High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

by Elad Gil

4. Announce and implement the re-org soup-to-nuts in 24 hours. Once you have decided what form the new organization will take, discuss it with your reports in their 1:1s. Your executives should have a clear plan for how and when to communicate the changes to their team members. If there are key people deeply affected or likely to be unhappy with the change, you or one of your reports can meet with them either right before or right after the announcement to hear them out and re-affirm the logic for the changes. You should never drag out a re-org or pre-announce it. Try not to announce “this week we will re-organize product, and next month we will change engineering.” If possible, all elements of the re-org need to be communicated and implemented simultaneously. If you pre-announce a portion of the re-org, that team will not get any work done until the re-org happens. Instead, there will be hushed conversations in conference rooms full of gossip and speculation, crazy rumor-mongering, and executive lobbying.