Slash and burn could be a rock band but increasingly it’s a phrase used to describe a drastic response to cutting an organisation’s budget. The approach is simple, if brutal, large scale compulsory redundancies. The calculations are simple how much do we need to save? How many posts does that translate to? Or in the case of management it’s an arbitrary figure like delete one in five posts how much will that save? OK that’s not enough delete one in four.
In the short term the savings are made and made quickly. The ruthlessness of the approach avoids all that special pleading from individual departments and the complexities of assessing hundreds of budget cutting proposals to establish if they are in fact deliverable. The mantra will be “We have no choice”. In the short term managers will cope, they will take on more responsibility, they will delegate more and they will become more anxious about how much they are really in control and therefore the likely hood of something going wrong. Staff will be in shock, those who are to be made redundant will go quickly so as to avoid the disruption of the disgruntled employee. Those who stay will know they have to do the job of two or three others but will be glad of that job.
Then the prioritisation will start. What no longer gets done because we don’t have anyone left to do it? There will be much talk of standing on a ”Burning platform” hence the urgent need for drastic action. There will be references to “Turkeys not voting for Christmas” so there is no point in debating unpopular decisions. The talk will be how much does this cost? Can we do it cheaper?
Success will be achieving budget reductions. Reputations will be made on the willingness to take tough decisions, that is making other people redundant, a willingness to cut services others have spent years building up.
After slash and burn what next? What remains will be a very different organisation, a much smaller organisation. HR, finance, IT, health and safety may all have been out sourced with the risk that the tail now wags the dog as the organisation loses control over these support services. Managers will have broader spans of responsibility which means they will have responsibility for services they have no background in and are therefore more dependent on the knowledge and good will of subordinates “Goodwill” will probably be in short supply as staff and managers have come to realise their pay can be cut, their terms and conditions changed, their workloads increased and their services dispensed with at short notice. Trade unions will continue to lose members as they are seen as powerless to do anything about this.
If the public sector is to survive, all be it in a smaller and different form, a new breed of manager will be tasked with making it work. This will not be the same senior management team that brought you slash and burn they will be long gone firstly to bigger and better jobs and latterly into early retirement as the limitations of their style of management are exposed.
All managers will be expected to be leaders. That is to inspire their staff, to influence partnerships, to shape strategies, and to take responsibility. This will have implications for how managers are recruited and developed with a focus on people skills. Managers will need to negotiate with outsourced support services and build up good working relationships since they will no longer have the power over these services they once enjoyed. In the absence of a large trade union membership to consult with managers will have to get serious about staff engagement. A new smaller more dynamic organisation needs not only to regain the good will of staff but find ways of making it easier for staff to improve the processes and ways of working that otherwise inhibit innovation, creativity and effectiveness.
Of course the really clever organisations will skip slash and burn and go straight to dynamic and effective.
Blair McPherson was until recently Director of Community services at Lancashire County Council and is author of People management in a harsh financial climate published by www.russellhouse.co.uk