JacobRosenberg.net

While I’m sure I’m not the last person at AOL to blog about our ongoing reorganization, plenty of other people have gotten their thoughts out there, so I thought it might be helpful to some tips for navigating the 5 stages of receiving bad news.

1. Denial

This is by far the most popular stage to get mired in these days. Recent stories, however, are making it tougher to deny what’s going on. Yes, it’s really happening. Yes, it’s going on right now. It isn’t a rumor anymore — it’s time to deal with it.
2. Anger

This is a stage where emotional outbursts, perhaps in the form of posts or comments on some site known for publishing rumors, are common. Resist the temptation to blog during this period, especially if you’re Dossy.

3. Bargaining

The prototypical bargaining tends to be with a higher power. The fact that many of your colleagues are reaching this phase may explain why your manager is looking so tired. You may wonder if change could be delayed until a project ends, or perhaps avoided altogether (e.g., Can we skip the layoffs if we don’t have a holiday part).

Sometimes this bargaining takes the form of a deal with yourself. I’m sure right now, at least a few employees are counting the days until bonuses are paid out. Others, who recently received layoff notices, may be considering whether to look for some opportunity to stay. Remember that you have to live with any deal you make, especially if it is with yourself.
4. Depression

Can’t… even… manage… to… blog…

5. Acceptance

Yup, things are changing, and that’s how it has to be. The reality is that every company, every society, every person is continually changing and this is simply part of the human condition.

Many of us are very wrapped up in the AOL Experience — we’ve been living the company day in, day out for years. This can lead to a certain loss of perspective: it is, after all, just a company that provides a service. We’ll do our best, and deal with what is to come next.

And, if what you really need is a dose of schadenfreude, just think that Yahoo employees will probably be doing the exact same thing really soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 17th, 2006 at 11:28 am and is filed under aol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.