Business puzzles (me)

A lot of puzzling things happened while I kept silence on the blog, it’s almost a month now – the silence was a consequence of the “doing more with less” attitude, which prevented me from writing on this blog as much as I would have wanted.  Doing more with less is not a bad approach, as long as a company had been wasting resources before refreshing its strategy. It can be helpful for an individual too, as long as the individual feels there’s enough energy and time, at least one can learn their limits.

Should a company turnaround start with a personnel reshuffle? Picture from Stockexchange

But I was thinking about what should management do at times like this – I guess it’s during tough times that managers show their true value.  Turning around a company is not an easy thing, even for small companies – I get to see it live in several cases. People are key – as a business journalist, I’ve been trained (or trained myself in time) to skip statements like this one, and look for more than this general statement. But its holds an important truth, and I see how important it is every day.  The quality of people working for a company gives the quality of the people  company. At any given point, a company may be represented in front of its customers, or business partners, by any of its employees. If they fail to do their job properly, a customer/business partner is lost, and it may not seem much, but the small things make the big things.

I guess it is even harder for managers to change companies if they need to start by changing people’s mentalities and give them what I think lacks in many companies now: a sense of personal responsibility. A friend once told me that a good employee should be involved in the company they’re working for as if they own the company, and that will be seen even in the little things people do every day. Of course, the company needs to respect its employees too in order to get this sort of involvement, so I am worndering where is the problem: should companies try more in treating their employees with the sort of respect that would trigger the employees acting more responsabily, or should we all work on our personal (or betteryet, proffessional) responsibility issues?

Last week I was working on this management story – but I didn’t tackle the personnel side; I have started from the numerous cases of management reshuffle I have seen in Romania since the beginning of the year (and even in the last part of 2008) and from an increasing number of consultancy companies created to offer turnaround management services.  Here is the article in Business Review .   To go on with the personnel spin, I assume it should be easier nowadays to choose better people, at least for key positions, since the pool of candidates has grown and many of them would go for lower salaries and do a better job than those who were probably paid with much more than the quality of their work was worth.  Doing more with less may mean for some companies getting rid of those who waste the company’s time and money (this part I agree with) and try to divide their workload on the existing personnel (I only agree to this part as long as the workload doesn’t exceed the employee’s possibilities and as long as the extra work gets compensated by some extra benefit too). But doing your job right  should always be a constant, a reflection of who you are as a proffessional, and not a variable linked to what happens on the market or in your company. 
More to read on tunroaround management, on www.turnoaround.org.