namnori

A manager is only as good as his staff.

I'll remember that one.

It is inevitable. When there is not enough work to go around, spider senses start tingling and employees start seeking information; a lot of it. They look to upper management (good luck there buddy boy!), and worse, their cubicle neighbors.

From personal experience, I can tell you that the cynical tendencies of the office will distort and magnify layoff gossip, spreading it like wildfire and killing productivity. Managers, in general, must realize that workers are uncomfortable with an absence of information. They will in most cases choose the most convenient sources to fill in the void.

It has been once said that all information is good, even if it is bad. Those few that survive the latest brutal round of job cuts will expect a certain level of frankness from upper management to preserve motivation, as well as a sense of job security. Therefore, I agree and say the best option is transparency, but only on one condition. Cut once, cut deep, and prevent a demoralizing series of job layoffs that will only keep the workers guessing and the monster.com server busy.

I think the layoff blog is a great step; companies finally dishing the honesty and respect its workers deserve.

Well, you are definitely right about one thing: policy analysis is, unfortunately, a task too exhaustive for the average American. Therefore, I can definitely imagine a counterintuitive (but right) stance turning off voters.

However, one thing that I have learned throughout this whole financial crisis is that people do care. And regardless of whether or not the underlying problem(s) are generally understood, the public wants solutions...and good ones.

Political stances are always under a lot of scrutiny from the university professors and media networks. So if the general public cannot analyze and understand the full situation they will instead rely on and digest the consensus of the intellectual community. I cannot see politicians (at least smart ones) worrying about having their their voters understanding their policies. They have bigger fish to fry. They have to be right, they have a record to defend, and they want to carry on a political career that can only advance with a record of retrospectively, good judgment. Matthew Arnold put it best with, "The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next."