The Idea in Brief
- It’s not easy being the boss during a downturn. Your natural impulse is to focus on your own well-justified concerns, but your people are watching your every move for clues to their fate.
- You need to rethink your responsibilities in terms of what your people may lack most in unsettling times: predictability, understanding, control, and compassion.
- By making tough times less traumatic, you’ll equip your organization to thrive when conditions improve—and earn the loyalty of individuals who will remain in your network for years to come.
The Idea in Practice
Some years ago Robert Sutton led a workshop with the senior managers of Procter & Gamble that touched on the importance of providing workers with predictability, understanding, control, and compassion. It turned out that his framework aligned with what they’d already learned in the context of plant closings. John E. Pepper, Jr., who was then P&G’s chairman, explained an internal analysis of the effects that management’s actions had on productivity, retention of employees who were offered jobs elsewhere in the company, and sales in the cities where the closings occurred. Plant closings did far less damage when leaders:
1. Announced the closing date and key milestones well in advance and described how events would unfold both for employees and for members of the affected community.
2. Explained in detail to employees and the community the business case for closing the plant.
3. Gave affected employees options for finding other jobs inside the company or resources to job hunt outside.
4. Expressed human concern—in public and in private—to affected employees and community officials.
In other words, P&G executives saw the value of predictability, understanding, control, and compassion in times of distressing organizational change.
Watch video with Bob Sutton talking about being a good boss in a bad economy at McKinseyQuarterly.com.
