In a recent email to company employees, Google CEO Sundar Pichai informed members of the technology behemoth that they would need to slowdown hiring during H2 2022 due to challenging economic headwinds. Google certainly isn’t the only company facing these pressures as many in the tech space, especially, have already started slowing hiring, freezing hiring, or flat-out rolling back payroll (a.k.a. layoffs).
What Sundar Pichai added to his message, however, is what makes him a great organizational leader. While delivering not-so-great news, he provided an inkling of hope and result from the measure.
He stated that “scarcity breeds focus” and that’s a great message to communicate.
There are studies that talk about emotional wellness in the workplace which recommend cleaning your desk or office (or closet; whatever you have) either at the end of every day or first thing in the morning. The reason is that the organization gives you a clean slate to remove clutter – both literally and figuratively – and help you focus on what really matters. It’s another example of scarcity (removing everything that’s LESS important) helping to increase focus on what does matter.
In Google’s case it means focus on engineering and technical prowess. Everything else is extra. It’s necessary, of course, with finance and HR and marketing and sales and everything a large company needs to operate. But at the core is engineering and technology. That’s where they zero-in when it’s time to “remove clutter”.
Every company, every team, every household, every individual can use the same tactic. We don’t always have to take extreme measures once things get too far down the path. Instead, if we keep a really close eye on all of our activities we can realize when things begin to get cluttered and take decisive action to clean it up a bit and focus on what matters most.