Forgive The Corporate-Speak
Once again I prove the utility of 'Thinking Time', which today constituted taking Edna up around the back of The Summit late this afternoon, which also meant braving every other dog-walker in Greater Manchester. The intellectual problem was to combine two separate stories from the "Have You Seen A Company Get Ruined Because "The Guy That Did ______ Left?" about Chief Executive Officers, neither of which was long enough for a proper Intro. Art!
Because I've been playing Death Cab For Cutie in the background, much to Edna's disgust.
ANYWAY my inspired title means 'When the Chief Executive Officer was an Outstandingly Eulogised Chap', which is not forced or stretching at all.
First of all, as with Greek philosophy, we have to establish baselines and definitions, and also crank up the Word Count a tad. "Chief Executive Officer: the top dog in a company's management structure, holding forth on strategy, delivering profitability, promoting the brand, being the organisations public face, reporting to the Board of Directors." Plus other duties. Art!
To give you an idea of what a CEO embodies, that above is Mike Coupe, who was the CEO of Sainsbos when I worked there in HR. In 2018 he was recorded indiscreetly singing 'We're In The Money' before an interview, and it went viral, because he was seen as a Typical Fat Cat Rolling In It And Boasting To Boot, poor chap. For a couple of years if Sainsbos came up, or Mike was in the headlines, back came WITM. He moved on after a couple of years.
That's the kind of responsibility you might get lumbered with as a CEO.
Onto the meat of the matter!
"That dude was legit a solid guy" admits Wistful RetrospectivE Narrator, hereafter WREN, because a little bird told me so*. He was talking about the CEO of his company, an avuncular chap who took the time to personally meet everyone face-to-face, no mean feat in a business mustering hundreds of people. Art!
Legit guy and New Hire. Perhaps.
He knew who WREN was, and what he was working on - which WREN left coyly unidentified for his tale - before they met, and was ACTUALLY available to staff, who could walk into his office to chat if he wasn't obviously busy. 99% of managers come out with that 'My door is always open' drivel, when it's actually padlocked shut with number-pad and iris-recognition to boot. To see it done in real life is passing rare. Legit Guy embodied one of Robert McNamara's business edicts, that it is possible to have a hard head and a soft heart. He took a genuine interest in his employees, and also MADE MONEY, which is all a lot of companies care about. He also continued to MAKE MONEY, increasingly, year on year, which ought to have cemented his status as love icon in the BoD's eyes.
ANYWAY the owner's company decided to get shot of Legit Guy, because they wanted their own puppet in position, and got rid of him with a load of corporate bovine scatology as an excuse. Art!
I think they mean the other end
The Board of Directors and owners appointed a succession of monomaniacally profit-oriented short-sighted CEOs who, by 'updating' and 'modernising' and 'synergising' <insert other Corporate Buzz-Words Of The Week> the company, completely gutted it of the old Legit Guy values. Their big carrot was an 'IPO', which is an 'Initial Public Offering', meaning that they were going to float the company on the stock market, and give employees a number of shares. The idea behind this is that the shares would appreciate in price over time, in an appeal to basic greed.
Surprise! there never was an IPO. Ever. It was either blatant lies to cover sacking a profoundly OEC CEO, or they never had the potential to raise stock.
Surprise! most of the staff followed Legit Guy out of the business, as there was nothing to distinguish it from any other Soul-less Corporate Undifferentiated Motley.
Surprise! the company is still surviving, as a shadow of it's former self. Probably more of an embarrassment than simply ceasing to trade. Art!
We aren't given a date for any of these events by WREN, but, honestly, were they not aware of the Schlitz beer debacle**?
"The War Illustrated Edition 209 22nd June 1945"
We return to the middle-pages retrospective of the Second Unpleasantness, having reached the end of 1942. Art!
A bit of a fib, to be honest. Roosevelt and Churchill were there to discuss what the Allies would be doing next, having just secured the entire coastline of North Africa. De Gaulle and Giraud were the leaders of the Free French factions, who mattered politically but whom were militarily negligible. The conference decided that moves were going to be put upon Sicily, before an invasion of Italy, both of which would happen before 1943. Winnie intended Roosie to be stuck in Italy, instead of making a desperate gamble on the coast of Occupied France in 1943.
Mythbusting Again!
This time with Dan Snow, not Jamie and Adam, nor the delicious Kari wh
ANYWAY we're onto Myth #6 of 10 to do with the First Unpleasantness. Art!
I admit that I've not watched a second of Dan's doubtless splendidly factual presentation, and this is all my own input.
When trench warfare fully developed, so did the administration of soldiers on the front line, in all armies. There is no way Hom. Sap. could have coped mentally with being stuck in a muddy oubliette for three years without going totally round the bend. Thus, we shall address the British Army as an example. A battalion, such as the 2nd Welch Fusiliers, might be sent to do a tour of duty in the front line trenches, probably for a week or ten days (in extremis) in duration. Art!
After that, they'd be rotated back into the support lines, acting as a reserve in case of emergencies, providing working parties, and generally recovering.
After that they'd be rotated back to the rear, where laughably rare 'Rest and Recuperation' took place. Laughably rare, because they'd still have to provide working parties, carry out training, supply parade members, sentries, guards, etcetera. Then, after possibly a month away, back to the front lines.
Men would also be out of the trenches due to leave, of various durations, and sickness. Medical Officers got to be wary and cynical about 'malingerers' who faked illness in order to get out of a front line tour.
Calling All Adrenaline Junkies!
Also, the desperate, the poverty-stricken and the borderline insane. Yes, we are pointing our long and scaley talon at Mordorvia again, which is an absolute boon for bloggers always on the lookout for content. Art!
This is the starboard engine of an Azimuth Airlines Super-100 airliner, and no, that's not how it's supposed to look. The engine nacelle's cowling was torn away on take-off, so the captain aborted the flight (to Batumi on the Black Sea) and returned to Moscow. Very wise under the circumstances; you never know if that's symptomatic of other imminent failures, and the Air India catastrophe can't have been far from his mind.
So, a bad day for a single jet of a single airline? Hmmm nope, it's worse than that. Ruffian Telegram channels are reporting a serious aircraft in-flight problem, or one preventing take-off, at an average of one per day. We have covered the root causes of this years back, a large part of which is due to Western sanctions.
HOWEVER! a word destined to appear, the Superjet-100 is, supposedly, completely home-grown with 100% Ruffian components, so it shouldn't be subject to sudden failures thanks to inferior, substitute, counterfeit or otherwise sub-standard components. Unless <gasps in horror> Ruffian airline authorities haven't been telling the truth? Art!
That's an Aeroflot airliner, one of the Boeing or Airbus's that they stole in February 2022. As dangerous to fly as Azimuth, and the airline went from a $90 million profit this time last year, to a $45 million loss this year. O dearie me!
Trying times for Ruffian airlines. "Ruffian roulette" is now a game played by all their passengers.
Finally -
Gotta put the laundry out to dry and wrap up that Spiced Applesauce Cake. I may even venture outdoors.
* Ouch. Sorry.
** We've covered this before. Go Google BOOJUM!
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