The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Layoffs, Culture, and Buffalo

I have a friend who works at a software development company. This organization has been struggling financially for quite some time, executing large layoffs every few months.

What was once a 300-person team is now closer to 100. Pretty much everyone remaining is setting up a Plan B when the ship finally sinks.

I wanted to break down some of the decisions that likely contributed to this outcome.

When communication was desperately needed, there was silence.

The first layoff was understandably a shock to many. The leadership team announced this via a company-wide call (as the work is fully remote).

Management expressed genuine remorse, but their language behind the decision was vague: “pivoting strategy”, “restructuring the team”, “streamlining the future” — typical corporate buzzwords.

Employees were left guessing the decisions behind the layoffs. My friend speculated the company was trying get acquired, so it was cutting employees to showcase low costs for prospective shareholders.

The next round of layoffs were communicated over a company-wide email. That remorse was absent, replaced by a dawning sense of doom. Employees had serious questions:

• Why are these layoffs happening?
• What is the future of this company?
• Will I lose my job?

At some point, layoffs weren’t even notified to staff. On multiple occasions, my friend found out a coworker was laid off by attempting to send them an email, only to receive an automated response that the account no longer existed.

When time was scarce, work became a competition.

The workload was really starting to pile up on the downsized team. Projects intended for large groups were now thrown onto the plates of one or two employees, who were sometimes expected to teach themselves difficult programs on the fly (like C++, Python, or custom software).

Normally, if someone bumped into a project outside of their expertise, someone could lend a hand in the group chat. Since everyone was so slammed, though, any attempts to ask for help were futile.

Beside, requesting help showed that you couldn’t get the job done on your own. If management caught wind of that, that could be considered during the next layoff.

My friend explained to me: “I was watching a documentary about a struggling herd of buffalo. When the malnourished ones started to slow down, other members wouldn’t turn around to help them. They knew they were goners.

“That’s how I feel at this company. If someone needs help, I can’t do anything. I can’t take the risk of falling behind on my own work. I hate it. It’s such a culture of fear.”

Bleakness can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Management made a lot of mistakes during these layoffs.

For starters, employees deserve answers to their questions, especially when jobs are on the line. We can assume these layoffs were the result of poor profits, but we have no idea how deep in the red the company was.

Even if the situation was looking dire, our imagination is likely just as scary, if not scarier, than the truth. Everyone should have an idea what the future could hold, no matter how difficult that conversation is to initiate.

I hope I shouldn’t have to explain why conducting layoffs over email and in secrecy was problematic. Giving an issue less attention doesn’t make it any less real or stressful; it just makes it feel more uncontrolled and unaddressed.

Recurring problems can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Human beings are hard-wired to notice patterns. After two or three rounds of layoffs, workers learn to expect when the next round comes, not if another round happens.

Morale will expectedly decline after something as tragic as layoffs becomes a recurring and expected issue. Management has to establish a clear game plan, or else employees have nothing tangible to work towards.

The end result here was a horrific cycle of layoffs, poor morale, lost productivity, more layoffs, and so forth.

How can we stop the madness?

Human performance isn’t only about making controls more optimal or procedures more readable. It’s also about considering the rippling impact of human logic and emotion.

Ideally, we can catch opportunities for improvement before they lead to disaster. But we need to be adaptable when obstacles are thrown our way.

Employee communications and feedback are vital in critical moments. Leadership can’t throw more work onto a fearful team and expect a healthy workplace culture. Companies need a structured system that understands workers and much as workers understand it.

TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis is a human-performance based system that can help teams catch and address deeply rooted issues like this one.

If you’ve noticed a recurring problem at your company, even if it’s not as drastic as layoffs, I’d highly recommend signing up for the 5-Day Advanced TapRooT® Techniques Course. It gives investigators all the tools they need to find and fix their human performance problems.