Several changes due for one department are scheduled to land together, so the disruption happens once and the department's leaders spend their attention on execution, with little left for contesting each change.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Three changes were queued for the estimating group at an engineering services firm: a reorganization into two teams, the move of all cost data to the firm's new enterprise system, and a 12 percent budget reduction agreed in the annual plan. The group had resisted each idea separately for a year, and the next stage of a pricing policy it opposed was due in the spring. The chief operating officer scheduled all three for the first quarter, assigned an integration manager and two contract data analysts to the group for the duration, and told the director in December exactly what was coming and why the timing was combined. The quarter was rough. The director spent it on reporting lines and data loads, the pricing policy passed in week ten, and by the second quarter the group was running on the new system with its margins tracked weekly.
Why it works
Landing several changes together makes compliance easier, because going along with any one of them costs little against the total load and execution becomes the department's main job. It makes resistance look worse, since opposing three defensible changes at once reads as opposing change in general. And resistance gets costlier, because it needs senior attention that the changes are consuming. It works best where the department has thin senior leadership, each change is independently defensible, and peers are not similarly loaded. It fails when the department has someone whose role is to carry its objections, or when one change is plainly unreasonable.
The thinking behind it
Herbert A. Simon In Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World (1971), Simon argues that what information consumes is the attention of its recipients, so attention is the scarce resource. Three simultaneous changes consume a department's senior attention, and opposing a contested decision needs the same attention. Combining the changes reduces resistance for that reason, and adding capacity while keeping the contested decision on its own track is what keeps the move fair.
Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) describes System 2 as slow and effortful and argues that people under overload tend to accept the intuitive answer. A director absorbed in reporting lines and data loads has little System 2 left for the pricing policy. Announcing the schedule early, and assigning one person to think about the contested decision while others run the changes, respects that limit.
When it fits
Changes aimed at one department that are each justified and would otherwise drag across several quarters suit this. You need authority over the schedule, the resources to support the department through the load, and confidence that each change would survive scrutiny on its own.
How to use it well
Check each change on its own merits first. If any one would not survive scrutiny alone, take it out.
- Schedule them together and say so, with the reasons for combining them.
- Tell the department's leader early, before the quarter begins.
- Add capacity for the period: an integration manager, contract help, relief from other deadlines.
- Watch operating results weekly, and slow down if service or safety starts to slip.
Keep any contested decision on its normal track, with its own hearing, so nobody can say it passed only because the department was buried.
What it costs and where it backfires
Department leaders will feel ambushed even when you warned them, and some of the best people may leave during the load. If results slip badly, the disruption becomes your problem in front of the board. No deception is needed while the timing is stated and the department is resourced to cope. Loading a department past its capacity on purpose so that it fails, or denying that the convergence was planned, sets people up to fail and turns a scheduling choice into something nobody forgives.
When it is used on you
Request a staggered schedule in writing when several changes converge on your department, and ask why the timing was combined. Name one person to track the contested decision while others run the changes, and answer each change separately, accepting what is reasonable and contesting what is not.