What Downsizing Means for All of Us

By Herbert M. Greenberg, Ph.D., Founder and CEO, Caliper

Downsizing, which used to be viewed as an unfortunate occurrence, has changed into a fact of life for many wholesaler-distributors. Those employees who stay and those who leave are all confronted by an enormous loss. Each employee will feel that his or her loyalty has produced little more than a false sense of security, and everyone learns the same lesson: Everything today is changing. As we all look to find the “new normal” we need to confront the fact that it may be a long time before we know what that even looks like.

As wholesale distribution executives try to make quarterly ends meet, they find themselves trying to be “fair” about downsizing people, which is impossible. A distributor may state, “We will downsize by 10% across the board. We will all bear the brunt equally.” While such statements might seem fair, they convey a singular lack of vision about where the company needs to place the most emphasis.

If a company needs to change its shape and size, an axe will not accomplish the task. Such an operation requires careful surgery. The emerging company will not succeed just because it is smaller. Focus, markets, and ways of accomplishing goals will all change. And with these changes, virtually every job will be redesigned or eliminated.

Before any changes are made, management needs to view everyone from a new perspective: Look to see if they have the necessary attributes to fill the new jobs, along with the flexibility to change and the potential to grow in the new environment. Distributors need to hypothetically fire everyone at the company—including themselves—and then decide who they would hire all over again and, most importantly, what they would hire them to do. Would that person in purchasing be better suited to sales? Would that guy in the warehouse be better suited to inside sales? Just telling every manager to cut X number of people is the exact wrong thing to do.

The job that someone has done in the past may or may not have any relevance to the job they could fill in the new downsized environment. This becomes complicated because, more often than not, managers confine their views of individuals by considering only what they have done in their most recent position. It takes an objective, thorough, in-depth approach to delve below the surface and determine what someone is really capable of accomplishing. To successfully make the transition in a downsized company takes a combination of the right abilities, aptitude, and attitude. Do the people you are considering keeping have that attitude? Do they have the willingness to adapt?

The same holds true for those who have been downsized, often because they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such individuals need to assess their internal strengths, so that they can refocus their career goals. Many people realize that getting a new job that simply replaces the one they lost isn’t going to work anymore. When such individuals resolve to bounce back and discover within themselves the resources to continue and change, they often reach new, unimagined heights.

The ultimate lesson of downsizing is that whether an employee stays on board or carries on to new ventures, everything is changing. The future belongs to those who are not defined by the past or trapped by what they have done. While experience is one thing, potential is everything.


About this Blog

This blog is created by NAW and its partner Caliper, an international management consulting firm that offers a wide range of personnel services to wholesale distribution companies.