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The recession workplace is &quot;broken&quot; and needs somefixing, post-haste.&#160; That&#39;s not really a new hypothesis; these pages haveincluded such sentiments before.&#160;Melanie Haniph, in Advertising Age recently, explicitly diagrammed thesituation as the result of three factors: a damaged &quot;psychologicalcontract&quot; between manager and employee, heightened competition that hasput pressure on the environment, and a lack of engagement by both employers andworkers.&#160; But uncertainty -- how long will this last? What else can we doto pare expenses? How can we tell where we&#39;re going when the landscape isshifting before our eyes? -- is the driver.&#160; This economic cycle is harsher than anything we&#39;ve seen indecades, and it&#39;s putting a definitive (permanent?) stamp on life at theoffice.&#160;&lt;p&gt;Execs are handed a battle plan and when that is branded afailure by the board or upper level VPs, the battle plan changes track.&#160; That happens all the time, of course,but now it&#39;s happening at a quicker pace, and with a greater degree of coursecorrection.&#160; Real planning goes outthe window.&#160; Some top managers areeither thrown into self-doubt about their abilities, or burn out whileextinguishing a series of operational fires.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And perhaps for the first time, upper management is just asexpendable as the underlings.&#160; (Actually, there haven&#39;t been as manyreplacements this year as last -- planned, forced and voluntary CEO turnover islagging that of 2008, when almost 1,500 chief execs moved on, according toChallenger Gray &amp;amp; Christmas.)&#160;And they&#39;re certainly more likely to suffer increased scrutiny and/orpublic flogging by the media.&#160; Remember all those discussions aboutexecutive bonuses?&#160; A change at thetop isn&#39;t just for those unlucky souls who sit at the head table at a financialfirm; CEOs resigned or were forced out at companies like DuPont, Tyson Foodsand Yahoo! as well (though turnover at this level for financial firms isrunning at 18%, well above the customary 11%).&#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All this uncertainty has begun to unravel thesocial/organizational structure at companies of all types.&#160; Some places have thrived on the newopenness that these times demand.&#160;At those companies department heads are sharing some details aboutfinances, staffing and goals that were never spoken of before.&#160; Managers are compensating for salarycaps and cuts with small perks.&#160; Inthe interest of efficiency, barriers between the decision makers and workerbees are being broken down, even if the organizations themselves aren&#39;t gettingflatter.&#160;&#160; Any or all of theseactions can be continued once business fortunes improve.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But in the long run, will we use anything we learned fromthe past two years to benefit the team?&#160;It&#39;s not likely; the collective conscious has a short memory and isstubbornly resistant to significant change.&#160; But the managers and companies that do should bounce backquicker (and better) than their &quot;back to the status quo&quot;-mindedcounterparts.&lt;/p&gt;

Todd Obolsky

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