Maybe I’m overthinking this, but at some point you have to wonder whether all of the transformation, optimization, prioritization, realignment, simplification, restructuring, strategic focus, operational efficiency and whatever other terminology happens to be in circulation this quarter is actually accomplishing anything, or whether we’ve simply developed a more sophisticated vocabulary for saying, “We’re changing things again.”
Every organization evolves. Priorities change. Markets change. Technology changes. Customers change. Nobody reasonably expects a large company to operate exactly the same way forever.
But there’s a difference between genuine transformation and constantly rearranging the organizational furniture while insisting that everyone admire the new floor plan.
Every new initiative inevitably seems to be the one that will finally simplify everything created by the previous initiative that was also supposed to simplify everything.
First we centralize because decentralization created inefficiencies. Then we decentralize because centralization created bottlenecks. We consolidate roles to eliminate duplication, discover nobody has enough bandwidth, and distribute the responsibilities across three other teams. Layers get eliminated to “flatten the organization,” only for new layers, titles and reporting structures to gradually reappear.
Through all of this, employees are expected to remain agile, engaged, innovative, customer-focused, cost-conscious, strategically aligned and apparently capable of interpreting PowerPoint slides containing six arrows pointing in different directions.
Maybe that’s modern corporate life. Or maybe the machinery of transformation has become a permanent business function unto itself.
The question I keep coming back to is pretty simple: Are we actually building a better organization, or have we just become exceptionally good at continuously reorganizing the existing one?
What makes this harder to dismiss as simply “the way things are in IT” is talking to friends at other technology companies. Their experiences sound completely different. They’re excited about their jobs, optimistic about their companies’ trajectories and enthusiastic about what they’re building and where their organizations are headed.
They talk about growth, innovation, opportunity and the future, rather than another cycle of restructuring, uncertainty and waiting for the next organizational announcement.
And maybe that’s the part worth thinking about.
Perhaps constant disruption isn’t an unavoidable feature of working in technology after all. Maybe there really are companies where transformation means building toward something, rather than repeatedly dismantling, reorganizing and renaming what’s already there.
There’s something to be said for working somewhere with momentum, where leadership appears to have a destination in mind and employees can actually see themselves as part of the journey.
Maybe the ultimate measure of transformation isn’t how many organizations, reporting structures and strategies a company can change. Maybe it’s whether the people who work there can still look at where the company is headed and genuinely say, “I want to be part of that.”
Curious whether others are seeing the same thing.