Removal of responsibility - collateral damage?

[willandkate]

I enjoy my job and have had a good couple of years where I've built my team and delivered really successful projects and generally made good progress for the business. We've taken on extra responsibility and proved ourselves really capable of this.

Alongside my team are more operational functions who have had a more rocky time with changes of management. These functions are now in a stronger position and now want to take on or take back the responsibility that they feel should fall with their remit and they should be the decision maker on.

My problem is that I've structured (recruited), motivated and driven my team to have these responsibilities. It hasn't been easy and we've all worked really hard. It now seems unfair and really a bit of a slap in the face to say 'thanks for sorting that out/building that while we couldn't, we'll have it back now'. This has never been communicated by senior management as the long term plan, it's something that's been raised/demanded by one of the function managers and my feeling is that senior managers are so desperate to make it work after the instability of recent months/years that we'll be seen as collateral damage.

Any advice would be welcome, thank you.

If your team is giving up significant responsibilities to different departments, I presume it would only happen if there is consensus with the impacted people and depts, wither gaining or losing the activities.

If so, the next steps need to be an impact analysis of what the change is, which staff would gain or lose the work, and for management to I've it there seal of approval.

Ultimately if it benefits the business to relinquish the responsibility to a longer term solution, and redistribute the work to where it should be, could it make you look bad to refuse to change, just because your team got things shaped up?

Whether gaining or losing, that should say

That's much too emotive a way of looking at it. What's best for the business? If these extra responsibilities were temporary you should have framed them as such.

Get back to your core remit and look for other ways your team can contribute, or recommend that they follow the opportunity to the other teams.

Thanks a lot guys, your thoughts have really helped me think about it. Going to discuss some proactive options with my boss tomorrow. Thanks again.