Musk’s slashing far from ‘Efficiency’

For anyone who has had the tough assignment of downsizing a business or an organization, DOGE is a joke.

It’s a bad joke.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) should be called DOGC — Department of Government Chaos. Most business leaders use downsizing as a last resort, because they view their highly trained employees as treasures, as the company’s most valuable asset. Yes, I know that there is a minority of business leaders who don’t give a damn about their workers. But in my experience, they are usually a small minority and not very successful.

Business has its ups and downs from changes in the market place, from macro impacts like recessions or pandemics. Companies go for years without layoffs, but then are forced by exceptional circumstances to let people go.

But they plan ahead to minimize the hurt to their people. They cut back on overtime. They stop hiring and use attrition to reduce head count. They pull in work that was outsourced. They open the door for voluntary layoffs for people looking for a sabbatical. They reduce temporary workers. They offer generous severance packages. And they sometimes reduce hours across the work force to even out the loss of pay until business picks up.

One positive example was a restaurateur who closed one of his two restaurants but opened the other on Monday nights to keep his staff employed during a business falloff from the reconstruction of Main Street in West Bend.

Musk used none of those tactics. He symbolically brandished a chainsaw. He took psychopathic pleasure in the hurt he was inflicting on good people in federal agencies.

Musk did use early retirement packages, but they were often mandatory, not voluntary, standard approach in business downsizing.

Paramount in the minds of smart business leaders during a downturn is first to shed only the underperforming parts of the company and second to keep the best employees.

Those strategic two objectives require a thorough analysis of the business and a respectful evaluation of each person in the workforce. Musk and his kindred spirit Trump did none of that. They were aiming for “shock and awe,” so they moved fast and recklessly. They figured that slashing the ranks made for a tough image and good TV.

Their indiscriminate reductions had nothing to do with efficiency. The agencies were left in chaos and disarray.

A lot of intellectual property of an enterprise resides in the heads of motivated and highly trained employees. Indiscriminate terminations just have to weaken a company’s competence.

Further, the monumental disrespect for workers from Musk’s hatchet team surely has deep and lasting impacts on workforce morale. Do you think anyone gives 110% on the job when the thugs on top show no compassion or appreciation for terminated employees? They were often fired cowardly by email. They were often given short notice to clear out their desks.

Good companies just don‘t do that kind of crap.

Some were fired for alleged “poor performance,” without any evidence on that score. They should bring class action lawsuits for defamation and illegal termination.

Citizens should expect a sharp falloff in service and decision-making in the agencies that were ransacked. As just one example, the Department of Veterans Affairs is losing 80,000 staff people, many of them veterans themselves. Don’t tell me that those loyal Americans weren’t doing value-added work.

I have been involved in 10 company turn-arounds, and if you are straight with the employees, they will often even assist in a necessary restructuring. They care about the survival of the entity and the workers/friends who are retained.

It’s a tough pill for workers who are let go, but respect and appreciation for their contributions go a long way.

Finally, good companies provide their workers with positive references, and many offer out-placement services until the person finds a new job.

Questions: Would you want to work for Trump or Musk?

Do you think the best and brightest interested in public service are going to look for a federal job in the next four years?