„We’ve tried everything, but nothing works.“

„In theory everything is easy but practice is different and things do not happen.“

„Our staff does not worth, thus we are not successful. This firm is crumbling. “

I hear these and other similar phrases almost every day. I’m sure that you have also heard mumbles who claim it is someone else’s faults their company to fail. It is clear that something may go ahead only if there is will for work and focus. When one is missing, the firm is stalled. The exit may be found either by ourselves or with external help. Nowadays theory and practice go together in the management world. The big international companies have succeeded because they have implemented at least one management model. How does it happen that in big companies the management models work while in the middle and small size firms the chaos is insinuating?

There are many symptoms which show that we must change the management style. But the most difficult is to change ourselves, isn’t it?

„We’ve tried everything and nothing happens“ hints about lack of focus. Deconcentrating the company energy may be done deliberately or due to inexperience. In both cases the company loses but when the actions are on purpose, loses are bigger as they are discovered much later. Here we have:

1. The managers who don’t know what they want. For them the grass is greener on the other side. They are suspicious in everybody’s competency and it’s only they who know how to work qualitatively. Ostensibly they want to try different approaches and management methods but they do not have the patience to give a chance to the innovation to show and grow. These managers and owners of firms claim they are broad-minded, they work with their team and consultants (to know everything new), but in reality work alone and follow only their own mental model. They declare before everybody that they are ready for changes, it seems as if they have started to implement new models, but the models are thrown away in the beginning because it is less likely to give positive results. Actually this category managers and owners are poor managers who literally hide their poor management behind someone else’s proposals for improvements. It is much easier to find somebody else guilty for the incompetent management. The hesitation in moods and work courses are so frequent and contradictory that the staff loses motivation very soon. This is how the “non-quality employees” appear. Thus people do not accept and do not apply the rules. They want a stable leader whom to follow. In every company every failed project is due to „the rotting fish head“.

The exit: To get out of this situation the manager and the owner must stop be afraid from failure. The hesitation comes from suspiciousness in people which leads to fear that something will go wrong. The mind of these owners is blocked by peanuts – the unavoidable pebbles on every path. And because the model is suggested from outside the firm, the owner should relax and give the innovation a chance to enter. It doesn’t mean to leave everything to the chance, but to allow the innovation to make them perfect as people and leaders.

2. The saboteurs and the cheaters. One easy way to withdraw money from one company is by using dummy consulting services. The managers who want to steal from the employer buy consultant services with ready materials. The materials are not prepared for this company, so they do not fit here. When such strategy is applied several times with different consultants, the effect for the company is negative but for the manager’s bank account it is rather positive. The sabotage usually comes from managers who are afraid for their jobs. And they have the right to worry as they have driven the company to this difficult situation.

There are paradox even comic scenes, like in one company, in which the owner has surrounded himself only with managers-consultants. There every consultant (nevertheless what his specialty was – sales, marketing, IT or human resources) was fighting to catch the bone and replace the rest consultants. Every consultant thought that he was great and considered him good enough to be a general manager. The aggression (hidden and obvious) was enormous and was absorbing the whole personnel. Whatever proposal appeared from anywhere it was cut into pieces even before it was completely said. Decomposition in this firm was so high that the workers dared to dictate the rules to the owner. Who benefited from this situation? It was fine for every employee but not for the owner. The lack of clear hierarchy and management model influenced the production, the sales, legal compliance, labor discipline and so on, the list is endless.

3. People who aim to capture the company from inside. Whether these are your employees or consultants – they do not come to develop your firm but to extract benefits for themselves or for the cause of external organization. A firm with embedded ruining agent is chronically ill. The agent keeps it alive to draw resources from it but in reality this company is dying. The owner cannot go out of this vicious cycle because every trial for intervention is blocked by the agent. And so, whatever model is proposed the agent convinces the owner that this has been already tried and it doesn’t work. And the owner behaves like a drugged teenager and cannot realize that his company is at the edge.

The exit: The exit from both above situations is painful, very painful and difficult. Allowing the offenders in his organization, means that the owner has a serious problem with trust in people and in him. No external strength can help. It is necessary the owner to start seeing again and he alone to choose the change. The self-healing is the only way to recover. And when he acknowledges how serious the problem is and the owner realizes what exactly he wants to achieve, just then he may build a new team and start to emerge. He then may try different models and when he finds his model, to grasp it and to apply it. Gradually (in 3-4 months) he will sort out the negatives and replace them with positives from other models. But first he needs to achieve stability and harmony with himself.

We shouldn’t cling to one model only – on the contrary we must take the best for us from all models which we know. But this takes time, calm mind and focus. It requires your attention, patience and sober assessment of pluses and minuses. We hardly will discover the hot water but we shall discover these parts from the big puzzle which fix exactly our big picture. There are no non-working models in principle – there are either incorrectly applied models or unwillingness the company to proceed.