I was recently asked to comment on, what one reporter perceived, as people working excessively long hours and sacrificing their family time in order to hold on to a job during tough economic times. The reporter’s question was, “Is this a trend that will continue after the recession ends?  I hope not because there are some major unintended consequences that will prevent healing the wounds and harm both the employee and the organization:

•  My experience is that, while employees may work longer hours and sacrifice more in the short term, they also build up a reservoir of resentment and repressed entitlement that will not serve their organizations well in the long term. 
•  In the book, I call this “gunnysacking.”  It is a term for storing up repressed anger and frustration that – usually in response to a seemingly mild issue – results in an inappropriately strong and counter-productive response.
•  Employers that expect their employees to keep working long hours and make personal sacrifices are sitting on a keg of dynamite.  Fear is not a good motivator and sooner or later, they will either snap or burn out and simply go through the motions.  Either way employers may get their body but certainly not their spirit or their creativity.
•  What it will take to turn today’s organizations around are employees who are there because they enjoy the work and serving customers, not burned out, one dimensional employees who work excessively only because they can’t find another job and are afraid of getting fired.

Here is a link to the American Management Association Edgewise podcast of Healing the Wounds.  

AMA Healing the Wounds Podcast

 It is about 14 minutes long and gives an excellent summary of many of the points I make in the book.  The interviewer asked good questions and they helped frame my thoughts and ideas on leadership actions that will help in healing the wounds and getting layoff survivors back on track.

Gunnysacking is a term for storing up hurt feelings, anger, affronts, and unresolved conflicts, and, when the weight of the psychological gunnysack becomes too heavy to bear, unloading it, often to an inappropriate degree in an inappropriate context.    I have discovered that a surprising number of managers operate for many years under the oppressive burden of a heavy bag and use a crisis mode of operation as an authorization to unleash long repressed feelings of anger and frustration by figuratively beating their fellow employees about the head with their overloaded gunnysacks.  In an environment of layoffs and downsizing, this takes the form of those in power “getting” both functions and people that frustrated them in the past but were protected by a more tolerant organizational culture.  

 Gunnysacking is unhealthy for the leaders who practice it, for layoff survivors, for the prognosis of organizational continuity, and certainly not useful for healing the wounds.  Leaders who see it happening need to move quickly and stop it. They need to help those wielding those heavy bags find better ways to lighten them. If that won’t work, they need to carefully consider the costs in terms of productivity and morale, of retaining people who are more concerned with pursuing a personal vendetta than helping the organization recover.  If, in the heat of the battle for organizational survival, you are tempted to form a coalition to “get” a person or a function for the wrong reasons, resist it. It won’t help you, the person you are targeting, or, most importantly, the organization.  If you find yourself the victim of gunnysacking, don’t try to get even, that only compounds the problem.  Try to discover what past event lies unresolved in the other person’s bag and muster up the courage to directly confront the issue.  Gunnysacking is alive and well in today’s downsized organizations.  Effective leaders need to move rapidly to confront it and personally refuse to succumb to its temptations.

Here are five positive things that organizational leaders can do immediately to help combat layoff survivor sickness and heal the wounds.

 Move from directing to coaching.  When under stress, many organizations tend to revert to a command and control orientation.  This is the opposite of what is needed.  Employees need help, not control. I have a t-shirt with the humorous saying, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”   It makes my point.

 Combat uncertainty, ambiguity, and anxiety by re-focusing and re-emphasizing customer service and helping others.  If you feel bad about yourself, find someone else who feels worse and help them. You get a double win – you feel better and they get helped.  Focus on a customer is a sure way to escape from an inward orientation.  Organizations need to take the opportunity to switch to an outside-in perspective and align all systems with customer service and value orientation.  The company will be helped and layoff survivor sickness will be reduced.

 Create a practical, short term vision.  Visions do not have to be long term or esoteric.  They do need to be clear and give employees some hope – even if that hope is to remain a viable firm from month-to-month.

 Re-recruit and re-contract with key performers. Key performers will tend to jump ship if you don’t let them know they are important, share what information you have with them, and find ways to communicate that they are needed to help the organization turn around.  Organizations should not assume that key players understand that they are key and don’t need reassurance.

 Communicate all the time to everyone. In stressful times, withholding information, waiting until you are certain about the future, and managing bad news, only makes things worse.  People can handle almost anything if they have a sense of control and information gives them that.

I find it telling that organizations that are acquired call the process a “merger,” and the organization that is in the driver’s seat also initially colludes and also calls the acquisition a merger.  This non-authentic mating dance usually lasts until the first budget is established and then it becomes very clear which organization is in charge. Here is what doesn’t work in terms of healing the wounds during a merger. Next week, I’ll post what does.

What doesn’t work.

• Colluding that things won’t change.  Things always change during mergers/acquisitions.  There is kind of a dance of non-truth telling that takes place.  Everyone knows that there really won’t be two accounting departments, marketing functions or HR departments, but it seems safer not to talk about it. 
• Playing politics.  Scheming and making back-room deals may give an illusion of control but it is just that, an illusion. Straight-talk and openness make everything easier.
• Lack of clarity. Keeping things fuzzy is not a good strategy.  It may seem safe, even polite and respectful, but the sooner it is clear who are the winners and the losers and what functions will be cut, the better it is for everyone.
• Managing feelings. People feel the way they feel.  It doesn’t help to tell angry, fearful, people they shouldn’t feel that way.  That makes them worse and drives their natural feelings underground.
• Devaluing symbols. Merging cultures is difficult and allowing acquired organizations to keep their symbols and rituals is a low cost/high return expenditure.
• Sanitized, artificial communication. Phony, scripted, overly abstract, and double speak communication not only doesn’t work, people see right through it and become cynical.