Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal included an interesting interview with Nancy F. Koehn, a business historian, author and professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. In the interview, entitled
We’ve Been Here Before, Ms. Koehn reminds us that even back in 1869, people like Henry Heinz (founder of Heinz Co.) were able to survive and even thrive during tough times. I particularly like her response when asked whether she thought companies were ‘hunkering down’ too much: “I do. At a general level, American business leaders and other managers have spent months in fear mode — primarily in a reactive, fear-driven, fast-acting mode. That is very natural given the shock and speed of this downturn.”
How does this compare with what you are seeing? I would love your thoughts and comments. Thanks and hope you have a great weekend! I’m going to try and get my puppy (an active six month old chocolate lab) outside for some much needed exercise. Amelia
Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category
Everything Old is New Again…
Friday, April 24th, 2009How to Make Layoffs Worse
Sunday, March 15th, 2009As many of you know, The Thornton Group is fortunate to be consulting partners with Patrick Lencioni’s company The Table Group. Pat has been doing a lot of writing lately, and this ‘point of view’ entitled How Executives Botch Layoffs from the March 6, 2009 Wall Street Journal is particularly relevant these days.
In this article Pat talks about the three most common mistakes executives make during lay-offs:
- Don’t allow employees to leave with dignity
- Segregate ‘survivors’ from those who are leaving
- Assume that the survivors don’t need extra attention
I agree with all, especially the third point. In fact, I read somewhere that most companies spend 80% of their time and attention on the people leaving versus those who remain — counter-intuitive, don’t you think?
I’ll write more about this another time, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.
Thanks, Amelia