No problem: Just adopt one or more of the following tried-but-true proven techniques for grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.

1. Make downsizing the bogey man

All on its own, "downsizing" has no emotional baggage. In the many companies with either structural over- or mis-employment liberating the company from employees who do little except reduce corporate shareholder value represents a mandate for survival.

But there will always be those who decide that the best defense against any staff reductions, warranted or not, is to characterise ALL downsizing as reckless and excessive. Permit the latter fiction to prevail, and the company shoots itself in the foot in terms of this one of the Five Deltas.

2. Surplus, Don´t Cut

Finally, the company has faced up to the dual realities of (1) skills requirement profiles that change entirely every two yards (if not sooner), and (2) structural overstaffing, facilitated by misguided, value-destroying practices within the HR administrative fiefdom.

Regrettable but necessary decisions to separate the company from certain value-reducing staff have been made. But then, instead of completing the job, the company wimps out designates those to be separated as simply ´surplus´-

In a victory of bureaucrat gerbil spin over the forces of value-creation, the division or unit that transfers its unwanted/unneeded bodies from active employment to this zombie zone are (gasp) permitted to act as if they have ´created value´ by removing cost ballast. So much for the fiction. The reality is that no value improvement action has been taken only a meaningless transfer of the still-employed value- diminisher from Column A to Column B.

To no one´s surprise, those in the financial community who set company valuations are not fooled for a second, and no improvement in shareholder value is granted to the deceivers.

3. The trick-spin cost reduction announcement

Pick a massive cost reduction / efficiency improvement target-- something with a lot of zeros after it will do nicely. Next, advertise the fanciful target via your in-house corporate communications people, loud and long (what´s a ferret for, after all).

But make sure of two things- never, ever make a distinction between reductions in today´s oversized cost base and mere avoidance of possible, projected future spending in your definition of ´costs´. And never set a time limit for when these true and illusory cost savings might be achieved.

4. The Bad Mix

Dilute and disable the powerful E2 initiative by throwing it into a big project pot including some improbable growth initiatives plus a few distractions that the CONsultants have recently become hot about-- something with the words ´culture´, ´sustainability´ or ´leadership´ is preferred.

Cast into such a poisonous brew, the fist step is that major E2 value initiatives are emasculated down into a mere afterthought in the form of soft assurance that the various value-diminishing parts of the mix are to be implemented ´in the most efficient manner possible´ or alternative weasel words to that effect. But that de-grading is only temporary.

By the second draft any mention of value-creating basic cost reform will have been purged.
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