On Both Sides of the Story

What RIFs and Change Have Taught Me About Humanity in Leadership

There’s a strange kind of duality that comes with living through organizational change, especially in biotech, where transformation is constant and often existential.

I’ve been on both sides of it: the one writing the talking points, and the one hearing them. The one helping leaders prepare for the hardest conversations of their careers, and the one sitting across from my own.

It’s given me a deep respect,  and deep grief,  for how change really feels inside an organization.

When You’re the One Leading It

When you’re on the inside - the person crafting the message, managing the timeline, holding the line for confidentiality, there’s a quiet weight that doesn’t make it into the project plan. You’re balancing strategy and humanity. Legal language and lived experience.

You know people’s names. Their kids’ names. You’ve seen them at team offsites and social hours. And yet, when the business imperatives shift - a portfolio pivot, a trial milestone, an integration, you have to translate that shift into a story people can bear.

The first time I helped lead a reduction in force, I remember realizing that “communication plan” wasn’t the right term. What we were really managing was a collective emotional event - one that needed as much care as any scientific milestone, if not more.

Because at the heart of every RIF or reorg, there are two stories unfolding: the organizational one, and the human one.

The best leaders hold both.

When You’re the One Living It

And then there’s the other side. The day your own name is on the spreadsheet. Even when you understand the strategy, even when you’ve written the very scripts being used, it still hits like a physical shock.

Suddenly, all your change frameworks and communications theories become real. You feel what it’s like to sit in that liminal space between what was and what’s next, waiting for clarity to return.

It changes you. It humbles you. And, if you let it, it teaches you something essential about leadership: that information isn’t what helps people survive change - connection is.

What It All Comes Down To

Over the years, I’ve learned that thoughtful communication isn’t about spin or optics. It’s about stewardship. It’s about creating enough psychological safety for people to process what’s happening even if what’s happening isn’t what they hoped for.

That might look like:

• A leader editing their talking points so it sounds truly like them, and then practicing their delivery until it feels human.

• A note that names and explains the uncertainty instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

• A follow-up conversation that begins with “How are you holding up?” before “What’s next?”
  

These small acts of care don’t make the loss go away, but they shape the memory of how people experienced it. And that memory becomes the culture that remains.

The Work Ahead

As I prepare to launch Arcana Communications, I keep coming back to these moments - the ones that taught me that transformation work is sacred work.

It’s not just about helping organizations move through change; it’s about ensuring they do it without losing their humanity along the way.

Because whether you’re the one leading the conversation or living it, communication is the bridge between endings and beginnings.
And in that space - that quiet, tender middle - there’s an opportunity to do something rare:
to be both clear and kind.

That’s the work I want to keep doing.

Arcana Communications: Where meaning meets change.