Reorganised five weeks out

A new structure takes its date from the fiscal year. So it lands in January.

Which in this region means it lands about five weeks before the biggest trading month of the year, because Ramadan is expected around the middle of February and the plan for it was written in November by people who were sitting in a different structure at the time.

The pattern is always the same. A brand lead now covers two categories instead of one. A market that reported into Dubai reports into a regional hub, or the other way round. Someone good has a new title, a new manager and a first one-to-one in the diary. And the Ramadan plan, the only document in the building with a hard external deadline, now has an owner who did not write it and an author who no longer owns it.

Nobody decided that. It is what the default does. A reorganisation is designed against next year's ambition and executed against this month's calendar, and the calendar was never in the room.

What follows is not sabotage. It is worse, because it is reasonable. The new owner reads the plan, finds the parts they would have done differently, and starts improving it in week two of a six-week runway. The author, who knows why the difficult trade-off was made in November, is being helpful in somebody else's meeting. Reasoning does not transfer with a file.

The plans I have seen survive a January like this are the ones that named their owner inside the plan, in writing, next to the reason each hard choice was made.

An org chart is at its newest exactly when the market needs it to be at its oldest.