Bill Canady argues that cutting staff across the board just makes a company smaller. Instead, identify people doing work you've stopped doing, cut or redeploy them, and move survivors to revenue-generating work. This permanently shifts the capability-to-cost ratio.
You made the company smaller at the identical ratio. The remaining people are now doing the work of people who aren't there, and you have spent your one credible restructuring on nothing. Doesn't feel good. Now, the ratio rewards capability, not thrift. Now, there is one exception, and it's important. Cutting people who are attached to work you have actually stopped doing is completely different. That's not thrift. That's the second half of the principle, redeploying resources from low-value activity to high-value activity. You retire the tail. So the 4 people who service the tail move to segments that pay or they leave. That moves the ratio and it moves it permanently.
