A friend of mine called the other day in a panic. She’s been “reorged”.

Well, that word’s so 1993. The term they used was “change in reporting structure” but it’s the same thing. Now she has to break in another new boss and shepherd her people through yet more change management.

Time to buy more copies of “Who Moved My Cheese” for the staff. I have been through 6 reorgs in less than 10 years. I know where my @#$%$@^&* cheese is, I’m just lactose intolerant. I feel her pain.

Below are some of the trite phrases people have been trotting out to console her. See if any of them sound familiar to you…

• “It’s a top line problem, it’s no reflection on your performance”- which is the corporate equivalent of “it’s not you, it’s me….”. Either way there’s a better than even chance you’re about to get dumped.
• “Just go about your business” - which is the same thing cops always say after a really bad wreck. Pay no attention to the chalk outline under the dumptruck……
• “It will be invisible to our customers”- uh, no. Our sales people have been invisible to our customers which is why we had to reorganize  in the first place. And why would our customers notice when everyone they’ve worked with starts disappearing and the survivors are walking like zombies for the next three months?
• “Your deckchair will look so much nicer on the other side of the ship away from that nasty iceberg.” Okay, maybe I just imagined that one but it would be a heck of a lot more honest than the others…..

Light a candle, kill a chicken, however you invoke higher powers…she’s going to need all the help she can get.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 11:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.