Case Study: Microsoft Lync’s bottom-up restructure

The story
Software is developed at Microsoft through a carefully orchestrated process involving lots of skilled people: the Windows 8 Operating System was reported to involve 35 different development teams of 25-40 people each, for example.

As director of testing for Microsoft Lync, the audio-video conferencing and instant messaging service formerly known as Microsoft Office Communicator, Ross Smith oversees people who are undertaking intense, complex, technical software engineering work. The nature of the job demands that they are smart, but the work itself is not always intrinsically interesting.

The challenge
One of Mr Smith’s challenges is to keep his team of more than 80 people focused and motivated. When Microsoft Lync 2010 was released, he was asked to reorganise his team so that testing of the next-generation product could begin.

Reorganisations in any business tend to be highly disruptive, and often result in good people leaving. So Mr Smith tried an experiment: he would let the team lead the “reorg”. He says: “I have always believed some people want to follow their manager, [and] others want to follow their technology, but for this to work you need to let them choose.” The process became known as “WeOrg”.

The strategy
Rather than ask the four people who reported to him directly to pick their teams, Mr Smith explained that individual staff would select which of the teams they would like to be in. In this process, these 85 or so people became free agents looking for a position that was best for them in one of the four teams. The team leaders would not offer them more money, but they could offer them opportunities to develop their careers, new technologies to work on and new colleagues.

Initially, the software engineers felt it was just “a ‘reorg’ again”. So Mr Smith held a meeting to explain that he wanted team members to feel they were genuinely helping to design the overhaul and that the four managers were serious about accommodating everyone’s choices. The aim was for them to be making decisions, rather than just being allocated a position.

Three factors helped: Mr Smith had in the past introduced initiatives to increase empowerment and collaboration; he had a supportive boss; and, crucially, he was able to promise that there would be no staff cuts because of the changes.

The WeOrg took longer than anticipated, as people really wanted to do the research to find the right fit, and to “interview” their prospective bosses. But the ultimate outcome was that staff found themselves in roles they were happy with, even though they did not all get their ideal position. In a survey after the WeOrg, 95 per cent of the team “liked” or “somewhat liked” the new method.

As well as being highly motivational for the team, the WeOrg gave Mr Smith important feedback on a number of issues: which technologies the employees were more excited about; which products seemed the most promising; and who the team members saw as the best managers.

For their part, the team managers found themselves in the unusual position of having to “pitch” themselves and their team to employees. While awkward at first, they quickly warmed to the value of being able to tell a good story about the work their team would be doing.

The lessons
In most organisations, senior executives design structures and roles that they then allocate to people. It is an efficient process, but it ignores the fact that every individual has their own particular skills and motivations. By shoehorning individuals into predefined roles, senior managers do not get the best chance to let people use their full set of skills, and they risk demotivating and even losing them.

The WeOrg approach turns this logic on its head: first, hire a bunch of really good people, then allow them to self-organise to make full use of their skills.

The process takes longer, but it leads to greater engagement and harnesses the skills of the team far more effectively. It also requires managers and employees to trust one another fully. 

- Financial Times, Jan 21. 2013