Investing in Key People, Not in Pet Projects

Why do so many large businesses forget that people are the key to creating projects that find success and resonance in the marketplace?

A new manager begins a reign of terror this way:  Instead of promoting key people to oversee and muscle a public project that will benefit the greater goodness — the manager instead creates a private, pet, project that is narrowly micro-managed into failure.  

The failure of the manager’s pet is never the manager’s fault — the blame is always spread around to affect each of those living under the manager’s thumb.

That false blaming becomes a virus that negatively affects the entire workforce and the only way to remedy the cause is to cure the body politic with the death of the infected manager.

Few upper-level managers are able to see — let alone act — upon the necessary, surgical, removal of the failed manager, and that leads to a creeping, gangrenous death oozing pus that taints the workplace and poisons the marketplace.

Key people are smart by definition and they see this stench of death before it begins to fester and they quickly turn and race for the nearest exit.