Reorg Survival
What I’ve learned about building career resilience during organizational change—and what I’m still figuring out.
⏱️ Read time: 6 minutes
⚡ KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Build resilience proactively, not reactively. The best time to prepare is when you’re not in crisis mode.
- Document your impact continuously. Keep a running record so you can articulate your value when it matters.
- Quality work needs to be visible. Strategic positioning—making sure the right people know about your contributions—matters alongside performance.
My Experience with Organizational Change
Over the past three years, I’ve been through four organizational restructurings. Each one taught me something about how to navigate uncertainty and build career resilience.
I’m not sharing this as someone who has it all figured out. These are just the patterns I’ve noticed and the practices that have helped me. Your experience might be different, and I’d genuinely value hearing what’s worked (or hasn’t worked) for you.
The biggest thing I learned: In times of organizational change, doing solid work matters—but so does making sure that work is visible to the people making decisions.
Here’s what I’ve been learning about building the kind of career resilience that helps you navigate whatever changes come your way.
Why Organizational Change Feels Constant
If you’re a pharma director, you’ve probably noticed that organizational change isn’t a one-time event anymore. It’s become an ongoing reality.
The industry is dealing with multiple pressures simultaneously: M&A activity, patent cliffs, pipeline uncertainties, AI/digital transformation, and pricing reforms. Each of these creates waves of organizational adjustment.
What I’ve come to realize: Instead of asking “Will there be another reorg?” a more useful question might be “Am I building the kind of career resilience that helps me navigate ongoing change?”
Building Resilience Proactively
Looking back, I wish I’d understood this earlier: The best time to build career resilience is when you’re not facing immediate uncertainty. This isn’t about being paranoid—it’s about developing habits that make you valuable regardless of what changes.
💡 What I Learned: Keep a Running Record of Your Impact
One of my biggest mistakes was waiting until I needed it to document what I’d accomplished. When things got uncertain, I scrambled to remember projects and results from months earlier. The stress made it even harder to think clearly.
What I do differently now: I keep an ongoing impact document that I update quarterly. It takes maybe 30 minutes every three months, but it’s become my most valuable career tool.
What I track: Each major project, quantified results (revenue impact, cost savings, time saved, patient outcomes), and how it connected to organizational priorities. I save it outside work systems so I have it regardless of what happens.
💡 What I Learned: Make Your Good Work Visible
This one was hard for me to accept because it felt like “office politics.” But I’ve learned there’s a difference between self-promotion and strategic communication.
During organizational changes, decisions often get made by people who don’t see your day-to-day work. If they don’t know what you’re contributing, even excellent work can become invisible when decisions are being made.
What helps: Thoughtfully sharing progress on key projects with stakeholders who care about them. Brief updates (3-5 bullets) to your skip-level on major milestones. Volunteering to present results when there’s an opportunity. It’s not about being loud—it’s about making sure your contributions are known.
💡 What I Learned: Build Relationships Beyond Your Direct Manager
During one restructuring, I realized that decisions about my area were being made two levels above my manager. My manager advocated for the team, but they weren’t in the room where final decisions happened.
That’s when I understood: having a good relationship with your direct manager is important, but it might not be enough during major organizational changes.
What I try to do now: Build genuine relationships with my skip-level and with leaders in adjacent functions. Not transactional networking, but real connections based on working together well. When changes happen, you want people at the decision-making table who know your work and value your contributions.
💡 What I Learned: Position Yourself on Strategic Work
I noticed something during these restructurings: people working on projects clearly tied to organizational priorities seemed to have better outcomes. It wasn’t always the case, but it was a pattern.
This doesn’t mean abandoning your current responsibilities. It means looking for opportunities to contribute to work that leadership cares deeply about.
Practical steps: Understand your organization’s top strategic priorities (check earnings calls, leadership communications). Volunteer for stretch assignments on high-visibility initiatives. Look for ways to connect your existing work to those priorities. Stay curious and ask for opportunities to learn and contribute beyond your current scope.
A Practical Framework for Building Resilience
Based on what I’ve learned (often the hard way), here are practices I now try to follow consistently—not just when I hear change is coming:
Practice 1: Build Ongoing Alignment with Your Manager
⚠️ CRITICAL INSIGHT: Documenting your impact means nothing if your manager isn’t already convinced of your value. The real work is building ongoing alignment and getting continuous feedback.
What to do consistently:
- Schedule regular check-ins: Weekly or bi-weekly 1-on-1s with your manager. Don’t wait for them to schedule—you drive the cadence.
- Share progress proactively: Update them on what you’re working on, what’s going well, where you need help. Don’t let them hear about your work secondhand.
- Ask for feedback explicitly: “How am I doing on this project?” “What could I be doing better?” “Is this aligned with your priorities?” Make it easy for them to tell you if you’re off track.
- Course-correct quickly: When you get feedback, act on it visibly. Show that you listen and adjust.
- Understand their pressures: What are they being measured on? What keeps them up at night? How can your work make their life easier or make them look good to their leadership?
- Get peer feedback too: Ask cross-functional partners and team members for feedback on your collaboration, communication, and impact. This gives you a fuller picture.
Why this is foundational: If your manager doesn’t already know and value your contributions when organizational changes happen, showing them a document won’t help. The relationship and their conviction about your value must already exist.
Documentation is for you to remember and articulate your value. But your manager’s belief in your value is built through consistent, proactive communication and delivering on what matters to them.
Practice 2: Maintain Your Impact Record (For Yourself)
What to do quarterly:
- Document completed projects: Write down what you accomplished with specific, quantified results where possible (revenue, cost savings, time saved, quality improvements, patient outcomes).
- Note strategic connections: How did each project connect to company priorities? What problem did it solve?
- Capture your unique contributions: What expertise, relationships, or knowledge do you bring that would take time to replace?
- Save it externally: Keep this in your personal email or cloud storage, not just work systems.
Why this matters: This is YOUR tool for remembering and articulating your value—for interviews, promotion discussions, or updating your resume. But remember: the document itself doesn’t convince your manager. The ongoing relationship and their direct observation of your work does.
Practice 3: Build Authentic Relationships
Relationship-building practices:
- Know your skip-level: Schedule regular check-ins (quarterly works) to get their perspective on strategy, ask for career advice, or discuss your work.
- Connect cross-functionally: Build relationships with leaders in adjacent functions whose work intersects with yours.
- Find mentors and sponsors: Seek out senior people who can advise you and potentially advocate for you when opportunities arise.
- Network authentically: Focus on building genuine connections, not transactional relationships. Help others when you can. People remember who was generous before they needed something.
Practice 4: Connect Your Work to Strategic Priorities
How to position yourself strategically:
- Understand organizational priorities: What are the top strategic goals? Listen to earnings calls, leadership communications, town halls.
- Connect your work: How does what you’re doing support those priorities? Make those connections explicit when you talk about your work.
- Volunteer for strategic projects: Look for opportunities to contribute to initiatives leadership cares deeply about.
- Develop valuable expertise: Build deep knowledge in areas that matter to your organization’s success.
- Tie to business outcomes: Whenever possible, connect your projects to measurable business results—revenue, pipeline, cost savings, patient outcomes.
What I think about: If organizational changes happen, would removing me create real problems for work that matters? If the answer is “probably not,” that’s a sign I need to adjust where I’m investing my time.
Patterns I’ve Observed (With Humility)
Through these experiences, I’ve noticed some patterns—though I want to be careful about drawing firm conclusions. Every situation is different, and there are always factors we can’t see or control.
What Seemed to Help:
- Being able to quickly articulate quantified business impact
- Having visibility with decision-makers beyond your direct manager
- Working on projects clearly connected to organizational priorities
- Bringing expertise that would be difficult or time-consuming to replace
- Having strong relationships across functions
- Recent wins on high-visibility initiatives
- Being essential to ongoing critical work
Important caveat: Sometimes organizational changes are driven by factors completely outside individual control—portfolio decisions, therapeutic area exits, functional consolidations, geography-based reductions.
Even with perfect positioning, you can still be impacted. That’s not a reflection of your value—it’s a business reality. What we can control is building the kind of resilience that gives us the best chance in uncertain situations.
If Organizational Changes Impact You
Sometimes, despite everything you do, organizational changes result in your role being impacted. This is often about business decisions—portfolio shifts, M&A integrations, functional reorganizations—not about your performance or value.
What I’d Focus On (Based on What I’ve Learned):
- Negotiate thoughtfully: Severance packages, extended benefits, outplacement services—these are often negotiable if you approach the conversation professionally.
- Secure references quickly: Get LinkedIn recommendations from your manager and key colleagues while relationships are current.
- Use your impact document: You already have your accomplishments documented and quantified for interviews.
- Activate your network: Reach out to senior connections who know your work. Many director-level roles are filled through referrals.
- Maintain professionalism: How you handle the transition matters. Pharma is a small industry, and people remember.
Being impacted by organizational change doesn’t mean you failed. It means the business changed. What matters is how you navigate what comes next. The interview mastery framework can help →
My Continuing Journey
I don’t have all the answers, and I’m still learning. But what I’m increasingly convinced of: building career resilience is an ongoing practice, not a crisis response. The best time to start is today, regardless of whether change feels imminent.
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