Home > management > Surpise, Suprise, Surprise

Surpise, Suprise, Surprise

I always get a kick out of how people express great surprise when a management shakeup occurs and the old guard is sacked for the not-so-old guard. “OMG! I can’t believe so-and-so is gone“. “It’s about time so-and-so got booted“. “Why the hell is so-and-so still here?“. “Why am I still here?“.

Well geeze, the reason a change was made was because it finally became unavoidably obvious that something wasn’t working the way it should to somebody who had the power to make the change. Nonetheless, changing a leadership team in response to an existential crisis doesn’t guarantee squat. At best, the new team will propel the org out of the crisis and place it on a trajectory of success. At worst, the org’s demise will be accelerated.

  1. bottom-feeder-fish's avatar
    bottom-feeder-fish
    October 6, 2011 at 8:05 am

    You missed the ever-present fact that quite often, while the figurine at the top of your nice little org pyramid is switched out with another croney/buddy/inneffectual/egotist, the people one-two layers below usually stay in place. Sometimes one of them even moves up a notch. And it’s these players that hold the real reigns of control and process. The top level may change, but the puppetteers remain.

    Just because you’ve put a new picture on the wall doesn’t mean you’ve rearranged the furniture in the room.

    • October 6, 2011 at 6:10 pm

      My dear Fishmeister, I tend to miss a lot of things.

  1. No trackbacks yet.

Leave a reply to bulldozer00 Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.