As above - exactly.
There is no getting around the shrinkage. It leaps from every pore of the company. The only time expansion is genuinely referred to is when massive pay concessions are ‘required’.
IE ‘We will do X (which we demonstrably can’t afford to do) but of course there is no way we can even contemplate that sort of expenditure unless we get Y in staff agreements’. Even if Y is provided, it will immediately be absorbed in Exec pay rises.
There is a place for naïveté and I do admire those who possess it, but there does come a time when it has to be recognised for what it is.