Logical is not the future

In the World of Corporate Business, there’s one Great Evil… personal greed… and redundancy.

…in the World of Corporate Business, there’s two Great Evils… personal greed… and redundancy… and a lack of appreciation… in the World of Corporate Business, there are three, THREE Great Evils… personal greed, redundancy, a lack of appreciation… and sales. (*sigh*)… amoungst the Great Evils in the World of Corporate Business there is personal greed, redundancy, a lack of appreciation and sales.

And, in all my working years, never have I seen these four horsemen of the corporate apocalypse ride in better formation than at my previous employer. Well, when I say employer… more ‘victor in a doomed acquistion.‘

Now, sound mind and a knowledge of how internet search engines work prevents me from naming the company, but logical is the name.

Believe me when I say that I’ve no misconceptions about the requirement for redundancy in any business. Redundancy is a necessary part of growth within any business, and it would be completely unrealistic to think there was such thing as ‘a job for life.’ But what really grinds my gears… ? How it’s carried out by any organisation. And how it’s perceived by the next organisation. But… that’s another vent…

Suffice to say, I’ve gone through the redundancy process previously, and I’ve helped work colleagues faced with redundancy, sitting as their ‘second ear’, as the process allows.

But it’s never been handled as badly, as insensitively, as unfairly as the last occasion this occurred for me. Honestly, they were shockingly poor! Which was odd… given their degree of practice at it…

I’d joined a small VAR (look it up…) and had worked for a little over a year when it soon became apparent that the organisation (some 50+ people) was being polished for re-sale. We were hastily acquired by a larger VAR looking to extend their offerings into the field in which the smaller organisation was in fact the UK’s No. 1 provider.

In the previous year, we had hit some budgeting issues and were being pressured by competitors, so I was greatly in favour of the acquisition, believing (erroneously, it later became manifestly apparent) this would fund a move to the next level of what the business could provide its customers and its employees.

In truth, the small business collapsed.

With no synergy between the victor and the vanquished, and completely no understanding by our acquirer of the market in which we were being successful, the rush for the door was at first startling, then embarrassing, then bewildering, as the now parent company simply kept polishing the palm prints from the revolving door out of reception.

In desperation, I approached a (as they now like to be called) C-level manager, who shrugged his shoulders and replied, “R***, it’s simply because the numbers aren’t big enough to feature in board-level reporting…”

So, a once prosperous and successful company was allowed to dissolve because its loses weren’t “big enough to feature in board-level reporting…” !!

Now this is the point at which I failed. I failed to realise that there was no future. I failed to see the headlong rush for the revolving door (and they actually have one too !) was a herding instinct I didn’t have. So I stayed in what soon became apparent as the dust off hastily cleared desks settled, was a viper’s pit.

With the greatest frustration, the issues we faced were eminently fixable; it was just that no one with any authority was bothered to save the business.

My redundancy, whilst not a surprise, was still… a surprise; more in the atrocious manner in which it was mismanaged. When I left, of the +50 people employed in the business at the time of the acquisition, I think we were down to 6 or 7 of the “originals“… all in 18 months.

Redundancy needs to be a clean break. It is only right to dispense with someone services with solemnity, consideration and respect. Logical Is had none, and they paid off my notice period and showed me the door.

I saw that C-level manager some months after. He’d gone on to become CEO. How the coffee in my hand at the time didn’t go over him remains a mystery to me to this very day. Suffice to say he didn’t stay in Costa for long, and thankfully (for whom I’m not sure) I’ve not seen him since…