Radical Action for Radical Times: Expert Advice for Creating Business Opportunity in Good or Bad Economic Times

Chapter 2. Cascading consequences

Ultimately we are talking about cascading consequences—consequences few had considered or were prepared for, consequences that have yet to surface. The spiral of doom mentioned earlier is a simple example. What annoys me about this is the waste or unintended consequences that make things worse.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the United Kingdom produced a report in January 2009 suggesting the cost of laying off staff, before hidden costs, was £16,375, or approximately US$25,000. It's the hidden costs that do the most damage: decreased productivity and burn out and stress for those who remain—the list goes on. But the irony of this statistic is that in a firm's desperation to cut costs, they ...