Reflections 16th February

New Growth, and Making Camp.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Organisations have always been slow to change, and established organisations with well-established managements and shareholders the slowest of all. Management wants well-rewarded security, employees get accustomed to routine, while shareholders want reliable, risk-free returns. Activist shareholders pressure underperforming parts of their portfolio to do what is needed to meet their needs, managers under pressure make short-term decisions to keep them happy, and before they know it, the seam they have been diligently mining is exhausted.

Meanwhile, ideas have surfaced elsewhere and often out of sight, and to paraphrase Ghandi, incumbent managements first ignore them, then laugh at them, then fight them, and then they lose.