5a Successful Downsizing: Developing A Culture Of Trust And Responsibility

5 A Successful Downsizing: Developing a Culture of Trust and Responsibilityby Alexander Laufer, Dan Ward, and Alistair CockburnMy Engineering Staff Shrunk from 80 to 12Judy Stokley recalls the challenges she faced when she took over as program director of the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida:“Talk about a difficult start. The program was rife with problems when I arrived, not the least of which was the mandated drawdown plan that had not been met. The Air Force had issued a mandate to draw down the workforce, and everyone on the program knew about it—civil servants, military personnel, and support contractors. A lot of these people had been on the program for the full 20 years it had existed, and many thought they were going to stay there until they retired.“The program director before me had not been able to face letting people go. ‘I would rather retire than let that many people go,’ he had said, and that’s exactly what he did—so there was a perception in the program office that perhaps we would be able to ‘escape’ compliance with the directive.”Judy called a meeting of all 200 workers who were assigned to