John Linton .....but it's a pity that it also forces you to see things much more clearly (or perhaps just differently) - and provides views of much darker nature.
I suppose when you are always very, very busy and take your job very, very seriously over a long period of time you lose the ability to see things clearly. It is only when you have your daily routine so completely disrupted that you are forced to look at things differently and, based on my last two days, I have to say that I don't like what I am seeing and hearing. The reviews with various managers/supervisors in Colombo has been very useful in generally changing some views I had previously held and I think that has allowed us to make some very positive changes over the past two days. However I have also noticed a change in some people's positive attitudes to attitudes that are less positive and these, when 'delving' into the reasons appear to be based on less than acceptable treatment of SL personnel by Australian personnel which is being brought about by the continuing increase in interdependence between personnel in the two locations.
I blame myself for the current unacceptable attitudes and behaviour I have very recently become aware of and see it for what it is. It appears that the dedication and abilities that have allowed Exetel to survive and grow over the period of its existence continue to be diluted as the company's personnel has increased and has allowed petty squabbling and other sheer stupidities of behaviour to become increasingly wide spread. It seems that Exetel is becoming more and more like the commercial organisations I have always despised - and has acquired a growing number of individual people who treat their employer as some sort of cash cow that will simply provide them with money in return for a lazy day of work in which their prime objective seems to be to disrupt the working day of others by any petty means possible.
This has come as a surprise to me - again my fault - but I have obviously been deluded in what I have thought were pre-eminent characteristics of Exetel that allowed us to differentiate our small company from those companies we compete with. I don't know whether I am any longer, if I ever was, the right person to deal with what I am now seeing as it clearly didn't start 'yesterday' but has obviously been developing for some time. Perhaps the best solution is going to take time to find as for such a situation to develop has obviously been because of the way I have run and structured the company. Perhaps the best solution is to fire myself for incompetence and let the remainder of Exetel's directors run the company a different way. However that has practical difficulties in that 100% of the money that has been invested in Exetel is mine and I really don't want to hand control of that, to me, very large amount of money plus seven years work to anyone else.
But I am truly distressed at what I now see and have to do something about it before the few 'rotten apples' in the barrel destroy the overwhelming good people they are currently negatively affecting.
A very unpleasant view with which to start a new day.
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