Flattened Org: Build a Promotion Case for Merged Scope

The org chart is the new promotion rubric

When a company flattens layers and merges teams, the old promotion story stops working. You may still be excellent at the old subspecialty, but the committee is now judging the new scope. Canva offers a useful warning: its restructure will affect 1,271 employees, equal to 22% of its workforce.

Canva's chief executive told staff about the changes on November 4. The chief executive is scheduled to speak to employees at a company-wide meeting on November 10. Canva is folding Product, Growth, and Platform into one product organization while narrowing subspecialties and merging overlapping layers. That is the kind of move that makes a promotion case either stronger or thinner.

Flattening management layers changes what evidence means. In flatter structures, people with strong soft skills tend to outperform those with the deepest technical expertise. Removing hierarchical status from job and pay grades can also make career pathways less transparent. So the case has to make the new scope clear to the committee.

The human part is real. A reorg can make your work feel invisible, especially when the title, team name, and reporting line all shift at once. The promotion case is where you make the work visible again, but it has to match the new scope.

Lululemon put store-level teams in charge of results under a decentralized structure, so their success depended on their own performance. A former Lululemon CEO described the company's hierarchy as flatter than most organizations. When layers disappear, the case needs evidence from the merged scope, not just the old specialty.

The checklist makes the case credible

Keep this checklist in a doc you can update as the merged team settles. Treat each item as a check, not a performance review. Fix any failing item before you send the case.

• Map the merged scope. Write the combined team's main outcomes and circle the ones your work touches. Name them, or the case stays about the old team.
• Collect ownership evidence. Attach artifacts that show you decided, shipped, or unblocked work across the merged scope. A decision log, a shipped change, or a risk you closed all count.
• Name stakeholders. List the people outside your old team who relied on you after the merge. Their names make the scope real to a committee that may not know the org by heart.
• Match level criteria. Mark each level criterion with a current example from the merged scope, not the old subspecialty. If a criterion only has old-team proof, treat it as a gap.
• State the ask. State the next level and the scope you are asking to own. A vague ask invites a vague answer.

The first three items are where most cases fail. A merged scope is easy to describe in a deck and hard to prove in a file. If your evidence is still organized by old team, the committee will read it that way. Put the new outcomes at the top, then attach the artifacts that show you moved them.

Ownership is the difference between influence and responsibility. A promotion case that says you helped is weaker than a case that says you owned the decision, the delivery, or the risk. The artifacts do the talking, but only if they point to the merged scope.

Level criteria are the committee's language. Use them to check whether your examples show the kind of operation the target level expects. If the proof is still from the old team, say what you will do before the next review.

The ask should name the merged scope

Before you send the case, read it as if you are the committee. Does it prove you can own the merged scope? Does it show the work after the org chart changed, not before? A no answer means the case is still about the old scope.

Flatter structures can make career paths less obvious. Career progression is a top priority for 91% of Millennials when they look for a new job. That pressure is real, but the strongest move is usually to make the current case credible first. A weak case lets the reorg become an excuse to leave. A strong case turns the reorg into proof.

Canva has not disclosed how many affected employees will leave. That uncertainty is part of the human cost. A promotion case cannot fix the org, but it can make your place in it clear. Build it around the merged scope, and make the evidence easy to follow.