hardScenarioBehaviouralSeniorStaffLead
A reorganisation has moved half your team's scope to another group. You argued against it and lost, and morale has collapsed. What do you do?
5 min readUpdated 2026-08-15Target archetype: Big Tech, Enterprise Captive, Product Startup
Answer
Short answer
Own the decision publicly without pretending you authored it, find out individually what each person believes they have lost since the answers differ, then either win back real scope or say honestly that the team is now smaller than its ambitions.
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Likely follow-ups
- An engineer asks you directly whether you agreed with the reorg. What exactly do you say?
- Your two strongest engineers now have no path to senior because the scope that would have proved it left. What do you do about that?
- The receiving team is visibly struggling with the work they took. Do you offer to take it back, and how?
- Six weeks in, three people have resigned. Was that avoidable, and what does it tell you?
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