Repeated change
Each change forced me to revisit the organization.
I joined with a relatively focused demand generation mandate. Field and partner marketing came into the organization first, followed by Marketing Operations, then web and marketing technology. Enterprise security marketing had been operating separately and later joined the broader organization. Near the end, I also carried Corporate Events for a brief period.
The Micro Focus integration added another demand organization and new capabilities. We expanded ABM and introduced lifecycle marketing, drawing on practices that were already working well within Micro Focus.
There were at least eight meaningful changes in scope during that period.
Each one forced me to revisit the organization.
Who should own what? Which capabilities belonged together? What needed a formal reporting relationship? Where could a matrix work? Which decisions should be centralized, and which needed to stay closer to a business, region, or customer?
By May 2025, the organization had evolved into three broad pillars spanning Marketing Technology and Operations, Corporate Demand and Web, and Field Marketing, with both formal and matrix leadership connecting the pieces.
Beyond the boxes
People have to feel part of the organization.
But I learned that an organization does not become integrated because the boxes eventually make sense on a slide.
People have to feel part of it.
That became particularly clear during the different reorganizations and the Micro Focus integration. Formal inclusion in the management team mattered deeply to some leaders. It gave them a sense of voice, access, and belonging. Other leaders were comfortable operating through dotted-line relationships as long as expectations were clear and they were part of the right decisions.
I had to learn the difference.
The structural answer could not simply be, “This is the most efficient org chart.” I needed to understand how people actually experienced the organization we were building.
A different management rhythm
Create regular ways for people to be heard.
That changed my management rhythm too.
I held Fireside Chats every other week with the broader organization, sometimes with as many as 100 people joining from around the world. Once a month, I held an evening session so colleagues in other time zones had a forum that worked for them. My one rule was that we did not record the calls. That gave people more freedom to participate honestly. We shared recaps afterward and also published a monthly internal newsletter.
I usually opened with a 30-second update about my family, a recent trip, or a personal goal. I wanted people to know me beyond my role because personal connection changes the dynamic. I never expected everyone to share in the same way. Some leaders were comfortable doing it and others were not. People could participate at their own comfort level without judgment.
We also gave people a way to provide anonymous feedback. My chief of staff, executive assistant, and I made sure people knew what we had heard, what we could act on, and where we could not make a change. The improvements were sometimes small, but making them consistently demonstrated follow-through and commitment.
Monthly and quarterly sub-team meetings created more room for teams to share what they were working on, learn from one another, and simply ask questions. Rose, Thorn, Bud served a different purpose. I used it occasionally as a way for leadership team members to connect as people and talk about something outside work. It was never the meeting itself or a substitute for the operating agenda.
When the broader company survey was delayed, we ran our own departmental survey because I did not want to wait to hear what people were experiencing. We used the feedback to shape actions and recognition.
My chief of staff and executive assistant also helped create moments of fun and recognition throughout the year. Our virtual fun days randomized people into teams so they could meet colleagues outside their usual groups. Some activities included friendly competition and swag for the winning teams. We held semiannual in-person leadership sessions, including one in London, and I visited locations where we had clusters of team members.
We also brought people together for panels and conversations that went beyond the immediate work. For International Women's Day, I invited a former IBM leader to speak with the OpenText team about her career as a woman in technology. It was not a pipeline discussion or an organizational design exercise. It was a chance for people to learn from someone else's experience and think about their own.
Accountability and connection
The human practices helped make accountability easier to sustain.
Those things did not replace accountability. They made accountability easier to sustain.
As the organization matured, we continued changing the formal structure. By late 2025, responsibilities across campaigns, agile marketing, ABM, strategic accounts, web, and paid media had become more integrated, and leaders took on broader roles as the model evolved.
I cannot attach an engagement percentage or retention number to the management practices I used, and I would not try to. What I can say is that they became an important part of how I led through repeated change.
Two layers of organization design
Build the structure people can actually operate inside.
The lesson for me was that organization design has two layers.
The first is structural. Align the work, clarify ownership, create sensible decision rights, connect the data, and establish a cadence that lets different functions operate together.
The second is human. People need context. They need to know where they fit. Leaders need real ownership. Teams need ways to speak honestly about what is working and what is not. Sometimes someone needs the formal seat at the table because the seat itself matters.
By the end, I was much less interested in drawing the theoretically perfect organization.
I was trying to build an organization people could actually operate inside.
That meant changing the structure when the business changed, using matrix relationships when they worked, formalizing relationships when they mattered, developing leaders as their scope grew, and creating enough connection that a collection of functions could begin to behave like one team.
An org chart can tell people where they report.
Leadership has to give them a reason to feel that they belong there.