Five Managerial Fallacies Concerning Layoffs

Posted on September 28, 2009  Comments (2)

The Top Five Managerial Fallacies Concerning Layoff Survivors by David Noer, author of Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations.

The overwhelming consensus of downsizing research is that layoffs do not achieve their going in productivity goals. Survivors of most organizations are angry, depressed, anxious and fearful. They are not able or willing to take risks or focus on increasing customer service. At the very time organizations need them to be the most creative and energetic; they hunker down in the trenches, absorbed in their own toxic survivor symptoms.
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Leadership in the post-layoff environment is a helping, not a controlling relationship, and requires reaching out, not closing down and hiding behind a facade of toughness and control. Organizations that have successfully helped employees rebound from the trauma of layoffs have required their managers to learn and apply basic helping skills.

Read the full post, for more good points by David Noer. Obviously when managements failures result in layoffs it is a huge blow to respect for people. It is very challenging to maintain lean thinking or Deming based improvement efforts when layoffs are needed. And if that failure isn’t addressed and explained and details provided on why the leadership failed and what is being done to fix those problems with the management system, the challenges grow.

I am very disappointed in management that resorts to layoffs as the easy solution to their failed leadership. Most of the time layoffs are an indication management does not respect people in any way, no matter what they say. Now, I do believe, it is possible that a company has been failed by past leadership and gotten into a position where layoffs are the right choice, but most companies choose layoffs as just another MBA spreadsheet “management” exercise and those companies pay a heavy price for such poor management.

Related: posts on layoffs and reducing staff – Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year – Creating Jobs

2 Responses to “Five Managerial Fallacies Concerning Layoffs”

  1. Traditional MBA: Out-of-Date, Out-of-Touch, Out-of-Paradigm | Corpus Optima
    October 15th, 2009 @ 5:58 pm

    “here is good reason to be concerned about the message we are communicating to the younger students in the MBA program, especially when it comes to the REAL costs/ consequences of lay-off’s and job-elimination for the promise of greater effeciency. Someone always has to pay, and effectiveness (especially long-term) does not logically or naturally follow efficiency…”

  2. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Undercover Boss – Will They Really Change?
    January 11th, 2010 @ 8:44 pm

    [...] practice disrespect for people not respect for people. If it actually gets a few MBAs to stop managing by spreadsheet and start actually managing with an understanding the business systems they manage that would be [...]

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