The camera goes on. You know what’s about to happen. They don’t.
That’s the opening of every redundancy conversation I’ve ever had to lead, and it never gets easier. You’ve been showing the team the company numbers in the weekly meetings for the last three months. You’ve talked about the pipeline shape, the headcount cost, the runway. You’ve done it on purpose, so that when the call comes it isn’t a complete shock. Eighty per cent of the time, it’s still a complete shock.
The first thirty seconds are the usual greetings, the how was your weekend, and then the breaker line. “I’ve got to discuss some difficult news with you.” From there it goes one of four ways. They are shocked. They are angry. They are upset. Or, occasionally, they are absolutely fine with it. That last one is the response that takes longest to recover from. You never know which version of the conversation you are about to have after you’ve uttered those words. The room is very quiet whilst you wait.
What actually happens in your head
Marketing is almost always the first department the business cuts when revenue softens. That’s not a slight. It’s a structural fact of how P&Ls work in most firms. The investment in marketing is a forward bet on the next quarter or the next year. When the cash flow doesn’t permit the bet, the bet gets paused. The people who carry the bet are the people on the marketing team. None of that has anything to do with their individual performance.
What I learned, slowly, is that the only way to do the conversation well is to do it in two brains at once.
The first brain is the commercial one. You look at what marketing is being asked to deliver in the new shape of the business, where the funnel needs to perform over the next twelve months, and what the resource has to look like to support that. You map who does what now, who would be doing what in the leaner shape, and you make the call on that basis. It is grim arithmetic, but it has to be done coldly, because the team you are protecting deserves a plan that holds.
The second brain is the human one. The team you are about to talk to is not a P&L line item. They have rent, kids, a relationship somewhere, a Tuesday-evening five-a-side, a side project they were planning to launch. Years ago a CEO I worked for, Martin Bowley, gave me a line I have used in every management job since. You get them from 9 to 5, but you need to understand what is happening in their 5 to 9, because that is what shapes the 9 to 5. If you can make the 5 to 9 easier, they will be the best version of themselves in the 9 to 5.
When you have to deliver redundancy news to people whose 5 to 9 you have spent two or three years trying to make better, the commercial brain is what gets you through the meeting. The human brain is what you live with afterwards.
The cry afterwards is a feature, not a bug
I cry afterwards. I try not to in the meeting. My voice will 100% crack and I’ll have to pause and compose myself, and the person across from me is at risk of losing their job. They don’t need, or want, to deal with my emotions about it on top of their own. So I hold it together until the door has closed. Then I’ve been known, on more than one occasion, to phone my mum from the car park to be told that I am not, in fact, a terrible person. Business is business. Somebody has to make these decisions, and most often the alternative is that more people go later rather than fewer people now. But if your reaction to ending someone’s role is no reaction at all, you have lost something important about being a manager. The discomfort is the proof you took it seriously.
If you are managing marketing and the conversation is coming, here is the shape that has worked for me. Be clear and short. Lead with the news and the reason, in that order. Don’t dress it up. Have the practical detail ready: notice, settlement, references, timing. The conversation moves from emotional to logistical within about six minutes, and the team member needs to know you have done that thinking for them. Don’t pretend it’s a transition or a strategic realignment. They’ve seen the numbers in your team meeting. Use the word.
And then go and sit somewhere quiet. Have a cry. Phone your mum. The next conversation is in twenty minutes, and the person on the other side of that one deserves the same care.
The conversation no one teaches you to have is the one that defines whether your team, the ones who are staying, still believe you are the person they thought they were working for.
