Sharing Secrets
Years ago, when my father was general manager of a large music distribution company, this is how he and his staff found out that the corporate giant that had purchased them was shutting the operation down: Everybody showed up for work and found Pinkerton guards in front of the doors.
Today, that kind of secrecy is frowned upon--at least by the consultants who supposedly tell our bosses how to handle such things.
The person at the top may not want to tell employees what’s really going on, these consultants say, but honesty allows employees to plan for change--and this can help the organization better survive impending upheavals.
Which is why two years ago, when Judy Davis decided to leave the 16,000-employee firm where she was labor relations manager, she sat down with her staff and told them about it--even before she had accepted an offer from another company.
“I had been part of an organization that was doing a huge downsizing, and I was offered an opportunity to go to a new organization that was building up instead of tearing down,” said Davis, who is now a labor relations consultant based in Tustin. “I did not wait for the rumor mill to get started. As soon as I was even considering [the offer] I involved my staff in the process.”
After telling her own boss, Davis said, she went “within hours” to her staff. She told them she was thinking of leaving, and asked them for input in creating a succession plan.
“Secrecy does the organization and everybody in it a disservice,” Davis said, “because everybody is impacted by change.”
By the time she left the company, an interim replacement had been chosen, and the staff--already wracked by changes from the company’s restructuring--was prepared to soldier on.
Such attention to continuity is even more important when the person leaving is the company president or other top manager, said Roger Rittner, senior vice president of Sheppard Associates, a Glendale-based management consulting firm.
“Any change at a company raises all sorts of issues for employees,” Rittner said. “In addition to announcing that you’re about to leave, what you need to do to the best of your ability is to answer the questions that the average employee is apt to ask.”
Staff members will wonder, “ ‘Will we be changing our markets? Will we be downsizing? Will a new leader have a new vision?’ ” Rittner said. And most of all, employees will want to know what the change will mean for their own jobs.
It’s best to put a positive spin on the departure, Rittner said, but if there is trouble at the top, employees most likely already know about it. “If you have the strength of character to say, ‘My vision was wrong’ or ‘our markets have changed,’ we recommend that you just come out and say it,” Rittner said.
Once that’s said, however, it’s still important to assure employees that there is a succession plan in place and that they are in good hands, Rittner said.
Sometimes, such as in the case of a public company, executives are limited in what they can say by securities regulations, said Sandra Young, a partner in Career Focus, a Tustin-based career development firm. In such cases, companies often choose simply to put out a news release, along with an internal memorandum, that states that an executive is leaving.
But most consultants cautioned against terseness if it is simply a way to avoid dealing with internal rumors. “The sooner you can get out in front of it the more you can control the story,” Rittner said. “The rumor mill will create excuses and reasons far more drastic than the truth usually is.”
In today’s marketplace, where Internet chat groups volley rumors about public companies and everybody in an industry knows everybody else, it’s pretty unlikely that simply clamming up will shut down the gossip, Young said.
But that, she and others said, does not mean an executive who is considering leaving need not be discreet--particularly if the situation can be salvaged.
Troubles in the executive suite that might not result in a departure ought to be kept private in order to avoid instability--and to leave open the possibility that a difficult situation can be improved.
The other side of this coin is the question of what employees should do if they start to suspect something is up with the boss.
“If there are rumors that the boss is leaving and you report to the boss, I would go in and say, ‘We have a good relationship here--what’s going on?’ ” Rittner said.
Employees who are not close enough to the boss to ask personally still need information, Rittner said. Some companies have an internal communications process that allows for questions to be asked anonymously, and others have internal communications departments.
Part of the responsibility of a corporate executive, he said, is to avoid passing on false rumors and help employees find out what’s going on. “To pass on the rumors doesn’t help the company at all, and what’s most dangerous is that [employees] may make career decisions based on rumors,” Rittner said. “To take action on a rumor is foolish.”
