Today's Worsening: Brightsizing

Ever since my company made cuts and restructuring in parts of the sales and customer service organization last week Tuesday the situation has been getting worse day by day. I already gave up trying to call it worse, worse-er, worse-er-er and switched to mathematical notation like worse-(er)⁵ yesterday. A new day today brings yet-another increase in the exponent; i.e., a new, higher degree of worse.

Today's new degree of worse-ification comes in the form of something I heard yesterday but considered a rumor at the time now being confirmed as true. Yesterday when I was discussing problems in company strategy and execution with "Ike", a former a colleague who coincidentally quit just ahead of the staff cuts, he said, "I hear that John and Liz are leaving the company." I mentally filed it as rumor because I'd heard no official news of imminent departures and hadn't yet heard it unofficially from anyone else.

"John" is a manager within my organization, a peer of my boss; "Liz" is a VP in marketing. The news that either of them might be leaving is disappointing, as both are high performers in their jobs. Liz is the most engaged and industry savvy marketing leader we've had in years. John is relatively new as a manager but has really stepped up to lead not just his team of people but drive drive side projects that benefit everyone in the sales engineering function.

Well, today I saw confirmation that John is leaving. It was mentioned in an anonymous comment at the very end of a department-wide meeting. I haven't gotten confirmation yet of Liz resigning, though the fact that Ike was right about John makes it more likely he's right about Liz, too. Update: I got confirmation of Liz's departure a few days later.

Losing people like John and Liz is an example of brightsizing I first wrote about a few days ago. Simply put, brightsizing is when smart, successful people quit in a context of job cuts or reorganizations. When a company makes cuts it usually targets low performers termination. But when people subsequently quit because they no longer believe in or trust leadership, it's often the high performers, the best and the brightest, who leave first. That's why it's called bright-sizing.

High performers tend to leave quickly because they've got the strongest résumés and thus the greatest ability to get hired into a great new job right away. And as high performers they want to work in equally high-performing organizations. They're not going to squander their careers under executive leaders who demonstrate poorly thought-out strategy, unprofessional communication, and a growing record of insufficient results.

Brightsizing is a double-whammy for those of us who'd like to see it through. Not only is their departure another no-confidence vote in the leadership, the loss of high performers makes getting our job done well with who's left much harder.

Ceasefire Between Hamas and Israel?

In the news yesterday was announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The deal, brokered by the US, Qatar, and Egypt, would see Israeli hostages held in Gaza returned and a number of Palestinian prisoners in Israel released in the first of three phases. The first phase would also involve Israel withdrawing its troops from most of Gaza and allowing humanitarian aid to flood in. Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 15 Jan 2025.

One might wonder while hearing this objectively good news, Why now? What took so long? This war, now in its 16th month, was instigated by Hamas's surprise October 7 attack on Israel killing 1,400 people and taking as hostages over 100 people, most of whom were civilians. One ceasefire was attempted over a year ago; it lasted less than a week. And the framework agreed to yesterday is one US negotiators in the Biden administration first proposed last May. They've been working on getting acceptance for 8 months.

So why now? Why after 16 months of grinding war and significant humanitarian crisis, and after 8 months of negotiation on the same framework? Well, first, such negotiations are never fast. The sides have got to fight it out until their positions, and future possibilities, become clear enough. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously said, with slight paraphrasing, "War is diplomacy by other means." But still, why now? What changed recently to get the parties to shift their form of diplomacy from guns and bombs to words and handshakes? To me it's three things:

1. Hamas's military support has been significantly degraded. Destroying Hamas's own means of making war and launching terrorist attacks has a constant in the conflict since its start. Even six months ago a lot of it had been destroyed... and what was left was very well hidden. But what's really changed in the past few months is that Hamas's allies have suffered major losses. Hezbollah lost hundreds of its leaders in a carefully orchestrated, intelligence-driven attack by Israel a few months ago. You may remember that as the one with the exploding pagers. And walkie-talkies. Then last month rebels swiftly ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who fled to Russia. The common denominator behind all three of these— Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad— is that they've been propped up by Iran. Iran has lost significant resources and international standing as its clients have been beaten. Plus, tough international sanctions against Iran have continued to bite. The bottom line of Iran having fewer proxies and less money to throw at them is that Hamas military leaders now no longer see themselves being as capable of achieving anything, even their leaders' personal survival, through continued war.

2. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is in a stronger position domestically. It's been charged many times over the past umpteen months that one reason Israel reached a ceasefire agreement is because it doesn't want one. While that statement on its face may seem like a tautology, what it's pointing to is Netanyahu's precarious position in Israeli politics. He's been clinging onto power by a small margin and will face prosecution on corruption charges once he's no longer in power. Thus he's kept the country in a state of war, many allege, because the active war blunts his opponents' push to remove him. And he's held onto a slim governing majority that includes far-right parties that are war-mongers. With recent successes such as that exploding-pager victory over Hezbollah, and Assad's fall in Syria, Netanyahu is enjoying broader support at him. He finally has enough political margin to risk crossing his far-right coalition members.

3. The President Trump Wildcard. One thing I wondered right away when I heard news of the ceasefire agreement yesterday morning was why this thing negotiated by President Biden's envoys was coming to fruition only in the last few days of his administration. Was "Get it done before Trump comes in" a factor? Indeed, president-elect Trump claimed credit for the agreement on his Truth Social media platform even before President Biden announced it officially in a news conference. But did Trump really do anything? I'd say yes and no. No, he didn't participate in the negotiations directly. His people were involved at the very end, as part of the Biden team's commitment to a smooth handover— something, I'll note, Trump and his team absolutely did not do in January 2020— but they certainly weren't involved in the 8 months of negotiating it took to get to yesterday's agreement. And Trump's personal contribution was his fear factor. As he's signaled unconditional support for Israel throughout his campaign, called for even tougher actions against Hamas, and rejected all concerns about humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Hamas's leadership had to realize that making a deal under Biden was their last, best chance.

Update: Even as I posted this journal entry, the ceasefire deal was already getting wobbly with threatened resignations from Netanyahu's coalition and ongoing attacks.