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Important topic, thanks for sharing your experiences Nickey.

To your point about giving your team the opportunity (space) to process + close a chapter so they can open up a new one -> I've generally found the Bridges Transition Model to be most prescient: https://wmbridges.com/about/what-is-transition/

One of the core concepts in it being that people need to traverse a "neutral zone" as part of the transition process. That process may be quick for some and slow for others - but you can't skip past it regardless.

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So few instances of this done well. Some of it has to do with the mindset and language: “kill a project” “sunset the initiative”. Does it have to be so fatal? Imho “closure” can still occur when we evolve & move on, and a prerequisite for that is for everyone to be a part of the decision.

Too often there’s secrecy on why a certain thing is getting killed. Unless there are some tangible business risks, it’s so much better to spend the extra time and inform the team that a decision is coming, explain the tradeoffs, and leaders would be surprised how often a team will come to the same conclusion - we should stop X and move on to Y.

All of the above is harder if roles have to also go away, but the amount of angst and anger could be greatly reduced still.

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