Letting Someone go... (Management Lessons from Vasudeo - Part 3)

Vasudeo is my father’s name. In a normal middle class Indian family of 70’s and 80’s me and my siblings grew up enjoying the freedom of calling him by first name within the four walls of our house. While we enjoy his friendship - his status for us is nothing less than that of a god…. This in fact is a first lesson… you need not follow any rituals to get your natural respect….. He being a man of few words, I learnt innumerable lessons through his simple actions…though the meaning of many I was to understand much later…..these are the few moments that have always stayed with me …..management lessons learnt from Vasudeo

Doorbell rang and when I opened the door, my father went up to the door to receive the guest. When they greeted each other I realized that I should not hang around…. The man looked distraught…. As I served him some water, my father quietly told me not to disturb them for next half an hour…..

As soon as the guest left, I asked my father about the man “He was from my bank and had come to see me as he needed some personal guidance” “Oh, but why did he come home then?”, little surprised knowing well that my father never mixed his workplace and home. “There was a problem with him and we had to let him go (even in a casual conversation at home he never used the word like sacked etc!!)” Suddenly I understood the reason behind the distraught expression on his face. “But if you sacked him, why did he come home?” I must admit I was little anxious as I asked (I guess this must be the hangover of Bollywood where the sacked man comes to boss’s house and shoots everyone!). “He needed some personal guidance”. “But you sacked him!” “We let him go because there was a problem with his work. That does not make him criminal! He knew that there was nothing personal about my action. He also has a family and he has to live his life!”…….. Hardly did I know that this small incident would serve as a guiding principle as I got in the situations where I had to take some decisions…..

Much later in life I got into a situation where I had to carry out an operation to let go quite a few people. It was a slow-down post dotcom bust and the phenomenon of workforce rationalization was quite common…. Media had a field day publishing stories about how lives were ruined, proposed marriages were called off due to people losing jobs. When I had to execute my job all this was weighing on my mind apart from the sheer burden of the task itself.

When it was decided whom to let go we also decided how would we do it. We just followed simple guiding principles:
• The people we were letting go were our colleagues and not some hardened criminals
• Losing jobs itself was enough burden to handle and we need not burden them with extra load of clearing our conscience.
• Our objective was separation from jobs that they were doing and we were not in the judgement seat to decide their lives!

As we set out to do the unpleasant task, we actually structured Do’s and Don’t of the communication. Another important decision that we took was - we will not do any mass communication but we’ll spend time with each individual losing job even if it means our speed was slow! (Its good to do away with process efficiency parameters sometimes….sensitivity could be more valuable than efficiency!)

When we started talking to people we communicated few points clearly:
• This is the decision which has been taken (If you are breaking a bad news it is good to sometimes to come straight to the point rather than beating around the bush)
• This is a decision for separation from the current assignment and we are not passing any judgement on them. As this is a human decision we acknowledge the fact that there is a chance that we could be wrong (yes… we actually used to say that)
• We spent significant time on discussing the life after….. we allowed them to resign than a termination…… Though they had to disengage immediately we let them be on the payroll for a month so that the chances of finding other jobs are better (In any case we owed them one month salary)… In many cases we extended this period as leave without pay till they got alternate assignments….. We offered drafting resumes

Make no mistake…. In spite of all this life was hell! It was sheer trauma! We just held our nerves and their hands….. In the end almost everyone got a job ….. most of them called back to thank for the support during that difficult phase.

If nothing else the experience made me wiser. More often than not it is our anxiety to clear our conscience that makes us lose our sensitivity. If you are letting someone go, why should you heap further insults by justifying your decision. Most important of all, can you look at the person you are letting go as a flesh and blood human being like yourself than a piece of trash being thrown in a dustbin!!