Healing the Wounds

What to do when reality destroys your plans

The world seems like it’s falling apart. You thought you were on solid ground but then suddenly it shifted, putting your organization’s future at risk. Layoffs have been announced and everyone is scared. It’s hard to focus on getting work done but that’s all you can do to keep from going crazy. You can’t control the situation. The factors that upset the economy are beyond your control. You can only deal with what is immediately ahead of you and you lack critical information to do even that. You know you are supposed to be prepared for times like this, but the truth is you’re never really prepared. If only you had more time; but then, you were warned. Probably should have done something sooner. Or maybe chosen a different line of work.

The date? 2009. David Noer’s book, Healing the Wounds, is published to help leaders and those left damaged by the recession of 2007-2008 begin to pull their lives back together in the hope that readers would lean into the lessons to be learned rather than just find a way to get by and carry on. David called attention to the mixed emotions felt by survivors, those who kept their jobs while others did not. This included leaders who had to make tough decisions about who went and who stayed. Partly, survivors were feeling guilty, as if they had done something terribly wrong or didn’t deserve to be the ones left standing. Partly, they felt anger at being expected to do their old jobs and the additional work that had been done by the departed, for no extra pay and no fault of their own. Not the ideal time to do an engagement survey. The organization I was with at the time decided to skip that year’s survey and the next. When one was finally done, the most negative assessments were left for senior management, who were viewed as either incompetent for not anticipating the crisis or heartless in the way in which they chose to deal with it. As a senior leader, incompetent I could accept but heartless was tough to swallow. We had hired too many people on the upswing before the bubble burst and then compounded our mistake by following the advice of our attorneys to make the cuts as quickly and cleanly as possible, with too little appreciation for the things that people were going through. Clearly, people hadn’t gotten over how we handled it, even two years later. In fact, I think the psychological contract was shredded and replaced by one that we are all too familiar with today. What had been a family spirit with a willingness to go the extra mile without complaining became almost a union feel; “I’ll do what I’m paid to do and no more”; “You don’t owe me security, and I don’t owe you loyalty”.

David’s book helps people prepare for the next inevitable downturn or change of plans. The change may not result in layoffs, but it can alter plans that people have for the future. As I write this, Warner Brothers is the ping pong ball in a match between Netflix and Paramount. My friends there have no say in what happens next or what happens after that. David would tell them to wake up, come to their senses and be prepared to take control of their own lives. That’s the world we’re living in. He would say:

· Quit identifying as an employee of an enterprise and develop your own personal brand. Be prepared to move and take your brand with you. Define yourself in terms of what you do and not where you do it.

· Ground your work in what you love and what you do best. Know your strengths and what it is that makes a difference no matter where you are working.

· Pay attention to the people who are the customers for your work. Delight them and your chances of continuing to do what you do are much greater. Stop the pity party and get on with making your customers great (for CEOs, customers include the board and shareholders).

· Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It will be dropped. Be optimistic and give it your all but don’t expect it to last forever. Enjoy every moment of it fully but keep a bag packed.

· Maintain perspective. Think about the full arc of your career. On average, people change jobs 6 or 7 times. Use each move as a chance to get closer to your goal of living your best life. Be patient, don’t panic or jump at the first opportunity if it isn’t something that you can fully commit to, even as a stop along the way.

We are about to enter another era where work and organizations will be disrupted again, this time by AI and global economic forces. We can expect turbulence ahead. No matter how carefully you have prepared your strategy and positioned your organization to succeed with the best knowledge available, we all know that it’s anybody’s guess what will really happen. We can’t be fully prepared, but we can do some scenario planning around the best and worst cases just so that we aren’t caught completely off guard.

Smart CEOs will engage their boards in this exercise, since one sure way to get yourself in trouble is to pose as if you have everything under control. Boards expect leaders to be thoughtful, not prescient. If your board expects more of you, you either have the wrong board or the wrong job.

When it comes to sharing uncertainty about the future with employees, you don’t want to scare people, but you also don’t want to leave them in the dark. The worst thing is to wait until the last moment, when drastic action has to be taken, and announce your plans with no time for discussion or input. I’m always reminded of the automotive manufacturer who could see a downturn coming a year away and knew that layoffs would be inevitable. Even though they had never had a layoff before, they told their people right away and asked for their help in developing criteria by which layoff decisions would be made should they be necessary. Not only was the reaction from the workforce constructive – productivity continued to improve throughout the year – but even after the layoffs both those who left and those who stayed praised leadership for how leaders had handled the situation. No accusations of incompetence or heartlessness there.

The message here isn’t intended to be about impending doom and gloom. Just the opposite. We know change will come. Let’s be ready for it.