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Council: Restructuring / organizational change

When to invoke

Invoke this council for any decision that materially changes who works where, how, or for how much. Includes:

  • Reductions in force (layoffs)
  • Reorganizations (reporting-line changes affecting 10%+ of headcount)
  • Return-to-office or remote-policy changes
  • Compensation framework overhauls
  • Senior leadership replacements
  • Change-of-control implications on equity vesting
boardroom council restructuring: [decision]

Composition

The default 7-role council, with CHRO designated as lead voice for this class of decision via aggregator context:

  • CHRO — lead role on this council; regretted attrition, top-performer retention, cultural runway, compensation precedent, manager-effectiveness gap
  • CEO — strategic narrative, board interface, decision communication
  • CFO — financial impact (severance, replacement, productivity dip), real-estate cost, scenario analysis
  • COO — operational disruption during transition, manager training, capacity planning
  • CTO — function-specific attrition risk in engineering (typically 1.5-2x company average)
  • General Counsel — employment-law process, accommodation framework, WARN Act considerations, disparate-impact risk
  • Board Chair ⚔ — board-pressure detection, comparison-case modeling, structural-bias check

Context for the aggregator

This is a restructuring council. Pay particular attention to:

  • Top-performer retention — segmented by function, tenure, and performance rating; named individuals where possible
  • Cultural runway — how many structural changes the organization has absorbed in the prior 12-18 months; adaptive capacity has limits
  • Compensation precedent — every package decision (severance, retention, relocation) sets a template the company will be answering to in future cycles
  • Manager capability — managers untrained for the new structure default to inequity, producing a second wave of attrition in months 6-12
  • Process exposure — accommodation framework, selection criteria documentation, appeal paths must exist before announcement, not after
  • Comparison cases — restructuring decisions are often presented as binary; the actual decision space typically has 3-5 options the team has not modeled symmetrically

What the synthesis should always answer

  1. What's the regretted-attrition risk segmented by performance, tenure, function, and location (not as a uniform percentage)?
  2. Is the timeline operationally adequate for accommodation framework + manager training + capacity preparation?
  3. What's the compensation precedent being set, and is it consistent with prior decisions and intended future moves?
  4. Is the cultural-runway condition met (this is not the Nth change in M months where N is too high)?
  5. Have we modeled the alternative options, or are we evaluating a binary that excludes the better designs?

Worked example

See examples/04-rto-policy-decision.md for a complete worked example of this council in action — a return-to-office mandate decision under board pressure.