What Survives When People Leave?
Image credit: Digby Scott / Midjourney.com
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Recently, the NZ Government announced it's planning further 8700 public service job cuts over the next three years, along with a major drive to implement AI. The plan is to realise around $2.4b in savings.
The question nobody seems to be asking is: “What happens to institutional knowledge, capability, and culture when this many people walk out the door at once?”
There’s an assumption we need to test: that systems and technology can hold what people currently hold. Really? Can technology replace the relational, judgment-based, culture-shaping work of leadership? I don’t think so. Wisdom has its place. And it lives in humans. You can’t automate your way out of a capability problem.
The optimisation drive that AI is catalysing isn’t going away. The leadership challenge now is how to lead through this in a way that builds something lasting rather than just managing the loss.
A useful metaphor for the leadership required now is fire.
You can be the fire. You can be the ‘hero’ leader who tries to save the day, provide certainty and direction where there is very likely to be none, all the while managing a huge change process. You can focus on plugging gaps, and trying to keep the old ways of working going with less people and more expectations. This is exhausting and unsustainable. Leaders who are the fire will burn out faster in this environment.
Or you can be the fire-tender: You can be the ‘host’ leader who develops others, embeds capability, and distributes leadership across the team and the organisation. You’re focused on making the system more resilient. You’re not saving the day, but you are creating the conditions for others to step in and step up. Leaders who tend the fire are the ones whose teams will still function in 18 months’ time.
Where to start?
The leaders and organisations I see approaching this challenge well do these things:
1. Map where your critical capability actually lives before it leaves.
What would break if your three most connected people left next month? Most leaders assume the critical knowledge is in systems, documents, and processes. It's not. It's in relationships, judgment calls, and informal networks that take years to build. When people leave en masse, that goes with them unless someone maps it first. Do you know who matters most?
2. Invest your remaining development energy in the people who'll carry things forward.
Who's being developed to hold what's about to be vacated? In restructures, development budgets get cut, and leaders retreat to operational survival mode. Yet the people staying need investment, because they're about to carry a heavier load with less support around them.
3. Build the systems now that will keep going when individuals leave.
Which of your team's ways of working would survive if you stepped out for three months? The ones that wouldn't are your dependencies. Focus on embedding ways of working that work without a single point of failure. For example, a weekly team decision-making protocol where any of, say, three people can make the call, not just you.
The organisations that come out of this stronger won't be the ones that adopted AI fastest. They'll be the ones whose leaders built the capability that survived the transition.
If you or your leaders want to level up your change leadership capability, drop me a line.