Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • Bosses who become increasingly batty and autocratic.
  • globalti
    Free Member

    What happens when a leader seems to be losing touch with reality and is becoming increasingly batty and autocratic, making odd decisions and losing touch with what’s really needed at the coal face? There must be numerous examples all through history; the elastic can stretch for quite a long way before it begins to affect the operations and image of the organisation and steps need to be taken to remove the leader in order to ensure the survival of the rest.

    Are increasing autocracy, obsessiveness, micro-management and gradual loss of touch with reality the symptoms of stress and of a leader who has the character defect that (s)he finds it impossible to consult and share the decisions with senior managers?

    mogrim
    Full Member

    Seems fairly common in politics – Blair and Thatcher for example both lost touch with reality as time went on.

    martinhutch
    Full Member

    At which time it’s customary to knife the leader in question. Volunteers should step up. How about yourself, Brutus?

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    rocketman
    Free Member

    Ours was like that for a long time. We spent quite some time looking into ways of legitimately removing him but sadly when they’re the boss and part owner there’s not much you can do.

    Because he always did the exact opposite of what anyone suggested we put together a superb plan to partner with another company (after suggesting that it would be the worse possible thing to do) and cut a long story short he ‘stepped down’ on June 1

    Great success

    cloudnine
    Free Member

    what’s really needed at the coal face?

    Just shovel faster? Mining is a fairly simple operation.
    What rate are you shovelling at now?

    globalti
    Free Member

    Rhetoric.

    slowoldgit
    Free Member

    Isn’t it also about task-oriented becoming role-oriented, thinking of Mrs T and Mr B?

    cloudnine
    Free Member

    Ring fence the rogue unicorn and burn down his flagpole

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    Just shovel faster? Mining is a fairly simple operation.

    A very common misconception – says someone currently working on a large coal mining conundrum.

    piemonster
    Full Member

    From what I’ve seen. They usually end up sacked/managed out of the business.

    Although they’ve been managers in large multi-nationals rather than part/full owners or some other position where they are particularly unlikely to be disposed of. In that scenario i’d be looking to ‘do one’ if it was a real problem.

    globalti
    Free Member

    I guess it all comes down to a person’s character. Everybody suffers stress at some time in their lives and the true test of character is how they cope with it – do they stay mentally balanced or does everything start to fall apart?

    My BIL is Chef Exec. of a large NHS hospital, an undoubtedly stressful job especially during the cuts when he was expected to make hundreds of his friends and colleagues redundant. Nowadays a fair amount of his stress is caused by fortune-seekers having a pop at the hospital through the civil courts, all of whom, he says, will lose their cases. We the family can see the stress and so far he is coping extremely well but you can’t help wondering how much stress a person is able to shrug off over a period of years without becoming ill or unhinged.

    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    Because the coal face changes the higher up the organisation you get – it becomes less about delivering to the customer and more about delivering to shareholders and managing the share price. Also their packages are usually based upon delivery and what they’re having to deliver might not be completely aligned with what you’re trying to do, so decisisons they make might seem strange to you.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    I’ve seen it happen with two CEOs. With the first one, myself and some of the other Senior Mangers approached the investors directly and explained our concerns. Effectively a civilised coup. The CEO was replaced.

    In the second case, the CEO went completely mad, kept sacking all his senior managers (7 CFOs in 3 years), brought the company to its knees and was eventually paid off very handsomely by the board and replaced, although the company was left in a pretty desperate state from which it is still struggling to recover.

    In both cases they started off fine, seemed very rational and nice, but cracked under pressure when we had a run of bad quarters and then just stopped functioning and became completely destructive. Quite interesting to watch from the inside.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    Because the coal face changes the higher up the organisation you get – it becomes less about delivering to the customer and more about delivering to shareholders and managing the share price.

    The flip side is the further up you get the more coal faces you have to manage, and prioritise. Dealing with projects over a lot of areas the motto was the best option for all projects might not be the best overall for the business, so doing what might be the 2nd or 3rd best option might also be the best thing overall.

Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)

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