Sitting across from Oliver and his three directs, the conversation was going as expected.
“Walk us through the last data center move you led.”
“What are the top risks you worry about in a strategic initiative like this?”
“How do you coordinate multiple vendors with competing priorities?”
Then one of the directors finally asked the question everyone was thinking about.
“I just handed out layoff notices to most of the staff in Boston.
It’s pretty depressing there.
How will you keep people motivated so this move is successful?”
We’d seen this before.
Realities of Consolidation and Layoffs
In mergers and acquisitions (M&A), consolidation is the plan.
Costs get cut. Buildings, utilities, roles, everything gets trimmed.
The first move for many companies is to point to the severance package and remind people the work “matters.”
When that doesn’t motivate, managers clamp down with more meetings and tighter tracking.
That’s another miss when the team already knows they won’t be there at the end.
Instead, we focused on what they could still control.
We made the deliverables list simple and fair.
No busywork. No hovering.
Just: “This is what needs to get done, and this is what done looks like.”
We brought in help and tools to reduce their workload.
Then we showed them how to turn that work into what would come next for them.
We coached them on how to turn their contributions into resume bullets and interview points:
what they owned,
what they solved,
and what changed because of it.
At that point, they weren’t doing it for the company, or for us. They were doing it for themselves.
They had the system knowledge we needed. The trade was respect, autonomy, and support in exchange for steady execution.
In the end, the data center moved on schedule.
Not because everyone felt good about the closure, but because our plan aligned with reality.
