The Art of Managing Incompetencies

Let me tell you a story of a company I once knew...

The company had a business head who was very ambitious and was able to influence his team that managed to get get results he desired. On one of the new projects that he planned, he had an ambitious target of 100 and for that he hired a sales head who he thought fits the bill... but unlike most sales guys this person was a very pessimistic sales guy and did not believe in the figure, but yet he decided to move ahead because he did not have a strong enough reason to to know how not to achieve it... So they both put up a huge system to achieve that huge target of 100. But eventually before the project got launched, the Business head resigned and a new business head came in...

The new business head was a very aggressive sales person and took it upon himself to achieve the challenge of achieving the high targets... he made every effort and pushed the sales head to make it happen... the Sale head who did not believe in the figure on the other hand did not believe in the figure anyways... and had to go through a tough time to the extent that he was almost about to quit... when his stars smiled one day and the new Business head also quit.... he got a new lease of life...

The next business head was a conservative... he believed he would achieve lower targets and then the sales head already believed in the same, and yes what happened next was very expected... Since the new targets were much lower, they had to make the system much leaner, All existing people who were hired had to be reduced by half as the target too was reduced by half... A lot of people lost their job and who had the last laugh was the pessimist sales head... But the people who last their jobs were not the non performers but the people who were in good books of the sales head.

That year the company did not achieve its target again and so it happened the next year too. The Sales head was finally asked to quit because of non performance. It took the company an entire 4 years to realize who was the non performer.

The following year a new Sales head and a new business head joined the company, and they decided to take the stiff target of 100... and for that you know what they needed a much larger system and lots of people...