John Linton .....almost spectacular enough to promote an unseasonal feeling of joy and good will to all men (and presumably women in these pathetically PC days).......but not quite.
It was a good first week of the month - not 'spectacular' but quite 'solid' as first weeks of the month go with the two days of the weekend to add another 15% to all but the corporate results for the first full week of the month. The stock market turmoil, and the plunging dollar, of Friday our time was slightly alleviated by Wall Street not continuing its dramatic Thursday fall but clawing back a few points of gains based on the need for stock brokers to make money on falling markets which require them to buy back to restore the short positions they made money out of the previous day. How all that turns out is, literally, anyone's guess.
Running a business of Exetel's size is becoming ever more difficult as it slowly grows, in terms of employees, while also growing ever more complex in terms of products and services supplied. I remember the past well enough to know that this is one of those critical times in most companies development - no longer small enough for the dedication and urgency that had to be in place to grow from being a 'start up' to have survived the years of gradual growth which, despite all the effort put into recruiting and training to have survived. As I recall from previous times this becomes and remains a problem for some 12 - 18 months when employee self interest either kills the company or the 'next generation' of people dedicated to 'perfection' rather than their own self interests kicks in and the company proceeds to the next level.
I am not complaining about this 'fact' in any way. I understand its inevitability as well as most rational and reasonable people and have had the opportunities of observing it first hand as well as associating with people who have also observed it at first hand. I have even sat through 'lectures' on how to best deal with it. It's an unpleasant time in any start up company's progress towards being a non start up company but it is a very common situation for those few companies that survive long enough to encounter it. From my own experience and from the experiences of others I have talked to or read about there is no simple way of dealing with it. The most common experiences are that market growth took care of the inevitable failing of enthusiasm and dedication because there simply is no easy transition from the original start up closeness of commitment to people with an attitude of 'just a job' for the time being on the way to 'some other better paid job'.
We did three things to alleviate this 'inevitable' Sargasso Sea part of the passage to a newer and brighter corporate 'world', and while being no Himilco, I think these will be enough to get us through this next very difficult period in any company's development. To anyone vaguely familiar with the births and deaths of corporate entities what we have done is obvious. We 'split the company in two by establishing a 'new' Exetel in Colombo where a new group of people have the opportunity of 'refreshing' the company via their own 'excitement' of doing brand new things for the first time. We changed the focus of the 'old' people in the company from residential to business and corporate products and services. By doing the first two things we created many new management positions to 'challenge' all of our employees to develop their personal careers more quickly and push them far beyond the 'comfort' they had found in their previous years of doing similar things each day and will allow us to avoid the 'fat, dumb and happy' scenarios so prevalent in the companies with which we compete.
Of course - I may be completely wrong.
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