[Written in July 2024, but posting now]
Don’t lose your humanity when you have to make the tough decisions.
I can hear the train coming, and I wish like hell it would never arrive.
It is Saturday morning. In 72 hours approximately 25% of the employees in my org will be laid off. I won’t go into why. Suffice it to say that costs are up and revenue is down. The net result is that I have to do one of the most terrible actions that a manager may need to take: dismiss high performing employees that did nothing wrong but will lose their job regardless.
It is said that you never really become a manager until you have to manage out an underperformer. The struggle of coaching someone to do better, the realization that they are unable or unwilling to improve, and the action to remove someone from a company is profound. I am still early enough in my career that I can remember the separation meetings of every person that I have let go. Yes, even the first one ten years ago.
The small solace of managing out an underperformer is that they are not delivering. Through coaching, 1:1s, and performance plans we can try to coax and cajole people into doing better. If they don’t want to change then it is the individual who decided to leave by not engaging.
The opposite is true in a layoff. These are often people who have been doing everything right. They have been working hard to deliver impact for the company and provide what is needed within their teams. Then, suddenly, we tell them “thanks for the hard work, but we’ve decided that we don’t need you any more”.
The dollars-and-cents of a layoff, and the spreadsheets that accompany them, very intentionally work to depersonalize the decisions. People become a column, a row, a single cell. We are playing a game of Tetris to achieve a certain dollar amount or to obtain a percent savings target. I don’t know an empathetic soul would could survive the process without putting the human element somewhat to the side. As is true of many/most terrible actions, it often slowly becomes a case of “I am just doing my job”.
Tuesday will come. I will do the right thing for the company and complete the layoff. Then, Wednesday will come and the sun will rise again. The Earth will spin on. I will march forward with the remaining 75% of my org, laboring to manage the massive changes. It will not be lost on me how terrible the layoff is though, nor will I forget the sacrifices of hard working people that were necessary to reduce our costs. They are more than just entries in a spreadsheet.
Photo: The Santa Ynez mountains above Summerland, CA burn during the Thomas Fire in December 2017. At the time it was the largest wildfire in California history.
