Despite what you might have thought by reading the papers, change affects every level in a company. Sure, the front-line employees make all the headlines by getting laid off in droves, but they’re not the only ones who have it tough. Change spares no one; it moves inexorably through the organization, starting at the bottom and, like many things, losing steam as it climbs. Still, top executives often have a lot of changes to make – their business cards, their stationery, their offices, sometimes even their withholding rates.
Companies spend a lot of effort talking about change with their employees. They emphasize the “why” of change (global competition) and the “what” (we need to become more competitive.) Only problem is, it’s the “how” of change that people are concerned about. As in, how will change affect me: How many layoffs will there be, and how will they affect my job?
Executives often get worked up about resistance to change. “Those people just don’t get it,” they say. Are you kidding? They do get it! They know that those smiles and fancy phrases too often boil down to one thing: they’re going to have the opportunity of working harder without being burdened with additional income taxes.
I always wonder why, if the people being laid off are superfluous, were they hired in the first place? If the company is right-sizing now, who did the “wrong-sizing”? Have they been put in charge of the current right-sizing since they did such a good job with the up-sizing that caused the down-sizing to be necessary? Does experience pay?
There’s a town I know in Pennsylvania that’s too small to pay their mayor more than a pittance. This means that anyone who holds that position has to hold down a day job too. A few years ago, a local bank teller was elected mayor. Several several terms and a little digging later, he was arrested, tried and convicted for embezzlement. This event threw the town into a long period of discontent that ended only when the ex-mayor became an ex-con and then came home – whereupon he was promptly re-elected as mayor. After all, he had proven to be good with finance and numbers.
So I guess the answer is that experience does pay.