Warning: This is my release of frustrations towards the ineptitude of business management. No, I don’t claim that their job is easy, but some things are just common sense.
We’ve entered the last quarter of the 2011 business year, and once again I’m hearing about a practice in manufacturing (and other business sectors) that I deplore: the year-end layoff. For companies who run their business with eyes only for numbers (like bottom lines), this is a continuous cycle that I’ve even been a part of in the past. What completely blows my mind (and my temper) is the callous decision to affect a person’s life during the holiday season (repeatedly). It wouldn’t be so bad if a business learned from prior mistakes, but I have yet to see any enlightenment on their part. I’m sure that executives at the top of the company lament about their actions in public, but if they really did feel bad then why don’t they watch their actions and their decisions during the rest of the year outside of what is supposed to be a joyous time? Maybe even practice being proactive instead of reactive.
Explanations typically revolve around lost opportunities as customers change their minds about large projects. Yet if both sides took a modicum of care while negotiating the contracts in the first place, they would have foreseen the business climate’s potential or lack thereof. Business cycles are not full of drastic changes, but typically follow patterns and market conditions. If a company sees their market reacting in a volatile manner, then common sense dictates to tread carefully with large projects. And yet decade after decade, companies new and old act as though history is never repeated.
News flash: People are not commodities to buy and sell – or in this case hire and layoff. If you find your company making decisions that wouldn’t normally be made on a personal level (against yourself, for instance), then why would the decision be made on a professional level? That is just immoral in my eyes. I’m not particularly religious, yet their is one axiom that I follow: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. It pretty much ensures that you’re using the most care possible in every decision you make.
Why is professionalism and ethics lacking in a majority of today’s corporate world? Of course this question is rhetorical as we all know the reasons. What I would like are some answers as to why we continue to let this happen? And by the looks of people around the world, there are thousands who also feel the same way and are starting to fight back. I wonder what all of those CEOs and executives will think when they are forced to endure the same treatment that they inflict onto their subordinates? I personally think that their punishment is long overdue – at all levels of institutional leadership.
What we have is a dearth of qualified leaders who can take us into a prosperous and equitable future for us all. Perhaps this is the greatest testament to the failure of our educational system – not because of our teachers, but because of their institutional leadership’s skew towards treating it as a business. Not everything in this world is meant to be a business, because business is meant to be a tool for societal prosperity.
Some things transcend such tangible bounds. You know, things like integrity, ethics, and true morality (as opposed to empty and dangerous memes). Thank goodness there are many who do believe in the intangibles and are working on social change around the world. They are sorely needed in a society that has reached new levels of moral bankruptcy. False promises are abound in the business world of today, and that just leads to a complete dissolution of trust on all sides.
BTW – News like this completely refutes the corporate world’s personal belief that they’re struggling financially: 280 Big Public Firms Paid Little US Taxes, Study Showed and Excessive CEO Pay and Job Losses: Are They Linked. No matter how you look at it, greed is ugly and destructive.
