You may feel your organization reached the point where things do not go well anymore. Something’s missing. Your managemers only care about keeping their jobs. The company no longer wins new business. Subsequently, you start to lose existing business as well. Revenue and profit margin is about to plummet. What do you and your management team do?
I bet you know what is the most common reaction? “We can no longer afford to employ so many people. The hey days are gone. We have to cut costs. We have to reduce headcounts.” You put your organization on a massive “cost cutting diet”.
The fact is that the cost-cutting exercise will not get you back to growth. You can leave your company on a diet until it dies.
At some point while on the diet regime, your employees will start to struggle to keep carry on with their day jobs. They start to lose motivation and morale. This is typically a result of “resource actions” (Big Blue used to use this term in my days for lay-offs). Your workforce disengages. Risk-taking is still allowed by your management team, but they won’t tolerate any failures.
What do you do to turn such situation around? You have to re-establish trust with your employees. Create safe environment in which they could help you to reinvent organization. You need to create bright sparks. You need to reconnect with your customers.
