The End of an Era.......

In February last year, I made a post on here called P45 anyone?  It dealt with the way our company had changed, and expressed concerns about a round of job cuts that at the time was in full flow.  Reading it now, it was a pretty critical piece and in hindsight I stand by every word (if anything I was too lenient).  I ended it by wondering what the future might hold, both for the company and myself – and fairly pessimistic I was too.

 

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With good reason.

From the company perspective, the turbulence has not visibly abated since that time.  Our Charismatic Greek Chairman stepped down.  I think he took his well-earned fortune into a kind of semi-retirement, in that he no longer has any impact (at least as far anyone can see) in the day-to-day operation of the company or its strategic direction, and limits his public appearances to selected events like our annual users conference.  He sends out periodic All Staff e-mails (signed by “The Founder”) – on major religious festivals for instance, like Easter, or the start of Ramadan, or whatever – or when there is a major event in the world that may have an impact on the business.  He also sends out regular congratulatory mails to people celebrating an anniversary – I received one myself the week before last, on the 13^th anniversary of my joining the company.  All very nice I’m sure.

He was replaced as Chairman by our Greek CEO, who had been around for a long time and had been essentially running the company for years anyway.  In the mail he sent out announcing the changes, the New Chairman (let’s call him the Uncharismatic Greek Chairman) made it clear that he, too, intended to take a bit of a back seat and allow his replacement to mould the company and “take it to the next level.”

His replacement came from outside both the company and the IT industry, but with a decent track record of taking companies and building them up into leaner and more profitable entities through a combination of re-organizing them, cutting costs and acquisition (to paraphrase the introduction we were all given), he seemed a good fit for the strategic direction that had already been decided and started.  Let’s call him Le Gaul.

Those of us New Pretenders (and it must be said Old Guard) who had seen it all before (some of us a number of times) viewed all these pronouncements with a large dose of healthy scepticism.  Le Gaul of course brought in his own management team, thus creating a whole new (and expensive) layer to the company organization chart – odd, for someone who preached the Gospel of Lean is Mean.  He also succeeded in pissing off not a few people who suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves lower down the food chain.  God only knows what out Charismatic Greek Chairman Now Known As The Founder thought of it all……he apparently voiced unequivocal support for the changes in his annual conference address, but some people told me his tongue seemed firmly planted in his right cheek as he did so.  In any case, why should he worry?  He’d already taken the money and ran – not his concern any more.

To the rest of us?  Those at the coal face, so to speak?  An expectation that it would all end in tears.

 

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There was a series of roadshows, as managers new and old toured the world, telling us all what a bright future the company had, and how steps would be taken to improve things for all of us, apparently recognizing for the first time in living memory that perhaps things were actually less than perfect.  No excuses were acceptable for not attending one of these performances – I and all my colleagues on the site I was then working had to take a half day off and take a taxi ride 80 miles away to attend our one.  True to my reputation as a devil’s advocate (or, as some would have it, bloody trouble maker) I gave our hosts a bit of a hard time, as did other people at the presentation (possibly following my lead) and to be fair to our hosts, all criticism was well taken and noted for further action – although of course without any promises being made.  But that in itself was a departure from past experience and served to reduce our doubts (a little….).

That was in late summer 2011.  There followed a deafening silence for pretty much the rest of the year.  The odd managerial appointment was advised, Q3 and (eventually) Q4 results published together with the usual pep talk, and a new intranet site opened for business.  The final organization chart that had been promised at the roadshows remained conspicuous by its absence.  And all the while news filtered through of a few more redundancies, and a few more partnership agreements were announced.  It was all very confusing, but management (of course) remained very upbeat.

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Then, to paraphrase P45 anyone?, another volley of shit hit the corporate fan.  This time it came clearly from outside the organisation.   Early in the New Year, our major competitor announced to the world that it was In merger talks with us.  It didn’t go into too much detail, but said it was confident agreement could be reached before long.  It clearly took us by surprise, and as share prices in both companies started jumping up and down all over the place we were forced to rush out an announcement of our own.  We tried to be innocuous, and admitted we were in “preliminary discussions” but that nothing had been decided and we would make further announcements in due course, as and when there was a need……   The negotiations dragged on throughout Q1, while the press (in particular the doom and gloom merchants on the blogs) had a field day.  Throughout this time, business ground to a halt, as prudent customers and prospects decided to wait and see, on the understandable grounds they weren’t sure which product they were going to end up with.   Eventually, as many of us had expected, along came a competing offer, this time from some American venture capitalist I’d never heard of, whose offer of cash was more attractive to the competitor’s shareholders than our stock swap, so of course the deal (if it could be called that) collapsed.

Shortly thereafter, in the wake of appalling Q1 results, Le Gaul resigned to “pursue other business opportunities” (if you say so, monsieur….).  Our number one money man, a long-time employee and (just by way of a change) English, stepped up to CEO, and our Uncharismatic Greek Chairman announced he was going to play a more “hands on role” – although expressing complete support for English (so why are you immediately undermining him then?)

So now, a once lively and wildly entrepreneurial company is now being run by a trio of bean counters whose main priority is maximizing profits, minimizing losses and propping up the stock price to the satisfaction of all our shareholders (including one assumes themselves, with their no doubt substantial blocks).

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Predictably, within a week, the sackings started, for once at a higher level as middle ranking managers (not all of whom had come with Le Gaul) were shown the door marked Exit.   Then it percolated down, if that’s the right expression, and a bunch of people of my level were dumped…..across all business areas.  We in Services were assured (at least I was) that we would be ok since we had already been cut to the bone over the last 18 months or so.  It didn’t convince me at all.

While all this madness was going on, I was trying to keep busy and occupied since in this situation The Bench is not a good place to be.  Regular readers will have seen last years’ epistles from Geneva, Abu Dhabi, Cyprus and Chile and gather I was keeping busy and racking up some decent Airmiles – true enough.  But this year has been very different.  We’re in October and my total time on site has been a measly 10 weeks in total – in Florida, Cairo, London and Malta.  So despite best efforts – mainly e-mails every other day to our resource management team – I’ve been badly exposed.

So of course, push came to shove.  Half way through a bowl of cornflakes last Tuesday morning (late breakfast after two separate school runs for the kids – a great advantage of being at home, spending time with them) the doorbell rang.  DHL. 

True to form, my Termination of Employment Agreement (personally I prefer the phrase “Redundancy Notice”) arrived by courier with absolutely no advanced warning from either my line manager or HR.  It was no real surprise, despite my having spent a half hour on the phone the previous day, discussing how best to get a virus removed from my laptop, with my line manager, during which time the subject of my impending notice was not even hinted at. 

It would be very very easy to be angry and bitter about what has happened and, in particular, the way the deed was done – but I don’t.  There is no one person to feel angry at, of course – it’s not the fault of my various managers over the years, or HR, or even our Uncharismatic Greek Chairman, his predecessor or successors.  Rather, it’s a long line of errors of judgment and half-arsed strategic initiatives that have led to this, an insistence on crisis management and concentration on The Sale to the exclusion of every other facet of the business.  

That has created an imbalance in the way the company operates that someone, a total stranger, actually pointed out to me years ago in a bar in Almaty.   He wasn’t in our business, but knew the company and the way it worked through other people he knew, and his considered opinion was simply explained.  He stated that all companies, and in particular all software vendors, could be imagined as a pendulum, with Sales at one end of the swing and Services at the other (Product Development was somewhere in the middle).  If the pendulum swung too far in either direction, it set up an imbalance that could ultimately lead to disaster if not checked.  In his opinion, our pendulum was too far in the Sales direction – and nothing since then has been done to correct that imbalance – quite the contrary, in fact. 

There is frustration for sure, because I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed the job (I’ve written elsewhere it’s the best I’ve ever had|) and I wanted to continue doing it for the next few years, to my retirement.  I had my conversation with HR and it was all very cordial – in fact I received an apology for the way it has all been handled – and in all honesty, given the parlous state of the company right now I can’t argue with the cost-cutting logic behind it.    If I feel anything at all, it’s a sense of relief that the Sword of Damocles that has been hanging over my head for 18 months or more has finally fallen and done its job.  Since all this started last February, for me it’s always been a case of when I was likely to be dumped and how much of a payment I would get – I’ve never felt confident (hopeful, yes) that I would actually reach retirement age here.

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So now I can get on with the rest of my life.  I’ve started looking around for something new to do and financially I have maybe six or seven months before I need to panic – my notice period runs until February next, and I’m being paid throughout that.   I have a reasonable idea of what projects are coming through over the next few weeks and months, and the people I’ve spoken to are also aware of some if not all of them – since the company has taken the decision to use business partner staff for certain tasks, and it’s a relatively small world I move in professionally, I would have been surprised if that hadn’t been the case – so I’m confident something will come up before Panic Stations arrive.  There are other options as well, so we’ll see.

In the meantime, I have the kids to play with, and read to, and shout at when homework isn’t being done.  I have my books to read (four or five I’ve bought over the past couple of months and not yet started).  I have my music and of course the wonders of Polish daytime tv.  I can spend time finally transferring the handwritten manuscript of the “The Match” - a novel about sex and booze and football that I wrote nearly thirty years ago now but have never had time since to do anything about trying to sell– into a proper format that I might actually be able to do something with. 

And I have this.  The blog will continue, because I enjoy writing it, and I think a few people might even enjoy reading it (sometimes, anyway).  It may change a bit, for a while at least, because Travellin Bob has stopped Travellin.

But not for ever.  It may be the End of an Era, but not the end of all things.

So watch this space……