103 James sees himself as the new visionary within the retail market and constantly overwhelms people with his loud monologues on his latest concept...

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Smutek to uczucie, jak gdyby się tonęło, jak gdyby grzebano cię w ziemi.
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This is why it is unwise to talk of stress (as some people have done) in terms of degrees of loudness, since loudness is in part a product of the inherent sonority of sounds...
W 2002 roku jedno z głównych źródeł informacji medycznych, „The New England Journal ofMedicine”, opublikowało artykuł pod tytułem Migraine - Current...
The majority of people who work in the pharmaceutical industry subscribe to high standards of integrity and do everything in their power to stay within the constraints of...
In his systematic efforts to ruin girls and women he strives to break down the last barriers of discrimination between him and other peoples...
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Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public...
Constance Bedford niewątpliwie była przystojną kobietą...
United States|Virginia|Montross|Whithall Farm|1VG2United States|Virginia|New Castle|New Castle Intl|VA85United States|Virginia|New...
Takiego wszyscy bardzo zawsze lubili, bo choć sam nie podpowiadał, umiał jednak zrobić hałas, wywrócić się z ławką, pomagał na wszystkie sposoby...

Smutek to uczucie, jak gdyby się tonęło, jak gdyby grzebano cię w ziemi.

Publicly and vocally, he is a huge advocate for the change programmes the business needs, but privately he continues to fuel the fires that rage between Retail and Buying. He has a personal agenda to get control of the whole value chain.
In contrast to the prudent behaviour of most accountants, neither when he was Finance Director nor now does he see the need for budgets below Board level. He has openly discussed massage techniques for the Retail results to improve the picture to the Group Board.
On a personal level, he is very affable with other Board members and his staff who enjoy his management style, which is refreshingly open in contrast to Henrik. However, the staff regard him as a buffoon.
Meeting behaviour
James contributes significantly during meetings taking more than half of the air-time available. However, his inputs are largely confrontational, dismissive and largely miss the point. His style is to talk loud or louder than the others and to dominate the discussion by talking so rapidly that others cannot get a word in.
James comes to the meetings prepared with data to show how his functional area, Retail, is doing very well or would be if others – Buying – did their job properly .
PERSONNEL MANAGER – HELEN
Helen is a career HR person who has moved up the hierarchy mainly by changing company. Her impact at every level of the company is low, although she is a very likeable personality. Her mannerism often gives the impression of strength in management style, but this soon recedes when a firm response is given.
She has been in position for 6 years and as such has seen the going of at least 2 Managing Directors during that time.
She has brought little innovation or change to the HR function within the company but serves as the management tool for hiring and firing, doing much of the latter herself. The issues of high staff turnover are endemic in the Retail business. There seems to be little awareness of this in Helen’s function and no plans to attack the issue.
Helen is great business friends with George, the MD, and spends more time with him than any other Board member. She spends very little time with James, Retail Director, and seems troubled in his presence.
Meeting behaviour
Helen has almost no voice at the meetings, contributing nothing other than mild support for George. Silence appears to be golden in her life.
C O N C L U S I O N
I was working in another country at the time of this particular project. But I had many good colleagues who were involved. If I remember correctly, we did a lot of work out in the organisation trying to improve performance and we earned a lot of money for our efforts. But we never effectively tackled the problems at Board level.
Eventually, I think, the Managing Director was fired and the shops were sold off to another company with a more effective management team, which reversed their declining fortunes.

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I have recently received from sources within a major consultancy, their descriptions of the executive team at one of the world’s largest motor car manufacturers. They make quite fun reading – but perhaps we should save those for another time…..

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CHAPTER 10 F A R O U T I N T H E F A R E A S T
As consulting markets in the West became over-saturated, fad-surfing became unfashionable and competition began to push down prices for consulting manweeks, many of the major consultancies began to cast their eyes eastwards towards Asia as the potential most profitable new business opportunity. Between 1994 and 1997, for example, McKinsey opened offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Some consultancies made a success of their expansion eastwards by mastering the unique commercial approach necessary in many developing countries, but not all. Quite a few others abandoned Asia during the Asian financial crisis. A big challenge for the consultancies entering Asia was learning to live with a business culture that was somewhat different to what they might have been used to in the U.S. or Europe.
One of the many regrets I have, as I look back at the numerous high, medium and low points of my career in management consulting, is that I spent most of my time in Europe and the USA and only ever did one short piece of work in Asia. For, although the Asian project I was on was brief for reasons that I will explain, it was a real blast! As we say in consulting, working in Asia ‘accelerated my learning curve’. And this acceleration was in three areas:
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1. Professional – this was my first real experience of working with the hordes of wonderful folk in our massive IT systems division and my first exposure to the chaos that they considered to be professional client service and a well set up project. I was later to have the pleasure of co-operating with them on an opportunity that was even more challenging than my brief foray to help them out in Asia (Chapter 12 The great systems swindle)
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2. Commercial – I was privileged to experience business practices that make the Irish dairy (with its fraud and theft) and an Italian meat processing plant (with its management being whisked off to prison while we were doing our study) both look like innocent kindergarten games
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3. Social – the consulting team seemed to indulge in a variety of after-work activities, which made anything one had ever done in places like Amsterdam seem rather tame in comparison
1 . P R O F E S S I O N A L – A N I N T E R E S T I N G A P P R O A C H T O
S E L L I N G A P R O J E C T
How we actually sold the Asian project is a little unclear as is often the situation with projects that end up as basket cases – in consulting, as I suppose in most other walks of life, when things go horribly wrong, the people responsible start muddying the waters so that any blame going around doesn’t land at their door. Also unclear is whether we ever got any money for all the work we did. I suspect that finally, we made a monstrous loss, as we 106
neither got any fees paid nor our considerable expenses refunded. However, our project team had a great time. I do know that the salesman was fired immediately after the project collapsed and went to work for a competitor, where he was given Germany as his territory. I imagine he is now having rather less fun there than he had when he was ‘working’ Asia.