"Simplification." Five layers became three. We were layers four and five.

The programme was called simplification. The stated goal was removing management layers to improve agility. Five layers of management became three. Layers four and five — where I worked — were removed. The logic was presented clearly. I understood the logic. That didn't make it less strange to be a logic to be applied to. What struck me was the language of improvement. We weren't being cut, we were being "streamlined." The organisation wasn't getting smaller, it was getting "leaner." The vocabulary actively resists the human reality of what's happening. I was at HSBC for fourteen years. I am described in the official communications as part of a structural improvement. I have asked myself many times whether that's true and whether it should matter.