But there's also a danger: if the only tool leadership can think of to affect how things get done is to redraw the org chart, you get management-through-reverse-Conway.

There are other ways to tell people how to behave than shifting their reporting lines, but some leaders haven't heard of them.

Yeah, completely agreed.

I actually like the strategy outlined in the OP (Absorb and Split). When this has happened, it's always lead to a much better outcome than when you start splitting and creating teams prematurely.

I haven’t gotten to use it much, but it does seem to work for network services as well. But then it’s a fine line between reverse Conway and Gandhi (be the change).

You can stand up a sane thing that you enjoy interacting with and then maneuver to have the org and systems match that new structure.

IMO you should always engineer the organization chart before the architecture. If a major goal is to sell ads, that should reflect in both org and tech.

I love the idea of the reverse Conway maneuver. Thanks for that. Obvious in hindsight.