Tuesday April 07, 2009 
Tuesday April 07, 2009 And this time, it wasn't Ralph Kramden. The person with the big mouth and total lack of integrity is he or she who felt compelled to leak the IBM story to the press. And I'd like to say to that person, “Why don't you go work somewhere else? Like for the competition?”
Consider the grief we've had since the story hit the Wall Street Journal. Employees have been distracted. Angst has soared. Productivity has taken a hit. As if we didn't have enough to deal with, laying off 1,500 employees last week. And for what? Nothing. The talks have ended, if you believe the papers (although that doesn't necessarily mean anything). So we're back to where we were before, but ... different. There's an uneasiness in the air that wasn't present before. We've had dirty laundry aired in public, and we've had to come to terms with our attachment to Sun, should we actually be acquired by another firm.
Employee communication 101 teaches us that to help employees through a transition of this size, you need to answer two basic questions:
Why is there better than here?
What will happen to me?
Neither question is possible to answer when you're in a state of limbo. Which puts managers in an impossible situation – not knowing anymore than the employees do, completely unable to answer questions and not able to paint a picture of the future. So the faster a company can move to a decision point, the healthier it is for employees.
But we had the worst of all worlds – unsubstantiated rumors everywhere we turned. Respectable journalists reporting the story. And enough details to the rumor to make it hard to believe someone wasn't just making this stuff up.
Which brings me back to our own Ralph Kramden with the BIG mouth. You're not the greatest, pal. And you're no friend of Sun's. “To the moon,” buddy, to the moon...
Posted by terrymckenzie ( Apr 07 2009, 08:34:24 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [15]
