Any time we mess with people’s money, status, or ability to work, we create emotions—for ourselves and the other person. As managers, when we offer a job or a promotion, those emotions tend to be happy. But layoffs? Those emotions are rarely happy—for anyone. If we try to bury those feelings, we might appear as
Do you know what to say when it’s time to lay people off? The first time I had to lay someone off, I had no idea what to say. However, if you have a reasonable context, you (or HR and you) can create a script you can use to make a layoff a respectful and
Too many leaders work solo—and that’s because their managers expect them to do so. However, these managers and leaders often need other leaders across the organization to deliver the necessary work. In that case, one-on-ones can help. These peer one-on-ones can help build trust, clear impediments across the organization, and create allies for change. How
Your company is planning a layoff, and you’re one of the managers who has to decide and deliver the bad news. What do you say? What do you do? Almost everyone I know who has to do the laying-off feels terrible about that. But you can create a congruent environment and make it possible for
A senior manager said, “We give our resources everything they could need: technology, tools, even some training. Why are they so slow?” I asked, “How many projects are they working on?” “Each resource has at least two projects so they stay productive and efficient.” These managers have created a resource efficiency culture, not a flow
Before the pandemic, Jenny, the VP of Engineering, insisted that the engineering staff needed to work in the Boston area. She expected that people would mostly work in the office, and they did. However, during the pandemic, Jenny changed her mind. She said that as long as teams had sufficient hours of overlap, she didn’t
Dan, a VP, knows he needs more people to get the work done. Suzanne, one of the directors, starts to hire and realizes she has several problems. First, their salary bands are too low—candidates want more money. In addition, the people want to collaborate more than the existing people seem to. She meets with Dan
The Acme Corp senior leadership team is thrilled that they can bring people back to the office. That team decided that everyone would be back in the office on Mondays and Thursdays. Why Mondays and Thursdays? The senior leaders could make those days work with their schedules. They rolled this decision out to the rest
Dan, a Vice President, worries that his teams work more as individuals than as teams. He’s a physically active guy and decided that teams can choose from these activities: a zip line course, a hike up and down a local mountain, or an escape room. But when he suggested these ideas to one of his
The larger your product, the more likely you have components teams. I often see component teams because of the architecture of the product. In this first image, the Integrated System Program, the rest of the product uses the Platform of Common Services as components. Also, the teams find it tempting to think of the common