Originally I'd planned to write about facilitation but then I learned our team will be experiencing a 30 percent staff reduction.

And instead of going out of town, I'll be sticking around, helping management with planning and execution of the reduction. Here are my thoughts ...

In any business, there are cycles. In our particular department, we are chartered to provide services and products to internal customers who provide services/products to the external customers that pay our bills.

In our case, our staff reduction is really a leading indicator of what may be coming down the road. Several factors leading to the current overhead reduction include:

•    Inability to capture key business pursuits (in management speak, the must-win proposals turned out to be losers)
•    Too much reliance on traditional customer base--which is getting poorer each year
•    Lack of will to follow through
•    Conflicting leadership initiatives

What's happening within your work environment? Are you still experiencing these kinds of staff reductions?

Be sure to read my next post and I will explain what I mean by conflicting leadership initiatives.