The hastily called all-hands meeting combined with the individual team meetings soon after usually mean one of two things, either someone is leaving or a reorg is coming soon. The challenges which comes from either outcome are many and vary depending on the company, the team and the overall management but I think there are also opportunities involved when these sorts of changes happen. Nothing happens within a vacuum and these changes are going to work there way thru an organization no matter how much talk is given to things staying the same. It’s impossible since change is happening and it will be felt.

The key though is to look for ways to anticipate these changes, to look for new challenges which might present themselves because of the holes in the transition process. Communication is one place where many transitions wreck havoc because the usual information flow has been altered, it could have been because the person leaving was always the conduit of this information and now new pathways haven’t been created yet. This is chance to integrate yourself into that communication flow, start the new flow, make yourself be the conduit. This doesn’t mean you make things up or usurp someone else but it does mean that you are watching the information stop and try to find a way to get around the blockage. That’s going to be key as more things change.

It’s easy to want to keep your head down during the transitions, thinking if you keep it down, you’ll be able to show your work, do the work that needs to be done and settle in for the new organization. That might be the case in some places but it won’t be in all of them. Keeping your head down won’t help you at review time when one of the people who know the work you’ve been doing is gone and no longer your advocate. That’s the time when you need to make new alliances, new connections, showing new people the work which can be done. This becomes one key for the transition, staying alert for chances to connect with someone new. It won’t always be possible as sometimes the reorg comes as too high of a level for you to have much change in your day-to-day workflow. When tha happens, what’s needed is the continuation of the work and the consistency of getting the work accomplished.