During a reorganization, a leader proposes moving work they do not want, often low-margin or risky, to a rival department where it plausibly fits, and lets the receiving side argue over its cost.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
During a regional builder's realignment around project size, the head of the large-commercial division wanted warranty callbacks and small projects off his books; they ate superintendent time and dragged down his margins. He proposed moving all projects under two million dollars, with their warranty files, to the special-projects group, whose head was his main rival for the chief operating officer job. The memo argued the scale fit, which was true, and listed the open warranty files and the hours his superintendents had logged on them. The special-projects head read the numbers and asked for four people to come with the work. The chief executive split the difference: two people and a year to clear the backlog. The large-commercial division's margins rose the next quarter.
Why it works
Approving the move looks easy because the reorganization makes it housekeeping, and a sound fit argument gives decision-makers a reason to sign. Leaving the current split looks worse once it is described as a mismatch of scale or skill, and the rival's own goals get costlier to reach, since a fixed headcount and budget now cover the mandate and the inherited work unless resources move with it. It works when the proposer shapes the reorganization story, senior leaders do not track second-order capacity effects, and the rival has no veto over what enters the portfolio.
The thinking behind it
George A. Akerlof The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism (1970) shows that when one side knows the quality of what it hands over and the other cannot tell, the informed side sets the terms. A unit shedding work knows its true volume and risk, while the receiving unit and the decision-makers often do not. Putting the volume in the proposal is what keeps the move clean, and pricing it is the receiver's defense.
Oliver E. Williamson Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (1975) assumes bounded rationality, so agreements are always incomplete, and opportunism, which Williamson later described as including incomplete or distorted disclosure. Reorganization memos are incomplete agreements about who does what. Capacity estimates, refusal rights, and a six-month look-back are the safeguards organizations build against a proposer who discloses less than they know.
When it fits
Its natural home is a reorganization already under way, when you hold a seat in the redesign and some of your work fits another unit at least as well. You need a fit argument that is true on its merits and the willingness to put the work's full volume on the table.
How to use it well
Make the fit argument first: the scale, skills, customers, or systems that make the work belong elsewhere.
- Put the volume on paper in the proposal itself: the open items, the hours, and the risks you know of.
- Let the receiving unit price it and ask for resources. Expect them to.
- Propose the move inside the wider redesign, where it is one decision among many.
- Settle what moves with the work before the reorganization is announced.
Concede people or budget where the receiving side's case is sound. You still shed the work, and the move survives the review six months later.
What it costs and where it backfires
Your rival will remember, and if the inherited work drags their results, the next review may ask who sent it. Your own record with the work is visible to anyone who checks, and if finance prices the capacity hit, you may have to give up people or budget. The line is crossed when the volume or risk of the work is understated, or when the point of the move is to make the rival miss their goals; that is concealment, and setting someone up to fail.
When it is used on you
Price it before approval when a reorganization moves another unit's least desirable work to you with no headcount attached. Ask finance for the hours and people it takes today, ask for resources to move with it or for the right to refuse, and report inherited work separately so your results are judged on your own mandate.