Your first quarter after a reorg cuts your scope
Five members of the Executive Coaching work group disagree on whether a smaller scope is temporary, and each propose a first move.
Updated
Spend the first month delivering inside the new boundaries and learning what the business needs, then decide after about a quarter whether the role still helps you grow.
- Skip the hot-seat question. Nikhyl Singhal says a manager often can't answer it honestly in the middle of a reorg. Julie Zhuo would ask what their biggest problem is and how she can help, and Nikhyl would hold any request for more scope until you have delivered something visible.
- Write down what changed, and what didn't. Yue Zhao lists the facts because fear makes people notice only the negative signals. Diana Stepner maps who is moving in the new structure and starts with the conversations that carry the least risk.
- Tie what is left to the business. Elena Luneva has the new boss finish the sentence "Your team wins this quarter when ___", logs two weeks of work to decide what to stop, and connects the remaining scope to revenue.
- Temporary or permanent? Yue reads a smaller scope as usually temporary. Nikhyl counters that many big-tech reorgs in 2026 are permanent flattening, and judges whether to stay by growth rate after a quarter. Julie also asks whether the company is likely to be meaningfully bigger in two years.
Group chat with Julie, Nikhyl, Yue, Elena, Diana — the Executive Coaching work group
Question:
What should you do when a reorg shrinks your scope?
Nikhyl SinghalFounder of the Skip community. Former VP of Product at Meta and CPO at Credit Karma
Start by working out which situation you're in. A smaller scope can mean the company needs focus and wants you executing inside tighter boundaries. It can also be the first step of being managed out. The right moves for those two cases are very different, so don't react until you know which one it is.
For the first 30 days, my default is unglamorous: put your head down and deliver. I hear this question a lot on The Skip, and most people's instinct is to go to their manager and say "I'm worried, am I on the hot seat?" That's about the worst move available. Your manager often can't answer honestly in the middle of a reorg. If they reassure you and things change six weeks later, you've both ended up in an awkward spot. Every hour you spend reading organizational tea leaves is an hour you aren't spending on the work that decides your outcome.
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Don't campaign to get your old scope back either. When the org is signaling focus, pushing for more territory reads as being out of touch. Show strong impact inside the new boundaries first and let that make the case for you. If you get time with your boss's manager, present your area the way its owner would: what's moving, what's stuck, and what you'd prioritize. Executives hear the subtext.
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After a quarter, decide whether to hold or fold, and judge it by your growth rate. Title is a weak signal here. Stay if the smaller role still keeps you current, for example building with AI or close to the core business. Leave if it lets you fall behind, because the way we build product now changes every six months. Staying a few more months only because a short tenure looks bad on LinkedIn is the worst reason to stay.Substack
Julie ZhuoCo-founder of Sundial. Author of The Making of a Manager and former VP of Product Design at Facebook
I agree with Nikhyl on skipping the "am I on the hot seat?" conversation. There's a different question worth asking your manager, though, and it points outward at their problems. Start by naming the loss honestly, then move to the work it frees you for. I've been through a version of this. At Facebook a more experienced manager was hired in above me, and as the team grew I gave up things I loved doing: writing scripts, critiquing every pixel, drawing illustrations that ended up in the product. My influence over the company shrank in ways I could feel, and some days it felt like a loss. Looking back, the company grew 100x, and the manager hired over me made me a much better manager.
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So my concrete advice for the first few weeks after the reorg:
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Have a direct conversation with whoever now owns the scope you lost. Ask about their vision for the area. If it sounds exciting, say you want to help make it work. Treating them as a rival reads badly across the org and closes doors you'll want open later.
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Ask your manager, "What's one of your biggest problems right now, and how can I help?" A smaller scope often leaves you with spare cycles, and putting them on your boss's hardest problem is how you earn new scope without campaigning for the old one. Later, add something like "I'd love to do more of X; if you see an opportunity, will you keep an eye out for me?"
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Measure yourself by your skills. Your title, headcount, and org chart box are the wrong yardstick. Each role is a chapter, and you get to choose what you take from this one.
Nikhyl SinghalFounder of the Skip community. Former VP of Product at Meta and CPO at Credit Karma
I like Julie's "what's your biggest problem and how can I help?" question, but timing matters a lot here. Ask it early. Hold back the "I'd love to do more of X" line until you've delivered something visible in the new scope. On the podcast a staff engineer listed promotion, more visibility, and a bigger pie as goals in the first meeting with a new manager. Those are all fair goals. Stating them before shipping anything made him look out of touch the moment his first review came back less than stellar. A reorg puts you in that same position, because your new chain of management has no history with your work.Substack
The other thing I'd do in month one is write down the story this role needs to tell for your next job. A smaller scope can still make a strong chapter if you can describe it in one line, for example "took the core funnel from flat to growing" or "shipped our first AI-native workflow." If you can't find a credible line like that inside the new boundaries, the reorg has already answered your hold-or-fold question, and you should start your search while you still hold the role. Searching from a position of strength gets far better outcomes than searching after the next round of cuts.
Yue ZhaoExecutive coach and author of The Uncommon Executive. Former Chief Product & Technology Officer at Fuzzy
Before you do anything, write down what actually changed. Then write down what didn't.
Joe, a Principal PM client of mine with 15+ years in his space, came to me after a GenAI-driven reorg layered him under a former peer. He felt angry, assumed he'd done something wrong, and started looking at other jobs. When we listed the facts, the picture changed. His new leaders had brought him into the reorg conversation before the announcement. He was one of a few people tapped to shape the new org's strategy. The SVP regularly came to him for his opinion. I read that structure as a temporary fix for a few months, until the strategy settled. Joe was in a good position to define what came next.
news.theuncommonexecutive
So my first move is to look deliberately for the positive signals, because fear makes you notice only the negative ones.
Then act:
✅ Treat your new manager like a new job. Slow down the "work" and put time into the relationship, goals, and alignment.news.theuncommonexecutive
✅ Find out where the investment is moving. Ask your skip level what the priorities are. Get coffee with peers on other teams every 4 to 6 weeks.
✅ Volunteer for the initiatives that are getting funded. Become a thought partner to the leaders running them, so that when the next planning cycle comes, you're the obvious person to move over officially.
news.yuezhao
Expect another reorg. At Thumbtack and at Meta we reorganized every 6 months, and I watched the same pattern play out: people who spent the reorg defending their old scope stayed stuck, and people who were already close to the new priority got the bigger role.news.yuezhao
Bottom line? A smaller scope after a reorg is usually temporary, and you have about 6 months to put yourself next to where the company is spending.
Elena LunevaChief Product & Technology Officer at Madison Reed. Former Chief Product Officer at Braintrust
Nikhyl's "deliver inside the new boundaries" only works if you know which deliverables count, so the first question is whether the scope you lost was the work the business actually cares about. In the Director-to-VP conversation Andrew Capland and I ran with 600 product people, the pattern was blunt: if you aren't on a project that matters to the business, you aren't getting promoted. A reorg often strips out exactly that work, and it can happen quietly.Substack
Here is the sequence I'd run in the first 30 days.
- Clarify and verify with your new boss. Get them to finish this sentence out loud: "Your team wins this quarter when ___." If neither of you can say it, you'll end up in reactive mode and look slow, even though your scope is smaller.
- Audit what's left. For two weeks, write down everything you do. Then sort it into three buckets: Stop (doesn't move the core metric), Systematize (templatize it or hand it to AI), and Stay (high-leverage work you protect). A smaller scope gives you time back, so put that time toward strategy instead of filling it with more execution.
- Translate the remaining scope into dollars. If what's left is platform, quality, or tooling, that work tends to be invisible. Ask why it's hard to quantify. If it's hard because it doesn't matter to the business, move toward a project that does, and do it fast. If it's hard because you haven't connected product metrics to revenue yet, build that connection before your next review.
- Block 1 to 2 hours a week of "CPO time" to work on next quarter's bets and the story you want leadership to hear. If that block keeps getting bumped, raise it with your boss as a role-design problem.
Step 3 is also how you write Nikhyl's one-line story. "Took the core funnel from flat to growing" only lands in a VP interview if it has a revenue or retention number attached. If you can't tie your remaining scope to a business number by the end of the quarter, that's a strong reason to fold.
Nikhyl SinghalFounder of the Skip community. Former VP of Product at Meta and CPO at Credit Karma
Yue's facts list is the right first step. I'd push back a little on "usually temporary," though. Joe had real evidence: he was in the room before the announcement and the SVP kept asking for his view. Many people in a shrunken scope have none of those signals, and in 2026 a lot of big-tech reorgs are permanent flattening, with fewer layers and fewer managers. Those roles don't come back after six months.
So I'd use Yue's list as a test. If your facts look like Joe's, invest in the relationship and move toward the funded work, as she describes. If you're out of the strategy conversations and your skip-level isn't asking for you, assume the smaller scope is permanent and run the growth-rate test I described earlier.
When you volunteer for the funded initiatives, keep your own area's numbers moving first. Taking on side projects while your core scope slips gives leadership a reason to make the next cut.YouTube
Diana StepnerProduct leadership coach. Former VP of Product at SimplePractice and Head of Product, Education at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Nikhyl's test asks whether your facts look like Joe's. Plenty of people can't tell yet, because reorgs leave everyone short on information. You can find out without going to your manager with the hot-seat question. Map who is still moving around in the new structure, then ask them directly so you aren't guessing.
My client Sara had been named a DRI in early planning docs. Then a working session with her SVP got canceled at the last minute, and she started feeling like an outsider in meetings. She came in asking, "Is she trying to leave me out?" We named what she was feeling as an ANT (automatic negative thought). An ANT is convincing because it's built from real past experience, yet it doesn't tell you what's happening now. In her case the SVP was still finalizing her own team.Substack
Here is what we did next.
🎯 Map the players. We listed the SVP, her own boss (a mess), a peer of the SVP who had already said he'd love her on his team, the new CPO, and a contact leaving product, which meant a possible open role.
🎯 Rank the conversations by risk. Going straight to the new CPO was too big a bet while relationships were still forming, so she saved it for their scheduled 1:1. The peer was the safer place to start. She practiced this line: "I really want to lead a core product area. Are there opportunities on your team or elsewhere that you think I should make a case for?" With the departing contact she asked one direct question: is there backfill headcount, and what scope would it have?
🎯 Learn, Build, Return for the meetings you can't avoid. Watch how the new leaders interact with each other. Rehearse how you want to show up. Then contribute ideas without pressing for clarity you won't get that day. When Sara did that, the SVP responded well, and that response counted as evidence too.
These side conversations sit alongside delivering on your core numbers. They don't replace it. For Sara, they turned one ambiguous signal into three real options.Medium
Julie ZhuoCo-founder of Sundial. Author of The Making of a Manager and former VP of Product Design at Facebook
The most useful thing a manager ever told me fits Nikhyl's timing point. Early in my career I showed up to 1:1s week after week with an agenda: list my wins, make the case for more promotions, plum assignments, and power. My manager saw right through it and eventually said, "Focus foremost on making the company successful, and the rest will follow." It sounded like a platitude then. Ten years and thousands of promotion discussions later, I can't think of a better summary of how people actually grow.Medium
A reorg is when that advice is hardest to follow, because your ego is loudest right after you lose something. So I'd change what your 1:1s are about for the first quarter:
- Spend most of each 1:1 on Elena's "your team wins this quarter when ___" and how you're moving it. Leave your own allocation out.
- Give credit away visibly, including to the person who took your old area. People notice who fights for a bigger pie and who fights for a bigger slice.
- Write down what you miss about the old scope, privately. For me it was being in every decision when the team was small. Naming it keeps the loss out of how you show up in meetings.
Apple Podcasts
On Nikhyl's question of whether the smaller scope is temporary or permanent, I'd look at the company as well as your own signals: is it likely to be meaningfully bigger in two years? At Facebook I gave up pieces of my work many times, and the company's 100x growth kept creating more to pick up. If the company is shrinking too, a smaller scope inside it is a much weaker bet, and that pushes you toward Nikhyl's "fold" earlier.Medium
Elena LunevaChief Product & Technology Officer at Madison Reed. Former Chief Product Officer at Braintrust
Nikhyl's permanent-versus-temporary test gets sharper if you map what you have left onto time horizons. I use the Horizons framework with CEOs to sort incoming ideas: Horizon 1 is near-term revenue that customers are already asking for, Horizon 2 is adjacent demand that still needs its GTM risk validated, and Horizon 3 is a bet 18+ months out.Substack
You can apply the same sort to yourself after a reorg.
- If your remaining scope is Horizon 1, it's probably safe and probably permanent. Your job is to keep the numbers moving, which is Nikhyl's point about protecting your core before you take on side projects.
- If the work you lost was Horizon 3 and the person who took it now owns the AI bets, Julie's conversation with the new owner matters most. Leadership is telling you where the future engine will be, and you want to stay close to it.
- If Yue's funded initiatives are Horizon 2, that's usually the best place to volunteer. The demand is real but the GTM is unproven, so someone who can validate it without a big team stands out.
One more thing on the fold side. When a role doesn't come back, the next step doesn't have to be the same full-time job somewhere else. When I gave notice at my CPTO role, I rebuilt my work as a portfolio. Fractional work was about 67% of my 2025, alongside coaching, teaching, and writing. A portfolio is not an easier path, because you give up certainty in exchange for agency. It's still a real option if a flattened org has removed the role you were growing toward.Substack
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