Surviving Redundancy: It's not personal...until it happens to you!

Context

Almost a decade ago I was made redundant. When this happened, one of my dear friends asked me to write a blog on my experience with redundancy. Now, 10 years later I have revisited that post and added a post-script with my recent insights...

The post (that was written in 2016)

For a few years, as part of my role as a change consultant, I had been running numerous sessions on the ‘neuroscience of change’, using David Rock’s SCARF model, to help teams and leaders understand the hard-wired responses to change, how and why they vary among individuals, and how to support people through the transitions. After advising and coaching teams and individuals, it actually happened to me (along with another 140+ colleagues from the same division). When my manager broke the news to me, I was shocked. There was no forewarning, no gossip or other usual signals.

Despite being ready for the next move for the next challenge, the announcement still rocked me! The ‘survivors’ told me over and over again, it’s not personal. At that time, my standard response to that platitude was – of course it’s not personal…until it happens to you. Nowhere to go after that comment, hey?

So when this happens, who coaches the change coach? It was time to put my knowledge and experience to good use for myself. Let me share with you how I applied the SCARF model that I had worked through with many groups, and eventually used for my own self-assessment to better understand my emotional triggers to my redundancy news.

The SCARF model overview

As humans, we are hardwired to minimise threat and maximise reward. SCARF looks at the primal reaction in the human brain to situations of threat or reward, which can now be measured by imaging technology such as fMRIs. When one of the elements in the SCARF model is reduced or taken away, our brain activates a threat response.  If an aspect is increased or granted to us, we activate a reward response.  When we are impacted in one or more of these areas, how can it not be personal? SCARF stands for:

Status	About our relative importance to others
Certainty	Our concerns being able to predict the future.
Autonomy	A sense of control over events.
Relatedness	Our sense of safety with others, of friend or foe.
Fairness	Our perception of fair exchanges between people.

 My self-assessment

In my sessions, as part of the activity and discussions, I would ask individuals to rate how they are feeling, on a threat-reward scale, against each of the five SCARF elements in the context of the current events taking place.

Now, it was time to do this myself!

Here’s the concerns and responses I experienced:

Status	My immediate response was a perceived status loss. I knew being able to say I was a change consultant in a large organisation was impressive. Would I secure the same attention or respect if I worked in a smaller organisation or was self-employed? What would my colleagues and friends think of my capability?
Certainty	For a few weeks, the only certainty was the date of my last day of being officially employed by this organisation. What would the future bring? When would I be earning money again? Where would I work? A great deal of uncertainty.
Autonomy	The fact that the decision was made for me meant no autonomy. There were no options for other roles. However, on a positive side, it provided a different version of autonomy for me – to do what I want, seek what I want.
Relatedness	Interesting stuff happened in this space! People who I thought would reach out, such as some immediate team members, avoided me. At times, I felt expelled from the ‘tribe’. Support and kind words came from unexpected places, from some people I didn’t know very well. As over 140 people were made redundant we didn’t feel alone. Very soon after the news, a couple of the impacted employees set up a private group on our Enterprise Social Network to arrange coffee catch ups and to share useful information. It was only through this channel that many of us found out who our other impacted colleagues were, as the information was not disclosed by the organisation. Interestingly, this ESN group was not supported by the organisation – we heard senior leaders wanted to shut it down. This is the ‘new power’ of collaboration through informal networks folks! We found each other and became our own support group – a new ‘tribe’ bound by a shared experience. I realised after many years in the one organisation, there were some ‘good’ people I would miss the regular connection and banter with.
Fairness	Fairness is largely based on perception. Based on what my colleagues were telling me, this did not seem fair and no one could make sense of why my role was impacted. There were no performance issues, my work was exceeding expectations and gaining industry recognition. Less capable people were untouched.

For me, the lack of perceived fairness was the one I was most affected by and the one I couldn’t rationalise. It didn’t make sense to me, nor to most of my colleagues. What became quite apparent is an absence of training for the unaffected people, on how to deal with impacted employees and how to manage their own emotions associated with ‘survivor guilt’ (a blog topic in itself). Some of the people who avoided me are senior leaders in the business and I was surprised by what appeared to be their lack of emotional intelligence. It’s an awkward time for people on both sides of the change impacts.

So in my personal journey of surviving redundancy, I’ll always remember what one of my colleagues told me:

When you jump off the cliff one of two things will happen:

1.       You will fly, or

2.       You will land on your feet

And they are both good outcomes.

One decade later…

Now, almost a decade later, I realise it was the best thing that happened to me. Since ‘jumping off the cliff’ and facing imposed change, I set up my own business #changehacks and soon later collaborated with Dr Jen Frahm to establish the Agile Change Leadership Institute. I wrote two books - Hacking for Agile Change in 2017 and Change Essentials in 2020 and co-authored The Agile Change Playbook (2020) with Jen.

I created online courses, wrote numerous guest blogs and eBooks, created and co-created new content and IP that took us to Silicon Valley and consulting to organisations around the globe, spoken at conferences, delivered 100’s of presentations in-person and virtually, consulted and collaborated with big organisations across all industries and learned from so many. Not one day of this has felt like work – it’s been a blast!

Here's my key take-aways, in hindsight (which is described as 20/20 vision):

• Redundancy still feels personal. If it happens to you – it’s okay to feel like that.

• Embracing uncertainty is hard – but things usually do happen for a good reason!

• Reflect on the experience through the lens of the SCARF model – to identify which element was the most triggering for you.  Back then, for me it was fairness. Now, being self-employed, I have realised how much I value autonomy and that I do have a tolerance for uncertainty. I appreciate it’s not the same for everyone.

• Survivor Guilt needs more attention.

• When one tribe appears to reject you, there is another tribe, or many tribes ready to welcome you.

Vibe with your tribe!