Chapter 3
Not Much Different From Firing
One gloomy morning I was sitting in the office with the CEO of a large company. His office was located on a beautiful campus that was home to this multinational firm and thousands of its employees. This morning was different from others. This CEO had just announced that his firm was laying off hundreds of people in order to cut administrative costs. “This is a pure financial decision,” he explained. “My job is to increase shareholders’ wealth, and I am doing that by reducing costs and making my firm more competitive.” He proceeded to tell me how well he communicated his vision to the executive team. Everyone bought into his idea. Everyone agreed it was only for the best.
I looked outside through ...
Get Letting People Go now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
