Quandary Mat: We Grew. Now Everybody Feels out of the Loop.
Dear Hunter,
My organization has grown quickly over the past 3 years, growing from about 80 people to over 200.
There are benefits to this change, but the pace of changes and the way the executive team and managers are going about these changes is driving people crazy and making people feel unheard and unimportant. Where most of us, including me and the team I supervise, used to feel in the loop, it’s like now there’s no loop: We aren’t involved in anything.
Before, managers and even frontline staff got the chance to give input to department heads and to our CEO (who just retired). We had a lot of big meetings, in person pre-pandemic, then on Zoom. People got to hear directly from the top bosses, and speak to them directly.
Now, decisions are made with less transparency. No transparency for many big ones. We have far fewer big meetings with 20+ people. I don’t know what’s coming next, and I feel like I know why less and less as we go along. We don’t know how to give our input. High levels of confusion, distrust and even anger. Nobody is happy.
I guess what I’m asking is, how do we act like the big organization that we are, when it comes to communication and decision-making?
Signed, Growing Pains
Dear Growing Pains,
There is a lot going on here! It does sound like a stressful mess. Of course people are upset and miss the old days of face time with the CEO and the chance to hear from the big deciders about changes that are on the way.
In my mind, you are working with three big connected issues. I will make a couple of suggestions for each. (Message me again for more info on any of these.)
The change in size, including the changes you describe in interpersonal relationships and access to people (at all org-chart levels) across the organization.
The new need for clear processes to make smart decisions, including who is involved, how the input happens, who makes the final call.
The need for clear communication and structured information management, in part to tell people how the decision-making processes mentioned above are going to go.
The Transition from small to larger
Acknowledge the big change. Tell people, ad nauseum: The growth is a big change, and you (as a part of the management team) are working to do this correctly, and that it will take time. Use examples of past victories in succeeding through change, to build identity among team members.
Consider setting up short-term project teams for managing different parts of the growth transition. Projects could include creating or updating information management protocols, like when to use different types of messaging (email, Slack/Teams, etc.), or the training program for any new software. Add affected frontline staff to these teams, so they can add their expertise and share the work.
Get better results with better buy-in, and decrease the negative “Us versus the Bosses” dynamic that seems to be present.
Decision-making in larger organizations
When the organization is large, there are several layers and levels between those who make the biggest decisions, and the staff who are affected. That’s the reality.
To reach the best decisions, and to explain the decisions, you can plan and explain the decision-making process itself.
When figuring out how much process and communication you need, size matters. The bigger the change, and the more people affected, the more you need. You could start by asking yourself a slightly cynical question to establish what you could call stakeholders: How many people are going to freak out if we make a decision they don’t like, and they didn’t get a chance to contribute?)
For the next few big-enough decisions, I suggest the exec team or the management team announce, repeatedly, this information:
What the decision is and why it’s needed. For example, “As part of our growth, we are combining these two departments [insert strategy rationale]. We want the staff of these departments to help guide this change.”
The Who, How, When of the decision: “The exec team will decide at the end of the month, by consensus.” (Other options: the two department heads by mutual agreement, the process owner after a team discussion, the staff team by consensus).
Who can provide input and how, including who talks to whom: “Staff in the two affected departments will meet in two design sessions with their supervisors.”
Any other steps to decision-making?
If you know the project management frameworks RACI (Responsible-Accountable-Consulted-Informed) or MOCHA (Manager, Owner, Consultant, Helper, Approver), those categories come in handy here to assign roles in input and decision-making.
Clear channels of communication
For any big change, the executive team has to decide how much information to share, and when, with the different levels of staff. There is also different timing to figure out in what is shared when with different levels of management, and with front line staff teams.
For the record, it’s hard for me to believe that your good-old-days large meetings you describe were a forum where detailed feedback was shared in an equitable way that included all voices. In most big meetings where big changes are announced, people with power talk and other people with power respond with a few comments in support or in challenge. Smaller groups are where real exchanges, learning, and decisions happen.
Ideas for channels of communication and how to use them:
Directors and managers share the basic information and timeline for upcoming changes with their teams and answer questions. Feedback about the issue at hand, and questions for the decision-makers (e.g., exec team), can be passed along to the decision-maker or -makers.
Open meetings: Sounds radical, but there are organizations that allow anyone who is interested to attend any meeting. Some topics, like HR issues with private information, still need to be discussed behind closed doors, but most strategy and operations topics are good for anyone to hear.
Open meeting minutes: If not in the meeting, people could have access to the non-privileged part of all kinds of meeting-related information, like decisions made, through the posting of meeting minutes in a shared folder accessible to all staff.
There are a lot of details and changes to make to go from “everybody is out of the loop” to “everybody knows what’s going on and how to participate.” And simply talking about this as an area that needs attention will help people feel better about the exec team. In other words, starting to figure this out is a chance to heal the divisions and distrust you describe.