To: Upper Management
From: A C. Pennington, C.E.O
Re: Rightsizing
First and foremost, I wanted to thank all of you for your hard work, support and determination through one of the most turbulent financial environments this company has ever endured. In recent unnerving months, some of our largest competitors and financial giants have been either pushed to the brink of collapse, left breathing on government life support or have literally been wiped off the map forever.
Like a tsunami, with ungodly force, the subprime mortgage crisis swept over Wall Street sending industry leaders like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Fannie Mae crashing to their knees and into oblivion. Seemingly overnight, thousands ofprofessionals, associates and life long colleagues were suddenly unemployed and searching for work in a jobless industry. During these unsettling time of duress, I could only think of one thing… “More for us!”
And more for us was right. Thanks to your blood in the water perseverance, ascending by way of fallen comrades and sucking every last dime out of mom and pop, our commissions are currently 15% ahead of budget and 27% above last year.
During these challenging times we thought it might be wise to use these funds to reinvest in our product, help offset losses in more trouble, highly leveraged areas of the firm or simply pass down a good portion of these commissions to the hard working producers who actually earned them. After much deliberation, we have decided to do what we normally do and simply distribute most of the wealth over senior management.
Since the bulk of those commission dollars were generated from redemption driven transactions anyway, we’ll just highlight how redemption dollars are more like play dough money and in fact, not real dollars at all. We will continue to follow our usual year end procedure of ‘flat to down’. In order to minimize sales force rebuttal we have synchronized massive layoffs with year end reviews.
Due to current ‘end of the world’ economic conditions, staggering record losses and the one in a lifetime opportunity to chop lots of dead wood (along with anyone else who has an opinion), we will be “right” sizing by approximately 40%.
During phase one of this plan, higher producing, more expensive, older employees will be asked to go on early retirement, thus permitting the retention of younger sales people with limited experience, no relationships or viable business to carry us into the future. This SLAP (Sever Late-Aged Producers) phase initiative will be going into effect next week, so until we finalize the cut early retirement list, we highly suggest not engaging in personal conversation or making eye contact with anyone over age 50.
Once middle management has been used to successfully deal with the unpleasant task of SLAPPING away our aging core producers, we can then quickly shift our focus on removing middle management. First priority will be to terminate those managers who during the good times, made the age old mistake of taking the lazy way out, assuming credit for everyone else’s hard work and giving up production.
If my calculations are correct – and they always are… after axing the dinosaurs and wiping out all benign middle managers, we’ll still need to shed an additional 25%. So please have your suggestions with a brief one-liner, highlighting their weaknesses, flaws or anything else that will make termination easier, into me no later than next Friday before I leave for Aspen to close on my new ski-house and begin my annual six week sabbatical. This is a very dark hour and I understand letting go so many people you’ve grown to care about and worked along aside for years is going to be a real test of character. Try to remember that this is a business and needs to be managed as such. If you find yourself torn over who should go and who stays, then I strongly suggest what I normally do during these crucial times… After filtering out all attractive female employees, simply utilize the Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Moe method.
With corporate lawsuits becoming common place, I can’t stress enough the importance of strictly adhering to company policy, guidelines and proper procedures when severing employees. When issuing pink slips be sure to have an HR representative present, get right to the point showing no empathy or human emotion and regardless of the facts or how you really feel, be sure not to attribute the employees fate to race, color, nationality or sexual preference. “We are letting you go because the word around the office is that you’re gay” or “We already have more than enough token minorities for a bear market” is considered wrongful termination. Instead, take responsibility. Even if you’re not the one who decided to take the action, if asked directly, “Whose decision was this?” be prepared to say, “Mine.” And when I say “mine”… I mean YOU. It was your idea. Trust me, the last thing you want is a string of flaming homosexual minorities lining up outside my door because of your incompetence.
Respectfully,
A. Chester Pennington, C.E.O
