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Here's an uncomfortable truth: your track record of delivering excellent services may count for remarkably little when reorganisation comes knocking.Harvey Coleman's PIE Model suggests that performance accounts for just 10% of what drives career advancement. Image, how you're perceived professionally, contributes 30%. And exposure, your visibility to decision-makers, accounts for 60%.For council officers facing devolution deals, unitary reorganisations, and structural reform, those percentages deserve serious attention.The reorganisation paradoxMost officers respond to the prospect of reorganisation instinctively: they put their heads down and work harder. They deliver more, manage tighter budgets, and hit more targets. They assume that when the music stops, the strongest performers will find a chair.The evidence suggests otherwise. When shadow authorities are formed and senior appointments panels convened, the officers who succeed are those already known to the decision-makers in the room – not ‘known about', known ‘to'. During radical structural change, people assembling new leadership teams work at pace and with imperfect information. They reach for names they recognise, faces they've seen at cross-authority boards and voices that have articulated a vision beyond a single organisation's boundaries. Performance isn't what you think it is Performance still matters, but what counts as high performance shifts during reorganisation. Running a well-managed service is necessary but insufficient. The officers who position themselves well can evidence transferable leadership in transformation: projects delivered at scale, service redesigns that work across a larger footprint, innovation that would be attractive in a new structure rather than simply maintaining business as usual. The right question isn't ‘how do I keep doing what I'm doing, but better?' It's ‘how do I demonstrate that what I do is exactly what the new organisation will need?'The image question nobody wants to ask Image during reorganisation comes down to a simple question: in a merger, would you be seen as an asset or a liability? Breaking down that question, are you perceived as someone who leads transformation or someone who manages competently? Are you known for working across boundaries or for defending your patch? If a new chief executive arrives to lead the successor authority, will your reputation precede you, or will you be invisible? Building the right image means being seen as change-capable, collaborative, strategic, and resilient. Officers who actively cultivate this perception through the projects they take on, the networks they join and the conversations they shape are making a strategic investment in their future.Exposure: the 60% most officers ignoreIf exposure is decisive at the best of times, it becomes even more so during reorganisation. The power map is being redrawn. Tomorrow's decision-makers may be people you have never met, in authorities you have never visited. This demands a deliberate approach to visibility. Officers should be mapping relationships across the emerging landscape: combined authority leadership, shadow authority boards, cross-authority working groups and sub-regional partnerships. It should not be ‘who do I know?' but ‘who will be making decisions about senior appointments in 12 to 24 months and do they know me?' Practically, this means volunteering for cross-authority project teams, requesting a seat at transition boards, attending combined authority networks, presenting to joint committees and engaging with sector bodies like the Local Government Association and Solace. It means contributing thought leadership, writing and speaking about reform, which puts your name in front of the people who matter.Act for every scenarioReform is unpredictable. It may proceed as planned, be delayed, take a different shape, or bypass your authority entirely. The smartest strategies are those that work across multiple scenarios. Building a cross-authority network is valuable regardless of what happens. Demonstrating transformational leadership serves you in any structure. A reputation as someone adaptable, collaborative, and place-focused is an asset in every possible future. The officers who thrive through reorganisation are not those who wait to see what happens. They recognise that their career won't reorganise itself and they start building visibility now, before the structures are set and the appointments are made.Nathan Elvery is the founder of Imagine Public Services and provides executive coaching and mentoring to local government leadersnathan.elvery@imaginepublicservices.co.uk

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LEADERSHIP

Your career won't reorganise itself

By Nathan Elvery | 01 July 2026

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