As 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