Whose Bright Idea Was This?

 I’m sure most of you can harken back to some of your past jobs and dredge up examples of management decisions that defied analysis. Like bad managers, I am confident there is no shortage of strategic moves that would befuddle a middle schooler.

As an example, I once worked for a restaurant chain that specialized in exotic crepes. Many of you along the East Coast and in San Francisco may have an idea what company I’m referring to. Most of the company’s units were in shopping malls and obviously were mandated to adhere to the opening and closing hours of said malls.

The exception being a certain New Jersey county, which prohibited malls from remaining open on Sundays. Now, with no shoppers allowed in the mall, it would stand to reason that the restaurant would be closed as well. Nope. The company ordered them to remain open and as customer counts resembled a haunted house, it inexplicably held steadfast its imbecilic decision.

I even wrote to the company headquarters questioning the futility of remaining open, only to be dressed down by my manager for having the temerity to contact corporate.

Not long afterwards the company shuttered many of its stores and the concept was passed from one buyer to another and today, just a few remain in select airports. 

Fast forward a few years later when I was employed at a publishing house, which was steadily witnessing a decline in revenues. After a consultant was brought in to assess the problem, it was determined that the company had more vice presidents in its ranks than salespeople. This egregious strategy was implemented in a company that depended on ad sales for its survival.

The company president’s solution? – he hired yet another vice president and placed him in charge of revenue growth. I will leave it to your respective imaginations as to how that worked out.

Apparently, that company was not alone in its belief that increasing the number of C-suite executives would solve revenue problems. In my previous post prior to my current position, the publishing house I worked for exercised a semi-annual ritual of employee layoffs – in December and in August. They would terminate workers averaging $50K a year and then turn around and stuff its management ranks with additional executives - many earning more than 300K a year. That helped transform a company which once boasted more than 400 employees to one that numbers just over 100 today. And when I again questioned that strategy I was not only rewarded with a murderous glare from the CEO, but two weeks later, I suddenly found myself micromanaged by a duo of newly assigned supervisors.

And I could go on regaling you with buffoonish managerial vignettes.

I guess the point of all this is that just because someone holds the title of manager or perhaps even a higher assignation, do not assume that they are the next Peter Drucker or James Collins.

Like they warned after 9-11, “if you see something, say something.” If it results in a blowback, then it should be relatively easy to determine you should begin looking for employment elsewhere.

I did and unlike many decisions I’ve witnessed, have never questioned it.