When You Eat a Sandwich, Don't Nibble
Deliver hard news and hard change in one decisive move, then deliberately over-correct
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
A decisive-action model for hard decisions and cultural change: when bad news is unavoidable (like layoffs), do it once, fully, instead of a series of small cuts. Pair it with 'never waste a good crisis' and the discipline of deliberately swinging the pendulum hard the other way so the change is unmistakable to everyone.
Origin
Brian Halligan credits the sandwich line to Ruth Porat (CFO of Google/Alphabet). The 'next play' component is borrowed from Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Core principles
- 01The temptation with layoffs is to do a small one and 'grow into it,' then another in six months, then another — inflicting repeated damage.
- 02People are adults; tell them the bad news all at once and let them handle it.
- 03Most good things at HubSpot came out of crises because the company took drastic corrective measures.
- 04To actually change behavior at scale, deliberately over-correct and make it obvious to everyone what's going on.
How to run it
- 1
Rip the band-aid off in one move
When bad news is coming — layoffs, a valuation reckoning — do it decisively in a single action rather than a drip of smaller cuts. Tell everyone the full bad news at once.
Watch out Nibbling — a small layoff now, another in six months, then another — is the failure mode; it repeatedly re-traumatizes the organization.
- 2
Run the 'next play' after an unforced error
When someone makes a self-inflicted mistake, acknowledge it, forget it, and move on to the next play — don't compound the error by over-aggressive corrective behavior.
Pro tip HubSpot literally put Coach K's face on a giant slide reading 'next play' at company meetings after an unforced error.
Watch out Like a player who clanks a shot and then fouls hard on defense, teams tend to compound their first error — the discipline is to reset instead.
- 3
Use the crisis to make a drastic, durable fix
Treat a crisis as the opening to take drastic measures that ensure the same failure never recurs — 'never waste a good crisis.'
- 4
Deliberately over-correct / swing the pendulum
Don't aim for the exact new equilibrium — purposely swing the pendulum hard the other way so the change is unmistakable. The bigger the company, the more obvious you have to make it.
In the wild
On the last day of March 2019 HubSpot had an all-day outage; customers were furious and some canceled. Halligan cried in front of the whole company and used the 'next play' slide. The crisis drove HubSpot to completely rethink how it built and deployed software — critical because a CRM outage on the last day of a quarter directly impairs customers' ability to do business.
→ HubSpot had no serious outage since, and software quality improved markedly — a 'good thing' that came directly out of the crisis.
Common mistakes
Nibbling on layoffs
Doing a small layoff to 'grow into it' and then repeating it every six months inflicts repeated damage and erodes trust, instead of the single clean cut people can actually absorb and move past.
Aiming for the precise new middle
Trying to land change exactly at the desired equilibrium fails to register at scale; without a deliberate hard pendulum swing, people don't perceive that anything actually changed.
Is it for you?
Best for
CEOs facing layoffs, a valuation reset, a major outage, or any hard cultural change that must be unambiguous.
Not ideal for
Reversible, low-stakes tweaks where over-correcting would create unnecessary whiplash.
From the transcript
“when you have to eat a sandwich, don't nibble”
“just do a little one now and we'll grow into it and then do another and then they do another one in six months”
“just rip the darn band-aid off. Tell everyone the bad news. They're adults.”
“we almost we purposely swung the pendulum hard the other way”
From the episode
Sequoia CEO coach: Why it’s never been easier to start a company, and never been harder to scale one
Brian Halligan (co-founder, HubSpot)