UNEDITD Presents TOP PERSPECTIVES EDITION 12 · WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 28, 2026 MADDY VISWANATH · CRAFT YOUR CONFIDENCE | Welcome back to Top Perspectives. One story this week, because it changes what a layoff is for. | | This week 225,122 people, and one company that refused Five companies announced cuts in the last seven days. Microsoft's Xbox division, Intel, Expedia, Thinkific, and Novo Nordisk in its US operations. As of September 26, this year has produced 519 separate layoff events and 225,122 people. In the same stretch, Ingka Group, the largest IKEA franchisee, reported that the AI assistant inside IKEA customer service now handles 74 percent of inquiries, up from 47 percent in its first two years, and that not one of the 8,500 call centre employees was cut. | | Maddy's read Every time I had to work on a layoff, it was always about making a number. A number written down somewhere above me that the year had to end on. What a leader is told is some version of budget cuts, we are not meeting margins, find me your number by Friday. What is usually true is that without the layoff the company still breaks even. Not collapse. Break even. The cut is what turns break even into profit, and the profit is what pays the bonus. Nobody says that part in the room where the names get picked, and the person picking the names is rarely senior enough to be told. Which is what makes the IKEA number worth holding next to it. Those 8,500 people went through five to six weeks of training in digital room planning and consultative selling, and came out as design consultants and resolution specialists working across 24 remote sales centres in 31 countries. That channel made 1.25 billion euros last fiscal year, up from 1.08 billion, and customer satisfaction went from 60 percent to 89. Read it as a financial decision rather than a kind one. The cost reduction was available to them, because it is always available, and somebody senior enough to matter decided those 8,500 people were an asset with a destination instead of a line to be reduced. It paid better. |
| The move this week Five minutes, and it works whether or not anything is happening at your company. Write down the three people on your team whose work an AI system could do a meaningful share of inside two years. Next to each name write what they would do instead, the actual work, and which part of the business pays for it. If you cannot finish that second column you have found the gap before somebody hands you a number and a deadline. And if the number does arrive, ask the thing nobody asks first: Was the company losing money, or only making less than it wanted? Those two deserve different answers. | | Tool of the week · The Readiness Score Somebody is going to describe you in one line this quarter, and they will do it without asking you first. You should probably know what that line says. The Readiness Score reads your LinkedIn profile the way a talent review reads it and hands back the version of you that arrives ahead of you, in about two minutes. | See you next Monday. Maddy | P.S. If you have ever been handed a number and told to go find the names, you already know which half of it you were told. Forward this to one leader who is about to find out. | Craft Your Confidence |
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