Mike McGavick Quotes

Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.

But I don't want massive layoffs of anyone - public or private. We are planning on shrinking government through attrition and reform, not through random pink slips.

Tough times helped many commodities producers become lean and mean through consolidation, mergers and cost-cutting. All that excess supply has been sopped up.

We held the team together for as long as possible and then sent all except the most critical personnel home.

As long as we are one of the most expensive countries to produce in, we should focus on cutting costs that directly and indirectly weigh on business.

In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.

Strapped by tight credit and plummeting sales, businesses have overhauled the way they manage supply chains, inventory, production practices and staffing.

When you have less revenue coming in the door, you have more money going out the door. You have to find ways of trimming.

We will downsize the government, motivate excess employees to become entrepreneurs, and increase the pay of a lean and mean bureaucracy.

I will be ruthless in cutting out waste, streamlining structures and improving efficiency.

A research group found that 56 percent of major companies surveyed in the late '80s agreed that 'employees who are loyal to the company and further its business goals deserve an assurance of continued employment.' A decade later, only 6 percent agreed. It was in the '90s that companies started weeding people out as a form of cost reduction.

Things are bad in 2001 at Yahoo. There's been layoffs, restructuring, lots of people left.

There are companies that are cutting their costs by over 50% by offshoring.

You know, in a workplace, when you shrink the size of a workforce, there is pain there. But there is no question: we have a government that we can no longer afford. That is the cold, hard fact. So we have to make this more efficient. We have to sunset programs that no longer work. We have to eliminate waste and fraud. We must do this.

The two words, in the American lexicon, are never good. Pink slip. The first time I ever heard it when I was young was when Kaiser Steel handed out pink slips to many of my neighbors and relatives. Layoffs were about efficiency, sales figures for raw materials or refrigerators.

The only way to make budget cuts is to bring down force structure.

The consolidation that we started in 2009 was clearly the requirement of that time.

From a productivity standpoint, you're supposed to reduce headcount on par with declining revenue. If you believe the environment isn't going to improve, you should take a bigger cut to get in front of the problems.

I cleaned up everything behind the scenes and simplified my life. I made some changes in my staff. I changed management, my accountants, my bookkeeping team. I had a full refresh. For me that was extremely important.

If your cash is about to run out, you have to cut your cash flow. CEOs have to make those decisions and live with them however painful they may be. You have to act and act now; and act in the best interest of the company as a whole, even if it means that some people in the company who are your best friends have to work somewhere else.

New management at Nine has launched a concerted attack on its cost base in order to restore margins through eliminating waste, improving efficiency and lowering programming costs.

You can fire your workers, close your factories, export your jobs overseas, and get a tax deduction for doing it.

How does a government reduce expenditures? To be absolutely flat about it, 99 per cent of it is accomplished by putting people out of work. Now that is a tough way to say it, but it is a fact.

There are limits to what reorganization and reform can do.

If you have six corporate centres, six treasuries, six of everything, and then if you bring it down to one of everything, obviously there are some savings.