In a world spoiled by the hunger of the shares market, decisions are often driven by forces that are not aligned with the traditional values of the companies although those traditional values have made those companies what they actually are.
Employees in all levels of these companies would suddenly start to realise these forces and probably misunderstand the power that they actually have. It is altogether human to bound to an enterprise and to be taunted by its enthusiasm, and therefore personify the enterprise thus inadvertently attiring it of human characteristics as loyalty and integrity.
This enterprise is however just as any asset and is therefore subject to the regulation mechanisms of assets. It should not come unexpected that this asset may very well be put to the best service of a company to maximise its shares value in the market.
Failure to see the real asset essence of an enterprise as opposed to the adjoined human characteristics that this enterprise have acquired in the minds of the employees will lead to their frustration.
Frustration will lead to mistrust and lack of will. At last will rot the enterprise and render it a lifeless corpse within the company.
Victims of this situation can hardly see why a once successful idea would have such an end. They can hardly see where the turning point was. What originated this situation. Probably they will not be able to find out that reason. Or that wrong decision, because there was none. At least there was none within the scope of the enterprise.
I am standing in a corridor of a big company creating a very successful product worldwide. Waiting for a late hour meeting to start in some meeting room one floor below. The walls are white painted. Big pictures hang on them. Pictures of diverse and unconnected motives. Glass doors give access to medium size offices with rows of tables aligned inside. Here and there along the corridor a little resting place, or standing table for sporadic discussions or for meetings if the meeting rooms are all booked that day.
People are silently passing by, rushing with notebooks, computers, samples from one place to another. Doors along the corridor slam closed again and again, giving way to more by-passers. Busy in their own thoughts. They are thousands in this huge ant nest. Each of them with a purpose. A purpose that has probably been set, through uncountable layers of management, in line with the vision of a very high decision-maker in another building, maybe in another country. These ants follow the essence of the forerunner, absentminded of the world they live on. Some carrying a grin, some have no expression, some even looking troubled or confused, some just about managing to drag themselves around. Some are alive enough to realise that I am standing here hammering some lines in my computer, but oblivious of the fact that I am observing their lives. Some are a bit louder and seem to have a feeling of belonging to the place: these may be the little intermediate managers who feel at ease in one of the extensions of the ant nest.
Here and there I notice some sparks of life in some of the by-passers; they must be visitors or suppliers. I notice it because they seem to move on their own accord. They seem to realise that they are alive. That things happen in their surroundings that affect them and this instinct of adapting to the changes make them look like living beings. Some look extremely happy and excited, some deeply depressed, and some just alright. But all of them vibrate with signs of life.
Outside the afternoon is grey with october rain and turning darker to evening. Nearby the motorway runs constantly flooded of cars in north and south direction. All with a purpose too, or at least a destination for today. Soon the crowds of this place where I am will find their way to the large extensions of parking spaces surrounding the buildings and each one will also join that river. With a destination too. Some heading home to join their families and their little problems and achievements. Some meeting friends in a restaurant. Some going to be alone the whole night, or gambling. All having their little hopes and life achievements, dreaming of their vacations or just of the weekend. Not realising that life are those short periods of time squeezed between months of lifelessness.
It is getting late and there are less and less lifeless corpses. Some clusters of cleaning service personnel start making the place their own, with those characteristic noises of hoovers blowing and hitting the trims with firm resolution. In a random hoovering path that repeated everyday would about to ensure that 99% of the floorings will be vacuum cleaned at least once a week, but for the corners.
It is about time for me to play my little part of today in this gigantic organism. Some escalation meeting where I am to expose the bigger threats of the moment in my project, explain what my team is doing about them, get white-haired nodding heads of consensus, with that air of I-knew-this-was-going-to-happen, and promise that my team will outperform until the targets are achieved. So that some other consolidated targets will as well be achieved, and they will as well contribute to some bigger consolidation of facts and targets to be achieved, that in some extend will make that this gigantic organism keeps feeding, breathing and excreting.
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