Monthly Archives: November 2018

No decision is no escape

A company should catch free riders early and make them accountable if it doesn’t want to find itself in the doldrums.

Some CEOs and top executives hide behind inaction and refrain from making decisions that might increase for themselves the odds of personal mistakes and the unpleasant consequences thereafter.

An attitude, I believe, that is developed mainly because of those CEOs’ certain insecurities or inadequacies to serve purposefully their designated position.

They will skip responsibility for anything that goes wrong on the pretext of their having nothing to do with what originated the situation and to clear themselves they will not hesitate to implicate others. It seems that the longer they stay in office the more adept they become at distancing themselves from the wrongs, the troubles and the fires.

Such shortcomings, though critical, are not often made apparent early and remain for long unnoticed. So, for not making decisions or for not foreseeing things or for missing to take the necessary initiatives, they escape the consequences for a considerable time.

Even when those CEOs get revealed, their arranged dismissal with a velvet divorce and a golden handshake is far from conveying the true reason for the severance. Furthermore, the long time that passed for their dismissal effaces any connection with the real reason that was their decision-avoidance attitude, obliterating from the corrective action its didactic element or its called-for-justice power that the rest of the company should see and feel.

It is time that companies catch such free riders sooner and make them accountable before their behaviours and attitudes derail the company prospects further.

What I suggest is that for a company it is critical

to spot such top executives’ decision-avoidance early and
that its board or owners should regularly assess its [...]

By |November 28th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments|

Leadership in shambles – An interview with the company’s CEO

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to offer advice to a company that was doing poorly in its revenues and profits.

We sat with the owner CEO to discuss the company’s state of affairs with me asking and him giving answers.

Q: What about the processes in the company, how satisfying are they? A: They are OK I think.

Do you have some evidence for that, do you have some data to prove your assessment? No, we don’t do any measurements, they will add to our costs.

How about your product line; are there any new products or product improvements that you delivered to your customers say over the last three years? No, our product line is unchanged, we know how to do it well and we stick to it or as you management people say “we stick to the knitting”.

And your staff, your people, how do you look after them? They are all grown-ups, they look after themselves and don’t need anything from me or from anybody else.

When was the last time they were in some training? I don’t have the luxury to take them out of their jobs for them to hear some fancy new ideas that don’t have any meaning for our works here.

I suppose you have some kind of a strategy to aim at something better for your company, don’ t you? Our strategy is simple “work hard every day” something I have taken from my father who established and first run this factory.

Do you have partners with whom you work with like suppliers or your bigger customers? No, these people always want to get the maximum out of you without any regard for you or your business; I never trust them [...]

By |November 24th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments|