786: The Problem with Reorgs and How to Do Better, with Phil Le-Brun
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Phil Le-Brun: The Octopus Organization
Phil Le-Brun is an executive in residence at Amazon Web Services and a former corporate VP and international CIO at the McDonald’s Corporation. He is a sought-after speaker and has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. He is the co-author with Jana Werner of The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation (Amazon, Bookshop)*.
Most of us have gone through some version of a reorg. A lot of leaders have also implemented their own reorgs. Sometimes they work. Many times, they don’t. In this conversation, Phil and I discuss what goes wrong with reorgs and how we can do better.
Key Points
- Organizations traditionally looked like the tin man from The Wizard of Oz: perfectly planned, many interchangeable parts, not flexible.
- An octopus organization adapts, works independently to serve the larger whole, and is innately curious.
- A reorg that starts with an org chart misses the complex organic connections you are unlikely to fully understand.
- Prioritize structural stability while building internal flexibility.
- Nurture the complex informal human networks that deliver value.
- Be honest about objectives and communicate a reorg early.
- Engage people by starting with smaller-scale change. Clarify the problem to be solved instead of the structural “answer.”
Resources Mentioned
- The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation by Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner (Amazon, Bookshop)*
Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes
- How to Get the Ideal Team Player, with Patrick Lencioni (episode 301)
- How to Approach a Reorg, with Claire Hughes Johnson (episode 621)
- How to Help Employees Handle Tough Moments, with Anthony Klotz (episode 777)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Most of us have gone through some version of a reorg. A lot of leaders have also implemented |
| 0:05.7 | their own reorgs. Sometimes they work. Many times they don't. In this episode, what goes wrong |
| 0:12.8 | with reorgs and how we can do better? This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 786. Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. |
| 0:28.4 | Greetings to you from Orange County, California. |
| 0:31.5 | This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahoviac. |
| 0:36.1 | Leaders aren't born. |
| 0:39.9 | They're made. And this weekly show helps leaders thrive at key inflection points. An inflection point that comes up all the time in |
| 0:44.6 | organizations is the reorg. So many of us have been through reorgs. We have led them. We have been |
| 0:49.8 | part of them. We have had them done to us many, many times. And the reorg is one of those things that |
| 0:56.3 | we love to hate. Some organizations do it really well. Some organizations not so much. And yet, |
| 1:01.4 | we don't often think about the big picture behind reorgs today, what tends to go wrong, |
| 1:07.2 | and also how we can do just a bit better. I'm so pleased to welcome Phil LeBron to the show. |
| 1:13.1 | He's an executive in residence at Amazon Web Services and a former corporate VP and international |
| 1:18.3 | CIO at the McDonald's Corporation. He is a sought-after speaker and has been featured in the Harvard |
| 1:23.1 | Business Review, Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. He is the co-author, along with Yanna Werner, |
| 1:28.8 | of the Octopus Organization, a Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation. |
| 1:35.4 | Hi, Phil. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Dave. |
| 1:39.1 | We're going to start with the Wizard of Oz, because where else would we start? And there's a |
| 1:43.7 | beautiful analogy you make in, you and Yana making the Wizard of Oz, because where else would we start? And there's a beautiful analogy you |
| 1:45.4 | make, and you and Yana making the book of the Tin Man versus the Octopus, which of course is the |
| 1:52.5 | title of the book. I'm wondering if you could, could you share your thinking behind that distinction |
| 1:59.2 | and why those two very, very different characters |
... |
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