If your new corporate initiative - especially at a big company - has a Dilbert-like catch-phrase or slogan, you often know it's the start of something bad.

"Meeting the Next Century" or "Turning the Page" or "Supercharged for Growth" can often be a happy HR face on what behind the scenes are simple cost reductions.

These decisions can have ripple effects across the organisation. What often happens as a result of these decisions is retrenchment, not innovation. More work is piled into fewer people, and projects across every department just seem to slow down.

If it's bad news, don't try and sugarcoat it. Seriously.

If you give people bad news, that's one thing. If you give people bad news packaged as good news and you make them figure out it's actually bad news, then you have only shown them you can't be trusted.