There is a good conversation about the challenges of managing during tough times over at McKinsey.com where people are discussing the video, Good Boss, Bad Times, which is based on my current HBR article. There is an interesting and insightful comment by Wendy (and quite a few others too, I especially like the one by Alan Himmer) about the nuances of leading during tough times. As I look at the comments, however, I realize that although videos are wonderful, they can't quite contain the nuances of an article. And, in fact, Wendy makes an excellent point that, although I don't touch on it in the video, is something that comes up in the article, and is something I've been painfully aware of since doing a case of the collapse of Atari over 20 years. As Wendy put it, 'try to make budgetary cuts in one fell swoop—it is better to cut too
deep than to go back to the troops with more bad news. Incremental cuts
only destroy employee confidence and leave them “stuck” with confusion
and resentment.'
Wendy's advice dovetails with the argument in my article in that, to manage well during tough times, a good boss gives people as much predictability as possible — and especially does everything he or she can to make clear when people are "safe" versus have reason to worry. One of the worst things a boss or company can do is to make constant cuts at seemingly random intervals, as it causes people to live in a constant state of fear as they wait for the other shoe to fall. As Wendy suggests, although a single deep cut is hell, it is a better alternative than wave after wave of smaller cuts. Of course, things these days are unpredictable enough that what may seem like a deep and adequate cut today may later turn out to be inadequate,doing fewer and deeper cuts to the extent possible is a more effective strategy in the long-run.
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