quinn M. (Digital Citizenship Teacher)
Quinn’s lesson is designed for eleven-year-olds learning about social media, but it applies perfectly to corporate America. If the adults running the show demonstrate repeatedly that structural consistency and long-term roles are non-existent, why would anyone below that level dedicate themselves to long-term expertise?
Optimizing for Morale, Not Business
The real motive, I eventually realized, often relates to political calculus-managing executive personalities or clearing the decks. A new CEO or division head needs a symbolic victory, a decisive act that screams, “I am in control.” The quickest, most visible, and arguably cheapest way to signal control is not by improving product quality or fixing supply chain issues, but by rearranging the furniture. It’s a magnificent display of motion, masking an underlying inability to generate meaningful, lasting change.
$676M
Estimated Consulting/Transition Cost (4 Initiatives)
This behavior breeds two types of survivors: the cynics and the politically obsessed. The cynics check out; they do the minimum, hoard their knowledge, and wait for the dust to settle, knowing it will soon be irrelevant anyway. The politically obsessed become adept at navigating the shifting sands, focusing their energy not on the client or the product, but on ensuring their proximity to the new power center. Expertise is devalued in favor of political savvy, and the organization suffers an internal brain drain.
The Core Question
How many more times must we rip out the foundations of productivity and memory just so a handful of leaders can enjoy the intoxicating, fleeting feeling of having reorganized the entire world beneath their feet?
