Business developments expand and contract in harmony with economic developments. From this vantage, the current recession might be likened not so much to the Great Depression, but to more generalized periods of economic contraction. Yet, just as the ghost of the Great Depression has become a media favorite with which all of us must now contend, other ghosts may also be stirred to life in the present turbulence.

I became  aware of one such ghost, powerfully operating in the enduring organizational memory of a going business. It represented the historical loss of a family business, never mourned. And rose up, now, in a period of corporate upheaval, active in powerfully energized emotion and discontent.

I was introduced to the “Anodyne Group” as a muscular international firm, bearing up under the headwinds of our current global turmoil; but learned, through inquiry, that Anodyne’s origins fifty years ago, were in a robust family business, competing with similar Northeastern U.S. firms in commodity sales.

Acquired through expansion by an international firm within the last two decades ,  Anodyne’s operations and procedures had begun a long period of alignment with its new corporate parent. However, globalization and the shifting of markets to Southeast Asia had taken its toll. Anodyne’s US operations had become uncompetitive relative both to its industry and to other corporate business units.

The current economic contraction afforded Anodyne the opportunity to streamline its operations toward new business in alignment with contemporary business models. Reduced profits, from 2008 onward had exerted additional pressures. Anodyne’s management responded to the newly contracting business environment assertively— laying off numerous employees in communities linked to Anodyne’s historical origins.

Downsized workers were upset and dismayed. Despite generous buy-out packages, they acted as if they’d been betrayed by Anodyne. Inquiry revealed that their attachment, however, was not to Anodyne as the organization it had become since acquisition by its corporate parent;  but to a mythic, familial Anodyne— recalled both by long-time employees and successive generations of new hires, who had been socialized into the Anodyne culture through mentorship . Indeed, Anodyne’s vision statement still referred to the firm as the “Anodyne family”. Despite the long-time departure of family members both as managers and stakeholders, Anodyne had preserved its heritage as “family” long past its time. The “family” remained a ghost, disturbed only in this economic downturn, because of contemporary imperatives.

The consultation challenge for Anodyne necessarily went beyond outplacement. It required an exorcism of the unmourned transition from family business to international corporation. While the family tradition may have once served a purpose in an earlier moment of organizational transition, its success had become a liability.

In this  historical moment of already painful, if pragmatic, business contraction, Anodyne had also to affirm that its members were no longer an “Anodyne family”, but employees in a rapidly globalizing corporate workforce. Only with this clarification could sense be made of downsizing as practical business sense— however painful all around; and not familial betrayal.

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