Devils Advocate = In a previous response CEO said (paraphrasing)...

Devils Advocate =

In a previous response CEO said (paraphrasing) the type of staff they have hired aren't available in the market at the drop of a hat, need time to build the right team for the future incoming work, and once you have them in place don't want to drop them, as hard to build team back up.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't = if the contracts had come, needed to have the team to implement the growth, so being prepped "seemed" the responsible plan.

Problem is, none of them came in, and so the overheads have been way too high for the lack of contracts incoming.

So, "advocating" out of the way now (that the CEO had to be prepared for the Strategic Plan to work, to enable growth), doesn't change the fact that the Plan didn't work, which is something Board and Mgmt need to take responsibility for, as it seems naively optimistic now considering the slow wheels of bureaucracy, and they also need to take responsibility for not seeing this, taking it on the chin and making these adjustments a lot sooner, stubborness or hubris, or blind hope that something would come along and save the day.

But they are paid to be pragmatic and read the writing on the wall and these cost-cutting steps are about 6 months later than it should have been.

Also, it is a fair point made by others that if there was a way of planning staffing to achieve the easier scaling down and back up again to support the growth when (if?) it happens, why wasn't this the plan in the first place, before all the hiring took place, or why wasn't this plan devised 6 months ago?

Lots of mistakes made.