They do not do what I say

Background:

The producer of decorations for hotels (paintings, prints, mirrors) sees an enormous international market. The manager/owner is an excellent salesman who knows the international hotel world like the back of his hand.

He sells easily and the many large contracts that he accomplishes have, in themselves, a good margin of profit. The problem, however, is that what he has sold he can not properly translate to his own production department or his suppliers. Many things go wrong, there’s a lot of repair work; frustration and hassles are random. A much heard remark is: “They simply do not do what I say.” 

The problem:

Due to the amount of repair work the margins are minimal; due to the every day frustrations about what goes wrong it is no fun to work in this company.

The analysis:

The owner of the company is not aware of the fact that his expertise is solely in the field of sales: he is definitely no manager; he is not able to let go of tasks and organize work away from him. He puts a lot of energy in organising the production horizontally/operationally, but is not successful in this. Consequently he does not succeed to translate the commercial opportunities he sees into new contracts that can be executed by his company. So the vertical management of new opportunities does not work either.

The advice:

  • Hire a manager that complements the things you can do yourself: an organiser that takes work away from you. 

  • Get a strong character who – on the one hand – is the counterweight to your emotional and chaotic way of working and – on the other hand – is aware of the (ownership) relations within your company.

  • Start thinking with the manager about how to cash in on the possibilities that you see in contracts that can be carried out by your company without problems.

 Jan Boeren

 

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  • choose the right 'second in command'

  • a strong character who can manage his boss

  • a management team should be complementary

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Documents in English

 

Diez iez Vietnam

This book is about the story of life of prof. Adrie van Gelderen. I met him on one of my PUM missions where he was a local representative of PUM. Adrie told me he had a manuscript of his story of life and asked me my opinion about publishing it. I promised to read it and give my comments. And indeed I did: I told him that his book would not be a profitable cash cow, however, publishing your own literary thoughts will give tremendous satisfaction, it's fun to do and it's not expensive at all.

Now Adrie was seriously ill at that time and unfortunately he passed away before we could take his book into production. So we, being Adrie's friends, decided to publish the book posthumously and donate all the refunds to his 'affiliate-foundation'.

'Diez iez Vietnam!'  is written in English. A copy can be ordered by clicking the link.