Shutting it Down

Vijay Advani

09.30.20

One of the toughest decisions you can make in business is to shut down a division, branch, or venture. Here, Vijay outlines his hard-earned lessons for making these tough changes with empathy and clarity.

Summary:

One of the toughest decisions you can make in business is to shut down a division, branch, or venture. Here, Vijay outlines his hard-earned lessons for making these tough changes with empathy and clarity.

Thuy

What is the toughest moment you've had as a leader?
Vijay_Advani

Vijay Advani

I think when you have to make hard decisions of shutting down businesses. I think it is very hard because at the end of the day, it's right for the business. But, you always have an overlay of the impact you're having on the individuals that you're going to let go. And even giving feedback on an annual basis, I always say they may be disappointed, but they should never be surprised.

And so even along the years, during the year, you need to constantly provide feedback how the business is doing, or how that individual is doing. Because at the end, when you actually make that decision, however hard it is, you just feel slightly better that, you know you have kind of brought them along the way, that they actually know that they were either not performing up to potential or the company was not performing up to potential.