Blog Brief: How to run a company - medical devices or otherwise...

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Two years ago, in the first year of his "professional" career in medical devices, a friend of mine, "not me", came to know that his plant was being shut down to "cut costs" and was being moved from where it was to another state that was offering "tax incentives". (This said state is no longer offering any incentives, its own economy having been..).

In all, a healthy, profit producing part of the organization was shut down. Not only that, it was rumored that the "executive" responsible for this received a healthy "bonus" for all this, to a tune of millions of dollars, not too far south of what this generous family offered up as a bonus to all their employees.

Can you imagine the same amount of money as this family offered to dozens of workers to one guy for firing north of a 100 folks?

Now, I will name no parties and trust that as a reader of this blog you will never try to find out who my friend is, what company he worked for and who this "executive" was by going to LinkedIn or Google or anything.

But why talk about that dumbass "executive" any way?

Immediately after that, my friend happened to work for another medical device company that also laid off 20% off its workforce minus the CEO who is almost singularly responsible for the company's ongoing miserable performance for the last 3 years.

This CEO was also laughably seen giving entrepreneurs advice in Ohio about a month or so ago - himself having never done anything worthwhile in his career, other than of course...

Anyway, let's look past all this.

Do you want to "start-up"? Do you want to "promote the rapid growth of your stellar organization"?

Then stop "seamlessly integrating" anything, or "fitting round holes into square pegs" or "streamline operations" or "initiate a painful, yet necessary set of "cost-cutting" measures" (yes, that was air-quotes in air-quotes)...

Fire your "C" level executives practicing "CYA" management.

Yes, stop the BS. And no, true advice never sounds pretty.

Be honest to your employees. Maybe you don't have to be like the Illinois Family who were caring for their employees even after they sold the company..

Maybe, just maybe, you will treat your own employees - the ones actually producing something other than Excel Spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides - with a little bit more dignity and respect.

Maybe, just maybe.

And, lo! you will have yourself a great organization - whether you are making medical devices, software or bath tissue...