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Let’s pretend you have an investment in a company. You want a return on your money. But time has passed, and you want more than what you’ve been getting. So you ask for more, and the answer is no. So you get indignant. Still no increase in your return.
Now you become enraged. The company’s management is not listening to you. They might just be playing you for what they can get. So you decide to become an activist.
You call your friends who have also invested. You discover they’re not happy either. You begin to strategize. Your friends join in.
Together you decide to take matters into your own hands. You decide to attend the company’s annual meeting and express your feelings. These high-falutin’ self-serving snakes haven’t been listening to you. You’ll see to it that they get their dues. The greedy muckety-mucks.
You go to the meeting. There are lots of people there who agree with you and your friends. And you all get together and decide to vote out present management and put another person into the top leadership position.
The only thing you know about the new person is what you read, but you did hear him speak before the meeting. Wow, could he bring your blood to a boil. He told you how he would throw the bums out, maybe put them in jail, and build a new management group that would listen to you and increase your return. That is all you ever wanted.
It turns out that your vote, along with others at the meeting, wins the election. Your guy is now in charge.
The first month of the new leader’s tenure begins with wholesale firing. Top management staff is terminated. People who know nothing about the business are hired. The idea is to give the business a fresh start. A new direction. Drain the swamp!
Replacement people have two advantages. First, they’ll save the company money because they’re cheaper. And second, they’ll turn things upside down so you’ll get a bigger return on your investment. Sounds good.
The remaining long-time experienced employees are not willing to throw out everything they’ve been doing successfully. Another way of saying it is that these people are just not willing to change. So the new management starts issuing pink slips. Many of those not fired tender their resignations which are readily accepted. After all, these people are part of the problem.
You love the firings. That will show them. You asked for a bigger return on your investment, and no one would listen.
Time passes.
Customers become concerned as service is not what it once was. No one seems to know how to get to the bottom of customer requests. There’s no longer history between the company’s staff and customers. Things do not run smoothly.
Then, the new leader begins to say things that irritate just about everyone.
A customer wants lower prices on stuff it is buying. The new leader sends out a memo. Prices are not to be reduced for anyone. Sounds good. You don’t want less money coming into the company, or you won’t get your increase in return on your investment. However, the customer isn’t interested in the return on your investment and leaves to go to a competitor that is happy to reduce its prices.
The new leader takes the loss of the customer personally. He gets angry. He puts out a news release blasting the customer that went to a competitor. The new leader blames the salesman, service manager, pricing manager and, of course, the customer who does not exhibit a good business sense. He fires everyone involved. They are all idiots. That will show them.
You are delighted the new leader is taking a stand. You are glad other customers of the business are reading the news release. You don’t want them trying the same thing to get a better price.
However, unlike you, these other customers get nervous. In fact some pull their business. This starts a feeding frenzy among competitors and business leaves by the bucket full.
As sales drop, so does revenue, so does profitability, so does morale, and so does the return on your investment. Soon there is only a shell of a company remaining – and that shell is running in the red.
It doesn’t take long until the company fails. Its new leader is a good talker. He has money. And he soon lands at another company.
The results are devastating. Your investment is lost.
More time passes.
You start thinking about what you could have done differently. Perhaps you could have helped build the company in which you had invested, rather than tearing it down. Your return on investment could well have grown out of the company’s on-going success.
Now stop for a moment. Isn’t all this similar to what we are facing with our government? Some people are quite frustrated about what they think is an organization that is non-responsive.
Yet, would we not be better served to send in experienced experts to fix the organization rather than to send in fire starters to burn it down?
Bill Gindlesperger is a central Pennsylvanian, Dickinson College graduate, Pennsylvania System Of Higher Education (PASSHE) Governor, former Shippensburg University Trustee, awarded numerous patents, as well as Founder and Chairman of eLynxx Solutions. eLynxx provides cloud-software for automated sourcing and managing of mail marketing, swag, packaging, and all things print. He is a board member, campaign advisor, successful entrepreneur,
published author and commentator. He can be reached at Bill.Gindlesperger@eLynxx.com.
