Week 9 Stand-up: The reorg

Every trick so far assumed a stable org chart. This week the chart changes, your manager is new, and your brag document describes a team that no longer exists.

6 May 2027

This week's trickBecome the only person who understands the system you built.

Who paysYou: the person nobody can remove is the person nobody can promote.

The first stand-up of the block where things stop working. Weeks 3 to 8 gave you tricks that depend on people remembering you. This week, the people change.

Bring#

Your org chart from week 3 and your brag document from week 4.

The trick#

Concentrate irreplaceable context. Be the sole owner of a system the organisation depends on and that nobody else has had time to learn. In a restructure, the retained roles are the ones whose removal breaks something visible. Documentation is a strategic decision; make it deliberately.

What happens#

You invent a reorg: your manager moves, your team is merged, your skip-level is now someone from another building. You redraw the chart. Then you go through every trick from weeks 3 to 8 and mark whether it survives. The skip-level coffee does not. The public posts do, partly. The launch email does, if the new manager reads old email. The brag document survives only if it was written for a stranger.

How you know it worked#

You can say what a reorg does to each trick you know, and you have noticed that the one that survives best is the one that makes you a risk to remove, and therefore a risk to move anywhere else. Assessment 2, the case for an engineer whose manager left in exactly this kind of reorg, is due on Friday.