How leaders at Google et al lost the room
And what happens next
As we start another year; an internal post at Google says “thank you to our corporate overlords for our new annual tradition”. The post is referring to the latest round of layoffs or as those overlords like to referring to them as “reduction in force” because nothing makes you sound honest like using weasel-speak instead of plain English. This is a trend happening across the industry. At Cloudflare one employee captured the moment when they were told they were being let go and the inability of those handling the situation to explain the situation. My heart goes out to both sets of people in that situation — firstly the ones on the receiving end of the news. But, also to anyone put in the situation of carrying out something they disagreed with.
When a leader loses the trust of their organisation then the capabilities of the organisation take a nose dive. This is something which happens slowly at first but accelerates over time. It’s worth understanding how this came about and how this is likely to progress over time. Organisations have their own set of human physics. In the same way that an apple is subject to the laws of gravity if you drop it, an organisation’s culture will also change predictably based upon how its leaders behave.
