- Restructuring: A simple plan instituted from above in which workers are right-sized, downsized, surplused, lateralized, or in the business jargon of the days of yore, fired.
Anonymous. Fortune (February 15, 1995)
- To downsize effectively you have to have jobs…What you say to them has a lot to do with the attitude of the survivors: whether they see the company as a money-machine or keep their respect for it.
Percy Barnevik (b.1941) Swedish former C.E.O. of ABB. Interview, Company Man: The Rise and Fall of Corporate Life (Anthony Sampson; 1995), ch. 16
- I believe you can go into any traditionally centralized corporation and cut its headquarters staff by 90 percent in one year.
Percy Barnevik (b.1941) Swedish former C.E.O. of ABB. Harvard Business Review (March/April 1991)
- Downsizing has negative effects on companies. Early buyouts deplete the number of experienced, talented people, and multiple rounds of layoffs destroy employee commitment. Employees focus on keeping their jobs rather than on doing their best.
Kenneth Blanchard (b.1939) U.S. management theorist and author. “Empowerment is the Key,” Quality Digest (April 1996)
- Employees throughout downsized companies do not have time to think about new growth opportunities. Nor are they inclined to suggest innovations because their implicit commitment contract with the company has been severed.
Kenneth Blanchard (b.1939) U.S. management theorist and author. “Empowerment is the Key,” Quality Digest (April 1996)
- In the end we are all sacked and it’s always awful. It is as inevitable as death following life. If you are elevated there comes a day when you are demoted.
Alan Clark (1928-99) British politician and diarist. Diary (June 21, 1983)
- We need people to really think about whether it’s fair and right thing to do…no one should lose a job for short-term considerations unnecessary for the long-term well-being of the profitable enterprise.
Bill Clinton (b.1946) U.S. former president. March 4, 1996. Referring to downsizing. Quoted in “Bridging the Gap,” Online Newshour (March 20, 1996)
- Effective executives fill positions and promote on the basis of what a person can do. They do not make staffing decisions to minimize weaknesses but to maximize strength.
Peter F. Drucker (b.1909) U.S. management consultant and academic. The Effective Executive (1967), ch. 4
- Two things to help keep one’s job. First, let the boss think he’s having his own way. Second, let him have it.
Sam Ewing (1920-2001) U.S. author. Quoted in Wall Street Journal (December 4, 1996)
- Well sometimes you just don’t like somebody.
Henry Ford (1919-87) U.S. automobile manufacturer and C.E.O. of Ford Motor Company. Referring to his reasons for firing Lee Iacocca, then president of Ford, in 1978. Quoted in Iacocca: An Autobiography (Lee Iacocca; 1984)
- Delayering and destaffing do not by themselves provide durable solutions to performance problems…Reduction of corporate overheads merely provides one-time relief and buys some time.
Sumantra Ghoshal (b.1946) Indian academic and management theorist. “Building the Entrepreneurial Corporation,” The Financial Times Handbook of Management (co-written with Christopher A. Bartlett; 1990)
- The inexorable forces of competition and change catch up again with companies that restructure but do not revitalize, that cut people but do not fundamentally alter their ways of working.
Sumantra Ghoshal (b.1946) Indian academic and management theorist. “Building the Entrepreneurial Corporation,” The Financial Times Handbook of Management (co-written with Christopher A. Bartlett; 1990)
- There must be something wrong with a system where it pays to be sacked.
Jo Grimond (1913-93) British politician. “Sacked” means “fired.” Quoted in “Sayings of the Week,” Observer (London) (May 1, 1983)
- If you have made someone redundant it is your responsibility to help them…You have removed the certainties from their life and your personal support and help is the least you can provide in return.
John Harvey-Jones (b.1924) British management adviser, author, and former chairman of ICI. All Together Now (1994), ch. 10
- People in the company are almost never fired…they are encouraged to retire early or are eased aside into hollow, insignificant positions with fake functions and no authority, where they are sheepish and unhappy for as long as they remain.
Joseph Heller (1923-99) U.S. novelist. Something Happened (1974)
- You do not get good people If you lay off half your workforce just because one year the economy isn’t very good and then you hire them back.
Kenneth Iverson (1925-2002) U.S. industrialist, chairman and C.E.O. of Nucor Corporation. Speech (February 5, 1996)
- There was no question of appointing a man who was not fully trained…everything depended on his being the best man for the job before he set off. And so you took great care in selecting him.
Anthony Jay (b.1930) British author and business consultant. Management Machiavelli (1970)
- We had to lay some people off…every one that I had to do it personally, I thought, “A lot of these fathers and mothers are going to have to…tell their families they just lost their jobs.” And I’d never really thought about that before.
Steve Jobs (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, cofounder and C.E.O. of Apple Computer Company, and C.E.O. of Pixar. Referring to his return to Apple and the impact on his outlook of being married and a father. Quoted in “Steve’s Two Jobs,” Time (Michael Krantz; October 18, 1999)
- Modern heretics are not burned at the stake. They are relegated to back waters or pressured to resign.
Art Kleiner (b.1954) U.S. business writer. The Age of Heretics (1996)
- Downsizing suddenly became news because for the first time, white-collar, college-educated workers were being fired in large numbers, even while skilled machinists and other blue-collar workers were in demand. Paul R. Krugman (b.1953) U.S. economist. New York Times Magazine (September 30, 1996)
- “You’re fired!” No other words can so easily and succinctly reduce a confident, self-assured executive to an insecure, groveling shred of his former self.
Frank P. Louchheim (b.1923) U.S. business executive. “The Art of Getting Fired,” Wall Street Journal (July 16, 1984)
- Handled creatively, getting fired allows an executive…to actually experience a sense of relief that he never wanted the job he has lost.
Frank P. Louchheim (b.1923) U.S. business executive. “The Art of Getting Fired,” Wall Street Journal (July 16, 1984)
- Recession isn’t the fault of the workers. If management takes the risk of hiring them, we have to take responsibility for them.
Akio Morita (1921-99) Japanese business executive. Daily Telegraph (Londo) (February 24, 1982)
- There is ceasing to be the intimacy between masters and men…we scarcely know anything of men who have come into our service of late years because strangers negotiate most of the arrangements which are made.
Samuel Morley (1809-86) British textile entrepreneur, politician and philanthropist. 1878. Quoted in Enlightened Entrepreneurs (Ian Campbell Bradley; 1987), ch. 3
- I admit I have a reputation for hiring editors, but the facts do not support it…I have only ever sacked one editor of “the Australian”-although I admit I sacked him twice.
Rupert Murdoch (b.1931) U.S. C.E.O. of News Corporation. November 1972. Quoted in Good Times, Bad Times (Harold Evans 1983)
- Show me a man who enjoys firing people and I’ll show you a charlatan or a sadist.
Tony O’Reilly (b.1936) Irish executive chairman of Independent News & Media and former C.E.O. of Heinz Corporation. Quoted in Business Week (October 23, 1987)
- Nothing bad’s going to happen to us. If we get fired, it’s not failure; it’s a midlife vocational assessment.
- J. O’Rourke (b.1947) U.S. humorist and journalist. Rolling Stone (November 30, 1989)
- Instead of giving contracts to strangers, we decided we could just as well give contracts to our own employees. We would encourage them to leave…and start their own satellite enterprises.
Ricardo Semler (b.1959) Brazilian business executive and president of Semco. “Why My Former Employees Still Work For Me,” Harvard Business Review (January/February 1994)
- Fire the whole personnel department…Fire the whole purchasing department. They’d hire Einstein and then turn down his requisition for a blackboard.
Robert Townsend (b.1920) U.S. business executive and author. Up the Organization (1970)
- unless your company is too large (in which case, break it up into autonomous parts), have a one-girl people department, not a personnel department.
Robert Townsend (b.1920) U.S. business executive and author. Up the Organization (1970)
- Trahey’s Simple Rule: Would you hire you?
Jane Trahey (1923-2000) U.S. copywriter and author. Women in Advertising (1979)