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# The Humane Restructuring Is the One You Do Not Have to Repeat
- URL: https://www.antoinebuteau.com/the-humane-restructuring-is-the-one-you-do-not-have-to-repeat/
- Published: 2026-10-02T04:21:14.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T04:21:14.000Z
- Description: Most leaders try to make a layoff humane by making it smaller.
- Author: Antoine Buteau
- Tags: Research Explainers, Leadership, Management

Most leaders try to make a layoff humane by making it smaller.

The instinct is understandable. If the company needs to reduce costs, cutting 8 percent feels less cruel than cutting 18 percent. Fewer people lose their jobs. The announcement sounds less catastrophic. Leadership can tell itself it preserved as much of the team as possible.

But a small cut is only kinder if it solves the problem.

If it leaves the company underfunded, strategically confused, or organized around work it can no longer afford, another round follows. The people who left discover that their sacrifice bought very little. The people who stayed spend months wondering whether they are next. Managers stop planning beyond the quarter, recruiting becomes harder, and every rumor becomes credible.

The humane way to restructure is to avoid layoffs whenever a viable alternative exists. Once leadership concludes that roles truly need to disappear, the obligation changes: build a company that can survive, give the people leaving a dignified exit, and give the people staying a plan they can believe.

That usually requires cutting deeply enough. It never excuses cutting carelessly.

## Start with the company you can afford to become

Too many restructurings begin with a savings target and a spreadsheet of names. Finance calculates the gap. Each executive is assigned a percentage. Managers defend their people. The final list reflects political strength as much as strategy.

The better sequence starts with the future operating model.

What has changed about demand, access to capital, the product roadmap, or the path to profitability? Which markets and products still deserve investment? What work must continue for customers? What work can stop entirely? Which capabilities will matter over the next 18 to 24 months?

Only then should leadership design the organization.

[David Ulevitch’s Readwise-saved guide](https://a16z.com/planning-and-managing-layoffs/?ref=antoinebuteau.com) makes the key unit of analysis explicit: eliminate roles, not people. A layoff is a response to a company plan that no longer works. It should not become a disguised performance-ranking exercise or an opportunity for each manager to remove whoever they like least.

This role-first approach also forces uncomfortable strategic choices. If the company says enterprise is the priority but preserves every small-business motion, it has not restructured. It has distributed pain without narrowing focus. If it removes account executives but keeps the same pipeline targets, or removes engineers without changing the roadmap, the plan is fictional.

A real restructuring decides what the company will stop doing.

## Exhaust the alternatives before calling them kindness

Layoffs are expensive in ways that do not appear in a headcount model. Severance, legal work, lost knowledge, slower execution, customer anxiety, recruiting damage, and lower trust among the remaining team all carry a cost.

David Cote’s account of leading Honeywell through the financial crisis, captured in [*Winning Now, Winning Later*](https://www.harpercollinsleadership.com/winning-now-winning-later/?ref=antoinebuteau.com), argues that layoffs make little sense when the company expects to refill the same roles after a short downturn. Honeywell used furloughs in some cases because the company wanted to preserve industrial knowledge and remain ready for the recovery. Cote reserved permanent job cuts for positions the company did not expect to recreate.

That is a useful test: if leadership expects to rehire the same capability in six or twelve months, a furlough, reduced schedule, hiring freeze, executive pay cut, contractor reduction, office change, or project cancellation may be less destructive.

Alternatives still need financial scrutiny. Ulevitch warns that broad salary cuts can look fair while doing little to change burn, especially in smaller companies. They can also push the strongest employees into the market while leaving the company with the same strategic confusion.

Empathy should improve the analysis, not replace it. [Mark Suster](https://bothsidesofthetable.com/hard-decisions-require-empathy-1fa39fd75e6b?ref=antoinebuteau.com) recommends grounding the decision in persistent demand, runway, financing options, and the actual savings required. A temporary shock calls for a different response than a broken business model.

Leaders should be able to explain why a layoff is necessary, why the alternatives are insufficient, and why the proposed organization fits the company’s next chapter. If they cannot, they are not ready to make the cut.

## Cut to a credible plan

Once layoffs are necessary, minimizing the first number can maximize the total damage.

Ulevitch advises leaders to “do it once.” His reasoning is practical: the company is already accepting the emotional and cultural cost of a layoff, so the savings must create enough runway for the remaining organization to reach a believable milestone.

Small repeated cuts can deliver the cultural pain of a layoff without materially changing expenses. The company pays that price again each time leadership returns to the list.

“Cut deep enough” should not become an arbitrary instruction to maximize the number. It means sizing the restructuring against a conservative operating case rather than the forecast everyone hopes will happen.

The plan should answer four questions:

1. How much runway or operating margin does the company need?
2. What conservative revenue case supports that target?
3. What one-time costs will the restructuring create?
4. What work, teams, management layers, and commitments disappear with the roles?

Cash in the bank is not the only signal. Leaders should also examine efficiency and forward growth. A company can have substantial cash and still be carrying an organization built for a growth rate that no longer exists. Conversely, a company should not cut a productive engine merely to imitate peers or satisfy a fashionable efficiency ratio.

The goal is a stable plan with room for bad news. If the base case needs every sales target, renewal, and financing event to land perfectly, the company has created a waiting room for the next round.

## Own the failure without making the day about yourself

A layoff is a company decision. Leadership owns it.

In [*The Hard Thing About Hard Things*](https://a16z.com/books/the-hard-thing-about-hard-things/?ref=antoinebuteau.com), Ben Horowitz argues that leaders should describe a layoff as the company failing to hit its plan, not as a sudden discovery that many employees were weak performers. Some strong people will leave because leadership hired ahead of demand, funded the wrong bets, missed a market shift, or waited too long to react.

Employees already know who approved the budget and set the strategy. Euphemisms do not protect trust. They make leadership look evasive.

Ownership does not mean turning the announcement into a public display of executive anguish. The leader still has a job, authority, and access to information. The employee is losing income, colleagues, status, routine, and often immigration or health-care security.

Ulevitch and [Regina Gerbeaux](https://twitter.com/%5Frpgbx/status/1892349794670010493/?rw%5Ftt%5Fthread=True&ref=antoinebuteau.com) both warn managers against saying how painful the decision is for them. That asks the person being laid off to absorb the leader’s feelings at the exact moment their own life has been disrupted.

The useful version of ownership is short: the company made decisions that brought it here; the role is being eliminated; the decision is final; here is what happens next.

## Prepare the human details before the announcement

Compassion without preparation becomes another burden for the employee.

Before the first conversation, every affected person should have a clear answer to the questions that will shape the next several weeks:

- When does employment end?
- What severance will be paid, and when?
- What happens to benefits, equity, bonuses, commissions, and unused vacation?
- When will system access end?
- How can personal files be retrieved and company equipment returned?
- Will the company provide references, immigration support, job-placement help, or an alumni directory?
- Who can answer questions after the meeting?

Legal and HR review is mandatory, including an adverse-impact analysis and jurisdiction-specific requirements. Kind intentions do not compensate for an inconsistent or unlawful process.

Ulevitch also recommends timing benefits with care. If health coverage ends at month-end, moving the employment end date by a day may preserve another month of coverage. Severance should be consistent, understandable, and paid in a form that gives employees reasonable control over their own needs.

These are operational details, but employees experience them as evidence of respect.

## Tell people directly and privately

People should learn that they lost their job from a person, not from a locked account, a generic email, or a group webinar.

Managers need a script, rehearsal, the complete logistics packet, and clear boundaries on what they can say. Horowitz insists that managers deliver the news to their own people rather than outsourcing the hardest part to HR. HR can support the conversation; it should not become the face of a decision the manager and company own.

The conversation itself should be brief and unambiguous. State that the role is being eliminated and that the person is being laid off. Pause. Let them react. Explain the immediate next steps. Do not debate the decision, improvise promises, identify other affected employees, or fill the silence with nervous small talk.

Suster’s advice is to remain present without becoming defensive. The person may cry, become angry, bargain, or go quiet. The manager’s job is to listen, acknowledge the impact, and stay steady.

Gerbeaux calls this balance empathy with authority. Clarity prevents false hope. Calm prevents the employee from having to manage the manager.

## Finish the notifications, then remove the uncertainty

Once notifications begin, rumors move faster than leadership. Run the individual conversations in a tight window. As soon as they are complete, tell the remaining company that the notifications are over.

That last sentence carries enormous weight. Without it, every employee waits for the next calendar invitation.

The CEO should explain what changed, why the old plan no longer worked, how many roles were affected, what support is being provided, and what the new plan requires. The message should name the leadership failure without demeaning the company or the people who remain.

Horowitz notes that the company-wide message is largely for those staying. They will judge leadership by how their former colleagues were treated. They also need to see the CEO afterward. Visibility matters more than a polished memo: answer questions, acknowledge what is not known, and remain available when the emotional weight of the day reaches the rest of the organization.

## Give the smaller company a smaller plan

The day after a layoff, many companies ask fewer people to execute the same roadmap. That is not restructuring. It is overload.

The new organization needs explicit decisions about priorities, ownership, service levels, customers, products, and meetings. The Readwise article on [recalibrating a go-to-market system after a RIF](https://gtmonday.substack.com/p/how-to-use-the-gtm-operating-system) recommends narrowing markets, protecting the products and customer motions that matter, cutting activities the smaller team cannot execute well, and resetting the metrics everyone uses.

Within the first week, every team should know:

- which work has stopped;
- which decisions have a new owner;
- which customer promises remain unchanged;
- which targets are being reset;
- where capacity is now visibly thin;
- what milestone would make the company stable.

Do not tell survivors to “do more with less.” Tell them what less the company will do.

Then make room for grief, anger, and doubt without treating every hard question as disloyalty. People lost friends and mentors. Their workload may change. Their belief in the company may have weakened. Trust returns through accurate promises and consistent decisions, not one motivational all-hands.

## The standard is coherence

There is no painless layoff. Severance, careful words, and a well-run day cannot erase the harm of losing a job.

Leadership can still avoid making the harm worse.

The decision should follow a strategy. The number should fund that strategy under conservative assumptions. The roles should match the future company. The process should be lawful, direct, private, and prepared. The people leaving should receive real support. The people staying should inherit a plan built for the smaller payroll.

Humane leadership requires discipline before the decision, courage once the alternatives are gone, and enough care in the execution that people do not have to relive the restructuring three months later.

## Sources

- [Planning and Managing Layoffs](https://a16z.com/planning-and-managing-layoffs/?ref=antoinebuteau.com), David Ulevitch
- [Hard Decisions Require Empathy](https://bothsidesofthetable.com/hard-decisions-require-empathy-1fa39fd75e6b?ref=antoinebuteau.com), Mark Suster
- [The Hard Thing About Hard Things](https://a16z.com/books/the-hard-thing-about-hard-things/?ref=antoinebuteau.com), Ben Horowitz
- [Winning Now, Winning Later](https://www.harpercollinsleadership.com/winning-now-winning-later/?ref=antoinebuteau.com), David M. Cote
- [Six Mistakes to Avoid When Letting Someone Go](https://twitter.com/%5Frpgbx/status/1892349794670010493/?rw%5Ftt%5Fthread=True&ref=antoinebuteau.com), Regina Gerbeaux
- [How to Use the GTM Operating System to Recalibrate After Budget Cuts or a RIF](https://gtmonday.substack.com/p/how-to-use-the-gtm-operating-system), GTM Partners