How new executives destroy the companies they trust
This article is about the risks of changing management in large companies and characteristic phenomena when trying to ignore the law of effective property management:
But for those who come
To a world in darkness
Our story will be the key
S. Kalugin, Das Boot .
1. Risks of changing the company's management
2. The emergence of a universal pseudo-effective manager
3. Such unreliable reporting
4. Parallel management structures
5. Additional control over financial flows
6. Black box. Where does the need for staff reductions come from
7. False optimization criterion “Cost minimization”
8. Abbreviations in the branches
9. The way to outsource
10. Temporary workers squeeze the company. Revenue cuts following spending cuts
11. Acquisitions and Mergers
12. Beeline
13. Sbertech
14. Western consulting companies. External management
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Sooner or later in the life of a successful big company with a long vertical of power there is a change of the CEO.
This process generates specific risks that would be well taken into account by all its participants.
Making a mistake with the choice of a new gene. Director, the owner of the company runs the risk of lower profits, in neglected cases can lose the whole company. But, having sold the rest of the company, most likely he will live comfortably, except without a second yacht and a football club.
The new CEO will receive a guaranteed reward, the question is whether he gets a lot or a lot. It’s not a fact that his reputation will suffer - maybe he will leave on time. In any case, all of its shoals, if possible, will be hidden, justified by external factors. In the absence of a scandal, as a rule, everyone is interested, including the owner, who is interested in hiding the deplorable state of affairs of a company in order to sell its remnants at a higher price.
The most significant risk for the employees of the enterprise is that they will suffer the destruction of what they have created by their work, the reduction of income, dismissal of staff reductions and the subsequent search for means of subsistence.
The choice of the candidacy of the general director is determined by familiarity with the owner and the presence of trust between them. And the more important this relationship, the more skeletons in the closet of the company.
If there are no people with the right profession among the authorized representatives, then relatives, sports coaches, country neighbors, classmates and classmates are called upon. In general, people tested in small, trust to manage large. But often large is not the same thing as small: a newspaper is not the same as a factory.
The owner of the company reassures himself with the argument that his appointee will cope, he is a good universal manager - one of those who, although he does not know the subject area, has completed an MBA course and can successfully manage with the help of advanced people management skills. All you have to do is monitor the “traffic lights” in reporting: who of the subordinates got the red light of non-fulfillment of indicators should be called in, demanded eliminated, punished, dismissed.
Let's deal with the truth of this stereotype, using a close analogy to us from the field of IT.
Not to develop is to degrade. These are the laws of both IT and business in general.
Of course, you need to hire only those who can understand the many interrelationships of the elements of the system, and their internal settings, possible modes of operation. We need someone who can build a model of the system in her head, and therefore, if necessary, and recreate it. For example, if a virus or intruders destroyed everything.
In our example, someone who positions himself as a humanist (marketer, historian, philosopher, journalist) is not suitable for managing an IT system. If IT was not interested in IT before, then it is unlikely that it will even delve into the new job while everything works by inertia.
As soon as something breaks, he will move to another place of work — not to waste his life on creating an uninteresting system for him, which he does not fully understand, and does not want to understand.
In addition to this “psychological” argument, I have suspicions that it is in fact only a manifestation (rationalization) of a deeper reason.
Not everyone can be programmers , not everyone can be theoretical physicists, not everyone can fit in his head a large technical system. Not everyone can fit in his head a system that represents relationships in the work of the divisions of a large organization. Not in the sense of someone who has hooked someone, who has a relative, where financial flows take place, etc., but the interconnection of units in the production process. Otherwise, E. Goldratt would not have to write a series of “The Goal ...”.
Why, there - not always the director can realize what kind of service his company produces. If Yandex couldn’t understand “what it is worth” the “Film Search” it bought and decided to turn it into another online cinema ...
Why is it important to fully understand the work of the entire organization? Because otherwise, its work cannot be optimized - the already mentioned E. Goldratt in his “Theory of Constraints” proves that independent sequential optimization of individual sections will guarantee non-optimal work of the whole enterprise.
However, even if it is not optimal, at least there was some kind of work. But our case is harder.
So, for the new director, the work of some divisions is a “black box”, i.e. he understands only the inputs and outputs, the requirements-requests and the desired results. He may mistakenly believe that he understands them or understands them in 5 minutes “if necessary” - here the Dunning-Kruger effect will help him.
For example, for a new marketing director, IT will be the black box. Here we will keep this situation in mind.
Let's see how trying to manage a partially incomprehensible company, the new director will lead her to destruction.
To manage the need information about the state of the company. And here comes a huge problem - how can you make sure that the reporting is correct?
Reporting on the results achieved, the current state, and especially the forecasts, are worth something only if they were made by an expert to whom there is confidence. More precisely - if there is confidence in the entire chain of information processing, coming from reliable primary sources.
I will give 4 examples
1. About Beeline write:
2. An example of the state. management:
3. And here is my favorite Satyam / Maytas case, with expensive, very expensiveleeches from PWC auditors:
4. About the fake reporting in the Soviet era, you can search for the keyword "postscript".
The problem of trust in reporting from the category of eternal,
The new director himself as his subordinates and advisers will invite their "proven people."
By the same principle, the process of leadership change cascades to the lower levels of power in the Company ...
But you can't just take off and remove the old leaders of the black boxes. Suddenly, they are doing something important, and the time for “their own” to accept current affairs needs to be given.
All managers can be immediately removed unless the branches, before closing them.
Therefore, inviting your friends to senior positions translates into an increase in the company's management staff and the creation of parallel management structures.
The new structures created for soft interception of company management, trying to understand business processes will load divisions with additional expanded reporting. In essence, it will be confusing reporting - in order for reporting to be sensible, you must thoroughly understand the production process. The reaction to confused work is irritation from the additional “work in the trash can”, a decrease in trust in the company’s management, and a reduction in the quality of work is possible (as the management still does not understand what the work is).
Plans for a hidden replacement of management personnel can grow to the restructuring of the entire organizational structure, ostensibly for the sake of efficiency. Type really did not have time to enter, but already found inefficiency.
In this case, there are risks to get even more chaos - up to a misunderstanding of who submits to whom, how the new divisions and new posts are called, and for what the person is responsible "here in this post."
For financial flows, the director will need separate special control. Remember about unreliable reporting? Therefore, new additional contours of control over financial flows will be created.
All purchases must be coordinated by a committee of people checked by the new director. So that everyone and everything will buy only from the right suppliers.
And how will the new trusted people figure out, is it necessary to buy something requested for work from the “black boxes” at all, or can they be denied and thereby saved?
And let's arrange another committee for this to protect the need for procurement, etc. We will meet once a month.
The result is a slowdown in the production process, real financial losses from delays in deliveries ... But no one will take this into account.
The new director will put his people in high positions, in the central office - s / n, premium, and other status support must be at the highest level, otherwise what will be their influence , who will listen and respect them?
He will also need to find funds for a higher premium to the board of directors - they control his work, and should feel positive trends in their pocket.
And also gold parachutes fired from the old team ...
So, something is already too much spending coming out. Golden parachutes should be cut off, and it is better without scandal, "of their own will." Put pressure on their ... conscience.
An increase in the staff of top managers is burdening PLT, and the new director hardly promised the owners an increase in personnel costs, rather the opposite .
Therefore, no matter how cool you are, in order to maintain the same level of financing as personnel costs, you will inevitably have to make a decision about a small reduction in “worker bees”.
How are we going to cut - the same percentage for all divisions, or will we figure it out, and we will reduce only the “wrong bees” that bring little honey? You understand that it is simply indecent to ask such a question to an efficient manager. So the question is how to distinguish the drones from the right bees.
And what about the "black boxes", are now transparent?
Nope They bring calculations, but they are still not clear how to check. They muddy the water about different personal productivity of programmers, about training, stretched for 2 years.
They lead to an average level of performance, and it turns out that they should not be reduced, but should be expanded!
And they will no longer argue, and they will fulfill the order ... that is, their reduction goal .
If “their people” the new director comes to leadership positions from small companies, then they may not be ready for the increased flexibility of downstream managers ( see clause 2.2 ). Focusing on the usual amount of feedback from subordinates, they easily bent over in their "reforms".
And in the reporting will be "everything is fine," until the very end - because responsibility for the success of the cuts was shifted to the managers of the black boxes.
Besides, to whom should they now talk about internal problems? Those who previously did not want to listen to their arguments, those who in fact created these problems, but shifted responsibility from themselves to them? And what will it do besides harm?
We fix:
The new director will strive first and foremost to reduce what he does not understand, that for him he is a “black box”.
Psychological pressure, he will seek from the leaders of the "black boxes" consent to the reduction of their employees.
The black box managers will have to independently develop plans to reduce their units and take responsibility for all subsequent risks of their implementation.
The reductions will take place under the flag of increasing efficiency, otherwise, but due to a lack of understanding of the internal laws of the functioning of “black boxes”, they will not even be able to formulate criteria for this efficiency, except for the poor “cost minimization”.
Minimizing costs is not at all a criterion of efficiency. The criterion should either be a nonlinear function with a minimum at a non-zero cost, or be supplemented by reasonable restrictions on the allowable range of values ​​of its arguments. Otherwise, the desired value will be found at the point where "costs = 0". And this is a stopping point, the death of an enterprise, which has nothing to do with the optimal mode of its operation.
The goal of minimizing costs without additional reasonable restrictions is the goal of destruction.
Personnel cuts will take place primarily in the branches, for each manager strives to have his subordinates nearby. He knows them, emotional contact is established with them, they are really useful to him, it’s pitiful to cut them.
The main downsizing is in black boxes in the branches
... and it may turn out to be unexpectedly high.
I also propose to consider the truth of a stronger statement:
Almost always, reductions in a large successful company in Russia are associated with the desire of top management to increase their salaries and bonuses.
I ask you only to distinguish such cuts from the filtering mechanisms of the labor market, when the same Google or MS gains thousands, and thousands periodically dismiss.
Take into account that there is such a rule for large stable companies - the total wage fund (FOT) should not grow faster than the total profit. In this payroll, both billions are added up for bonuses to members of the Board of Directors, and pennies on ordinary staff salaries. According to my estimates, top management easily eats from 20% to 35% of the total payroll. And in our country, inflation ... and influential boys want to compensate for it ... but they can do it only at the expense of the rest ...
At some point, management will be sure to visit the idea of ​​minimizing the number of black boxes by combining them. Ideally, there should be only one, and a trusted person should be at its head.Along the way, this association will contribute to reducing the number of staff.
The reasons will come to their mind - such as geographically dispersed teams work worse
In order to control the available KPIs of a large black box, the process of regulating the interaction at its inputs and outputs will be launched. They will create a “Single Window” of sending requests to the “black box”. Naturally, right here, near this single window, a “single queue” will arise, for which, in order to avoid conflicts, a “single moderator” will be required, determining the order of requirements fulfillment, etc.
This will be accompanied by breaks in horizontal (not always regulated) links between departments, bureaucratization, a fall in speed and an increase in the complexity of interaction between departments.
In the layers and contradictions of the old and new regulations, it will be harder to work and easier to strike in Italian, not even with the aim of protest "against marasmus", but with the aim of avoiding the likelihood of being accused of violating one of the possible interpretations written in the regulations (difficult, I understand).
For the development of a black box is difficult to protect the add. financing.
Such a request immediately carries with it a conflict - while the director doesn’t feel the need to develop something unknown and incomprehensible to him, and now people come to him and ask for money. And he had other plans how to spend them! Given the flexibility of high-ranking executives in the face of their bosses ... yes, most likely no one will go to justify anything and ask. The subordinates will be told - oh, how I fought for our interests, but Gender, the bastard, refused.
Those units that the head does not understand and considers a black box will not receive development.
In the end, black boxes will be considered non-core for the enterprise and will want to be outsourced to minimize their internal influence, formalize interactions with them, increase manageability and other “advantages”.
Cutting off parts of the company he does not understand, the manager is trying to turn the company into the one whose work he is fully capable of understanding, i.e. which he is really able to manage.
Of course, there is a risk that the parts to be cut off will be very important, and the company will not survive such a castration.
In large companies, there is always a lag between the consequences of management mistakes and the financial indicators of annual reporting. Especially, if there is an interest to hide negative phenomena.
Financial indicators are no longer talking about the future of the company, but the past.
As one friend of mine said:
Therefore , a pseudo-efficient manager will always be able to squeeze temporary elevations from a large company - reduce staff, reduce operating expenses to the detriment of quality, and do not update fixed assets.
The flip side of this “savings” is staff turnover, loss of competencies, progressive internal degradation.
Following the loss of quality of work, revenue sags a little, which means there is a reason to further strengthen measures for the so-called “economy” in order to preserve sacred profitability. This is how a spiral of interdependent reduction of incomes and expenses is launched - a suicide of a company.
The larger and richer the company, the longer it is able to conceal the internal degradation, and the longer it can carry on its ridge a team of pseudo-efficient managers.
By the time of the company’s obvious manifestation of problems, a team of effective managers may already “fly” to a new job. They will have a head start - they still have the opportunity to feel the approach of a fiasco before external observers .
After a few years, the true state of affairs finally makes its way through crafty reporting. Then the people who let in the management of incapable people begin to regret.
Jobs told us about his regrets about the appointment of "non-core" Scully.
Jack Ma publicly regretted in general all the “professional leaders” attracted from him.
But often, management failures will all be tried to be attributed to adverse external circumstances, although they already write books aboutCompanies are dying primarily from internal causes .
Look, everyone is talking about external circumstances, as if they don’t see these internal reasons::
1. The results of the survey “what threatens the business and how to avoid it.
2. Megafon spoke about the main threat to its business.
Takeovers and mergers are a favorite process of top management.
Often, the director understands that takeovers and mergers threaten the internal environment of the company (the MBA is taught this).
He knows that sometimes it turns out to be a senseless destruction of the affiliated company, and he does this directly to do it.
But the temptation is great, and the hidden motives are difficult to prove.
Yes, and for Whatsapp suspiciously paid a lot compared to Viber ... well, the already mentioned Satyam case is an already investigated case.
So buy companies, and then write off losses.
From the cuts of those who understood the IT system, the consequences come: lack of development of the service, lack of technical support, delay in eliminating crashes and software bugs. What is surprising, when it’s banal no one knows where the server is located, or vice versa - there are server-buzzing servers, but no one knows what they are doing. And the monitoring was self-written, and not all servers were covered, and how to integrate it now ...
It looks like this:
1. “VKontakte” does not pay users for the found vulnerabilities, but does not consider them.
2. Why "Vkontakte" does not fix errors within a month?
Yes, I know that they are not merged, but only outbid. But that’s what the model external signs of adrain look like.
Let us turn to specific examples.
I want to first note a funny nuance.
Often, what looks like theoretical speculation in this article is actually a reality, and individual phrases are generally direct quotes ( I feel that we will not work together, drivers should be clear to management , etc.). But examples with references to specific companies are situations where I judge other people about the state of things and I could be wrong in my conclusions.
So, Beeline VimpelCom.
Until 2011, the director was Alexander Vadimovich Izosimov, who in 1991–1995 worked as a consultant at McKinsey, and in 1996-2001 he made a career in the financial and sales part of Mars Inc., reaching the regional president for the CIS, Central Europe and Scandinavia. In short, the universal manager-marketer-financier, prepared in McKinsey.
After him in 2011–2013, the director of VimpelCom was Anton Vladimirovich Kudryashov, a financier.
The current director of Vimpelcom is Mikhail Slobodin, an economist.
Michael is engaged in improvements in Beeline - he disguises employees in a new form , because he believes that the form will help the appearance of the content. He himself does not shy away from cosplay- this is “charging with positive, and useful for Beeline”. Carries subbotnik with the delivery of waste paper and scrap metal, etc.
As a result, the “financial finance economists and marketing specialists” optimized the work of the technical company Beeline to the following situation:
Let's translate from the language of PR into Russian:
Beeline’s management was not able to competently manage its own IT, and this is quite openly recognized.
I will assume that the goals of "saving" on IT systems and IT specialists were set earlier; there was no IT development for several years. Now everything is so bad that it is easier to start from scratch, and give under external control.
Keeping your IT team would be cheaper for future outsourcing billing for, say caution, 5 times. Of course, no one will ever count, how many times in fact - there simply won't be such a task from management, why know such a terrible truth.
The bosses will be ordered another report showing the benefits of outsourcing, and be sure they will count this benefit. As they say, "floated, we know."
Shareholder and management of Beeline, consider that it is profitable. But this is which side to look at. To transfer IT to outsourcing is how to lay your eggs in someone else's basket. To sell towers is like selling your kidney. But if the consulting doctor said “still to the morgue,” then it’s certainly profitable for shareholders - selling it is still alive.
It may seem to you that this desire to reduce the regions and keep the staff in expensive Moscow is somewhat contrary to the policy of reducing costs.
But let me, if the director and his team want to live in Moscow, then it’s no longer commeelrous to remember about savings. "When it comes to family honor, talking about money is inappropriate."
That's the reason for the dismemberment of the company - the leadership does not believe in the future, hmm, industry, and specialists want reductions for several years to extend the level of profitability. Well, along the way get bonuses from the sale of towers and other liquid pieces. And, who knows, maybe even get settled by the beneficiaries of outsourcing companies who will keep Beeline in the future for those same eggs and kidneys, and at the same time have a margin above Beeline itself.
Now conditionally a good example.
I wonder why this non-charitable "business" has become so hastily and a lot to recruit IT specialists?
I suppose that earlier in 2010–2011, the top management of Sberbank was given such signals from a roasted rooster that it was impossible to ignore them. As a result, IT management was given a blank check to recruit the best specialists for any reasonable money to save the situation. Well, in order to isolate IT from the incompetent influence of the top management of the main company, and at the same time not to embarrass other Sberbank specialists with high s / n in IT, they decided to separate their IT into a separate company.
As a result, Sberbank's IT got the opportunity to develop:
Yes, its IT in big companies is always more profitable than outsourcing, whatever McKinsey doesn’t whisper to Beeline.
By the way, what do you think, starting with how many IT employees are it financially advantageous to have your own IT, and not outsourcing? How about: starting with the size of a typical team - i.e. with 5-7 people, considering separately for each IT profession?
But a familiar employee from Sbertech denies my gloomy suspicions, and Gref’s more complete interview also softens the impression.
There is reason to hope for the best, but let's not forget what even good ideas are turning on from Gref to ordinary employees and what happens to those who are trying to give him feedback .
The new leadership will feel that it does not have the credibility of the old employees who understand their site of work thoroughly (and even more so - several sites).
Once I saw the results of an anonymous independent survey among employees - the statistics there was such that the longer the employee worked at the company, i.e. the more he understood exactly how it worked, the less he had confidence in the actions of the new leadership.
You understand that relying on such results of the survey will only increase the desire of the new leadership to get rid of these inert clever people who are resisting their “ingenious” designs to do “as they were taught at MBA”.
A typical solution to the problem of a lack of technical knowledge in a new director and his team is the assistance of western consulting companies.
Already with their help the director is not afraid of any deception from the “black boxes”.
At the same time, these “blacks” will have less nose to bully in front of the new leadership.
A friend of mine told me about Beeline that financing the costs of network development there is carried out according to a certain “Development Model”, which for Beeline was developed by consultants from the international consulting company McKinsey.
Everything supposedly happens like this:
Guess what this secrecy really hides?
There are no such secret models. If the model were, then in this case - only linear, and for one, maximum two budget campaigns, all its coefficients could still be calculated.
Most likely, McKinsey does not conduct calculations for its invisible model, which does not exist. Instead, McKinsey consultants take the calculations of Beeline experts and tell Beeline’s management where to cut costs, i.e. degrade network quality in the medium term.
Beeline paid for the development of the model, but instead received external control from a foreign company.
Transferring responsibility for financial and organizational decisions on technical units to Western consulting companies leads to a situation of external management, and without any responsibility for the decisions made.
Yes, this management is not tough, and has big limitations, but if you influence slowly, then in a few years ... we get the result: Beeline ditched its IT, Beeline sells towers, management does not believe in the prospects of the company and the wireless communications industry as a whole.
Oh yes, the ability to directly blow in the ears of a technically illiterate leadership decides a lot.
Google believes in the prospects of wireless communications, Facebook believes , Ilon Musk believes, and Beeline now lost faith.
Do you know what Google, Facebook and SpaceX might need to create a good network of billions of subscribers in addition to their satellites, balloons and gliders? Ground infrastructure. The one that Beeline and MegaFon are now thinking of selling. Plus it would be good to get a data transport network in the kit.
Hmm, an American consulting company recommends selling towers that American companies will need in a few years ... Is there a match here?
The second variant of events - if Google really gets the exchange rate between drones more than 4G 40 times , then the use of ground infrastructure for it will lose its meaning.
In this case, the partial loss of control over their infrastructure by the opsox still plays into Google’s hands - there is a way to convert it into a deterioration in the quality of services, their appreciation, and hence the subscribers ’readiness to switch to the Google network (albeit less speed, but flat tariffs or free , and works more stable).
By the way, another “consultant” - the Boston Consulting Group - is engaged in personnel management in Beeline.
Implements the principles of regulating the number of IT and technical staff, according to which once a year there is an adjustment - to dismiss or redeem specialists. It's so great when IT positions or techies are reduced to open them again and recruit new employees in a year. They are just like janitors - a new form has been issued , 1 day for training - showed the site, and on the 2nd day 100% return is already from them, right, right?
McKinsey and BCG present MelaFon and MTS for Beeline’s “best practices” as an exemplary, already run-in, successful optimization of the company.
If you say that I’ve gotten too close to it, that there can’t be such that Beeline is run by foreign consulting companies, then it turns out that you don’t know exactly about this .
You do not know that the US Central Bank is governed by the United States , and that in all the ministries of the Russian Federation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Delloitte, Ernst & Young are engaged in consulting and auditing.
You do not know that even the laws of the Russian Federation are developed with the money of these consultants , more precisely, they are both the sponsor and the developers .
In these conditions, on the contrary, it would be strange if Beeline were independent.
I agree with the opinion that headings like Killing us with our hands are the goal of America , too “yellow”.
I do not think that pragmatic people will go to such extremes. But our place in the global economy is clearly not advanced, and managing the competitiveness of Russian enterprises is the mandatory goal of foreign consulting companies.
The goal of foreign consulting companies is to build Russian companies into the global economy in the place that think tanks have identified to them of the Western elite. And so that no one jumped above the bar they set, did not create unnecessary competition to Western companies.
For example, one may assign the role of an agricultural superpower , and the other the role of a gas superpower. And why non-core enterprises such superpowers?
At this moment we will stop - this was an article about the typical mistakes of people who turned out to be “not according to Senka's hat”, but a separate conversation is needed about the advice of the consultants.
UPD. 2016.03.10 - Corrected the errors.
UPD. 2016.10.27 - Put a link to the continuation of the article - Tips of Western consulting companies. Part 1 .
You can effectively manage only the property that you could create yourself.Picture to attract the attention of readers from generations Y and Z:
Who can not create - will only destroy!
I.A. Dedyukhova, Hamurapi Codex
Summary
The new director himself as his subordinates and advisers will invite their "proven people." An increase in the staff of top managers under the conditions of a fixed payroll would entail a reduction of ordinary employees by a significant percentage.
The new director will first of all cut down those departments whose work he does not understand. Under the pressure of psychological pressure, the heads of these divisions will undertake to develop their own plans to reduce and assume all the risks of their implementation.
The cuts will be held under the flag of increased efficiency, but for the "incomprehensible to the director" units they will not be able to formulate the criteria for this efficiency, except for "cost minimization". The goal of minimizing costs without additional reasonable restrictions is the goal of destruction, and is not related to this optimization.
By cutting off parts of the company he does not understand (leading to outsourcing, etc.), the director will try to turn the company into one whose work he is fully capable of understanding, which he is fully capable of managing.
The problem of lack of knowledge in the technical field of a new director and his team compensate for the “help” from Western consulting companies. This will lead to a situation of external management, and without any responsibility for decisions dictated from outside.
External and internal reporting on the work of the company until the end will not show any signs of problems, because the one who brought the bad news does not give a premium, but chops off his head .
But for those who come
To a world in darkness
Our story will be the key
S. Kalugin, Das Boot .
Table of contents
1. Risks of changing the company's management
2. The emergence of a universal pseudo-effective manager
3. Such unreliable reporting
4. Parallel management structures
5. Additional control over financial flows
6. Black box. Where does the need for staff reductions come from
7. False optimization criterion “Cost minimization”
8. Abbreviations in the branches
9. The way to outsource
10. Temporary workers squeeze the company. Revenue cuts following spending cuts
11. Acquisitions and Mergers
12. Beeline
13. Sbertech
14. Western consulting companies. External management
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1. Risks of changing the company's management
Sooner or later in the life of a successful big company with a long vertical of power there is a change of the CEO.
This process generates specific risks that would be well taken into account by all its participants.
Making a mistake with the choice of a new gene. Director, the owner of the company runs the risk of lower profits, in neglected cases can lose the whole company. But, having sold the rest of the company, most likely he will live comfortably, except without a second yacht and a football club.
The new CEO will receive a guaranteed reward, the question is whether he gets a lot or a lot. It’s not a fact that his reputation will suffer - maybe he will leave on time. In any case, all of its shoals, if possible, will be hidden, justified by external factors. In the absence of a scandal, as a rule, everyone is interested, including the owner, who is interested in hiding the deplorable state of affairs of a company in order to sell its remnants at a higher price.
The most significant risk for the employees of the enterprise is that they will suffer the destruction of what they have created by their work, the reduction of income, dismissal of staff reductions and the subsequent search for means of subsistence.
2. The emergence of a universal pseudo-effective manager
The choice of the candidacy of the general director is determined by familiarity with the owner and the presence of trust between them. And the more important this relationship, the more skeletons in the closet of the company.
If there are no people with the right profession among the authorized representatives, then relatives, sports coaches, country neighbors, classmates and classmates are called upon. In general, people tested in small, trust to manage large. But often large is not the same thing as small: a newspaper is not the same as a factory.
The owner of the company reassures himself with the argument that his appointee will cope, he is a good universal manager - one of those who, although he does not know the subject area, has completed an MBA course and can successfully manage with the help of advanced people management skills. All you have to do is monitor the “traffic lights” in reporting: who of the subordinates got the red light of non-fulfillment of indicators should be called in, demanded eliminated, punished, dismissed.
Let's deal with the truth of this stereotype, using a close analogy to us from the field of IT.
Suppose a sysadmin leaves a company with a well-developed IT system — several servers, software, network equipment, and telephony. Who should he take as a substitute?
And here the owner of the company decides - I’ll take my buddy-marketer - he installed the boxed Windows, so he has experience. And in general, the system has already been adjusted, but you don’t need to maintain much of your mind - a universal “reset” technique is enough, the old admin always did it.
For some time everything will work by inertia, the new employee will report on the next successfully completed calendar period of work, will receive his award. But if at least one really complicated accident arises for which the reboot of the equipment will not be enough, will it eliminate it? Can he develop the system?
Not to develop is to degrade. These are the laws of both IT and business in general.
Of course, you need to hire only those who can understand the many interrelationships of the elements of the system, and their internal settings, possible modes of operation. We need someone who can build a model of the system in her head, and therefore, if necessary, and recreate it. For example, if a virus or intruders destroyed everything.
In our example, someone who positions himself as a humanist (marketer, historian, philosopher, journalist) is not suitable for managing an IT system. If IT was not interested in IT before, then it is unlikely that it will even delve into the new job while everything works by inertia.
As soon as something breaks, he will move to another place of work — not to waste his life on creating an uninteresting system for him, which he does not fully understand, and does not want to understand.
In addition to this “psychological” argument, I have suspicions that it is in fact only a manifestation (rationalization) of a deeper reason.
Not everyone can be programmers , not everyone can be theoretical physicists, not everyone can fit in his head a large technical system. Not everyone can fit in his head a system that represents relationships in the work of the divisions of a large organization. Not in the sense of someone who has hooked someone, who has a relative, where financial flows take place, etc., but the interconnection of units in the production process. Otherwise, E. Goldratt would not have to write a series of “The Goal ...”.
Why, there - not always the director can realize what kind of service his company produces. If Yandex couldn’t understand “what it is worth” the “Film Search” it bought and decided to turn it into another online cinema ...
Why is it important to fully understand the work of the entire organization? Because otherwise, its work cannot be optimized - the already mentioned E. Goldratt in his “Theory of Constraints” proves that independent sequential optimization of individual sections will guarantee non-optimal work of the whole enterprise.
However, even if it is not optimal, at least there was some kind of work. But our case is harder.
So, for the new director, the work of some divisions is a “black box”, i.e. he understands only the inputs and outputs, the requirements-requests and the desired results. He may mistakenly believe that he understands them or understands them in 5 minutes “if necessary” - here the Dunning-Kruger effect will help him.
For example, for a new marketing director, IT will be the black box. Here we will keep this situation in mind.
Let's see how trying to manage a partially incomprehensible company, the new director will lead her to destruction.
3. Such unreliable reporting
To manage the need information about the state of the company. And here comes a huge problem - how can you make sure that the reporting is correct?
Reporting on the results achieved, the current state, and especially the forecasts, are worth something only if they were made by an expert to whom there is confidence. More precisely - if there is confidence in the entire chain of information processing, coming from reliable primary sources.
I will give 4 examples
1. About Beeline write:
"... all statements of the company about business, operating activities and prospects cannot be considered correct . "
And do not recognize the income of a billion dollars! And they take a fine of 750 million dollars!
2. An example of the state. management:
... all experts make forecasts only in accordance with what the authorities want to see. I work in the AP six years. During this time, hundreds of analyzes, forecasts and plans have passed through my hands. I have not seen ANY negative forecast during this time. All the experts sing in chorus "Everything is fine, beautiful marquise ...".
3. And here is my favorite Satyam / Maytas case, with expensive, very expensive
On January 7, 2009, Raju announced to the board of directors of the company that he had been manipulating financial statements for many years. In the end, he confessed that in total he had overstated the company's assets in the financial statements by $ 1.47 billion. For several years, the company's revenues were “adjusted” almost every quarter.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has been auditing Satyam reports since June 2000, right up to fraud recognition - that is, about nine years. Interestingly, Satyam paid for PWC audit services almost twice the average price for the industry. If one of the four largest audit firms for nine years did not notice this large-scale fraud — and Merrill Lynch discovered it in less than ten days — it is worth taking an interest in the integrity of the auditing industry.
4. About the fake reporting in the Soviet era, you can search for the keyword "postscript".
4. Parallel management structures
The problem of trust in reporting from the category of eternal,
... and one of its possible solutions has the same limitation period.
“ Of all the arts, the most difficult thing is the art of reigning ... How often it is beneficial for four or five advisors to unite and deceive their sovereign! He is fenced off from people by high dignity, and therefore the truth is hidden from him; he can only see with their eyes, he hears only their false explanations. He puts on the most important posts vicious and weak, and keeps virtuous and worthy subjects in disfavor. Because of such shameful tricks, the best, the wisest rulers are rendered helpless before the corruption and corruption of the courtiers. ”
It is not surprising that Diocletian considered his solution to this difficult question to be his main task, which he eventually found. He correctly reasoned that it is easy to deceive one, two more difficult, and four, if they are honest and like-minded, is impossible at all, he called his most faithful, brave and reliable friend and shared with him power over the Empire, not dividing the Empire itself, after which both of them they chose two young, talented, reliable generals and adopted them, thereby transferring to him a portion of the Farrah and making him co-rulers.
It is not surprising that Diocletian considered his solution to this difficult question to be his main task, which he eventually found. He correctly reasoned that it is easy to deceive one, two more difficult, and four, if they are honest and like-minded, is impossible at all, he called his most faithful, brave and reliable friend and shared with him power over the Empire, not dividing the Empire itself, after which both of them they chose two young, talented, reliable generals and adopted them, thereby transferring to him a portion of the Farrah and making him co-rulers.
The new director himself as his subordinates and advisers will invite their "proven people."
By the same principle, the process of leadership change cascades to the lower levels of power in the Company ...
But you can't just take off and remove the old leaders of the black boxes. Suddenly, they are doing something important, and the time for “their own” to accept current affairs needs to be given.
All managers can be immediately removed unless the branches, before closing them.
Therefore, inviting your friends to senior positions translates into an increase in the company's management staff and the creation of parallel management structures.
The new structures created for soft interception of company management, trying to understand business processes will load divisions with additional expanded reporting. In essence, it will be confusing reporting - in order for reporting to be sensible, you must thoroughly understand the production process. The reaction to confused work is irritation from the additional “work in the trash can”, a decrease in trust in the company’s management, and a reduction in the quality of work is possible (as the management still does not understand what the work is).
Plans for a hidden replacement of management personnel can grow to the restructuring of the entire organizational structure, ostensibly for the sake of efficiency. Type really did not have time to enter, but already found inefficiency.
In this case, there are risks to get even more chaos - up to a misunderstanding of who submits to whom, how the new divisions and new posts are called, and for what the person is responsible "here in this post."
5. Additional control over financial flows
For financial flows, the director will need separate special control. Remember about unreliable reporting? Therefore, new additional contours of control over financial flows will be created.
All purchases must be coordinated by a committee of people checked by the new director. So that everyone and everything will buy only from the right suppliers.
And how will the new trusted people figure out, is it necessary to buy something requested for work from the “black boxes” at all, or can they be denied and thereby saved?
And let's arrange another committee for this to protect the need for procurement, etc. We will meet once a month.
The result is a slowdown in the production process, real financial losses from delays in deliveries ... But no one will take this into account.
6. Black box. Where does the need for staff reductions come from
The new director will put his people in high positions, in the central office - s / n, premium, and other status support must be at the highest level, otherwise what will be their influence , who will listen and respect them?
He will also need to find funds for a higher premium to the board of directors - they control his work, and should feel positive trends in their pocket.
And also gold parachutes fired from the old team ...
So, something is already too much spending coming out. Golden parachutes should be cut off, and it is better without scandal, "of their own will." Put pressure on their ... conscience.
An increase in the staff of top managers is burdening PLT, and the new director hardly promised the owners an increase in personnel costs, rather the opposite .
Therefore, no matter how cool you are, in order to maintain the same level of financing as personnel costs, you will inevitably have to make a decision about a small reduction in “worker bees”.
How are we going to cut - the same percentage for all divisions, or will we figure it out, and we will reduce only the “wrong bees” that bring little honey? You understand that it is simply indecent to ask such a question to an efficient manager. So the question is how to distinguish the drones from the right bees.
We give a task: each manager must compile a report on the work of his subdivisions, in which he will prove with the help of calculations the amount of resources he needs. Decompose the work into elementary actions, multiplies by coefficients of labor intensity, etc. At the same time and find out who does what, what processes the company lives.
So, we look ... In native and clear areas everything is normal, well done. Well, in some places attributed, but in moderation. Here is a reserve for the planned development of the direction, and this is a buffer for training young personnel ... Everything is justified, manageable. OK, accepted.
And what about the "black boxes", are now transparent?
Nope They bring calculations, but they are still not clear how to check. They muddy the water about different personal productivity of programmers, about training, stretched for 2 years.
They lead to an average level of performance, and it turns out that they should not be reduced, but should be expanded!
There is nothing to catch, but obviously they are lying - they are now doing their work with a smaller number.
Insolent. No, I feel that we will not work together.
Why did they write nonsense, they told you that drivers should be simple, clear to management.
Listen to me - you still need to cut. Difficult economic times in the country, it is necessary to increase efficiency. We will not reduce sales units, they bring revenue, and your units only consume, you have only expenses in terms of indicators.
We are one team. What exactly can you do for the company? Cost Savings? Well, here and save. Especially now it is important to save staff costs.
Stop the idle talk, what obligations to reduce your unit you take on yourself? You are the manager, understand yourself who to cut. Yes, under your responsibility - we are talking about your area of ​​responsibility. No, it is not ambitious enough. Either you can do it, or if someone else does it in your place, there will always be those who are willing to find such a salary. Twice more cut? Until what date do you intend to complete the reduction? OK, take action.
And they will no longer argue, and they will fulfill the order ... that is, their reduction goal .
If “their people” the new director comes to leadership positions from small companies, then they may not be ready for the increased flexibility of downstream managers ( see clause 2.2 ). Focusing on the usual amount of feedback from subordinates, they easily bent over in their "reforms".
And in the reporting will be "everything is fine," until the very end - because responsibility for the success of the cuts was shifted to the managers of the black boxes.
Besides, to whom should they now talk about internal problems? Those who previously did not want to listen to their arguments, those who in fact created these problems, but shifted responsibility from themselves to them? And what will it do besides harm?
We fix:
The new director will strive first and foremost to reduce what he does not understand, that for him he is a “black box”.
Psychological pressure, he will seek from the leaders of the "black boxes" consent to the reduction of their employees.
The black box managers will have to independently develop plans to reduce their units and take responsibility for all subsequent risks of their implementation.
7. False optimization criterion “Cost minimization”
The reductions will take place under the flag of increasing efficiency, otherwise, but due to a lack of understanding of the internal laws of the functioning of “black boxes”, they will not even be able to formulate criteria for this efficiency, except for the poor “cost minimization”.
Minimizing costs is not at all a criterion of efficiency. The criterion should either be a nonlinear function with a minimum at a non-zero cost, or be supplemented by reasonable restrictions on the allowable range of values ​​of its arguments. Otherwise, the desired value will be found at the point where "costs = 0". And this is a stopping point, the death of an enterprise, which has nothing to do with the optimal mode of its operation.
The goal of minimizing costs without additional reasonable restrictions is the goal of destruction.
Oh, effectively how the company will earn, if all of them are reduced and left in the staff of one director. EBITDA as trampling up ... all competitors will be envious.
8. Abbreviations in the branches
Personnel cuts will take place primarily in the branches, for each manager strives to have his subordinates nearby. He knows them, emotional contact is established with them, they are really useful to him, it’s pitiful to cut them.
What are they doing in the provinces? We are poorly seen from the Capital, but there is a reasonable suspicion that they relaxed there. So they can be, they are not sorry, and the cries of those being reduced to us will not reach - our sleep will be calmer.
The main downsizing is in black boxes in the branches
... and it may turn out to be unexpectedly high.
We will carry out a model calculation ...
Abstract company for 10 thousand people. The head office in Moscow is 2 thousand plus 8 thousand - branches in the regions of the country.
Board of Directors of 10 people.
Black boxes - 50% of the total (the lower the percentage, the worse they will be).
We hire 10 "our" trusted managers in the head office in Moscow. This is only an increase in the total number of 0.1%. But you need 1 million of costs for each "own" per month. There is nothing less - top management, Capital (I know that in reality is higher).
A specialist in the province costs 50 tr. per month (z / p + premium).
Therefore it is necessary to reduce these provincials in the ratio of 1:20 - i.e. total we cut the number of 200 "units."
200 out of 4000 thousand is 5%. Tolerant. You can simply freeze the job, and the natural loss of employees will do everything herself.
Oh, I forgot about the award to the Board of Directors. Annual bonus, at least twenty each more than usual. Total 200 million - i.e. minus another 8% - this is 330 "established units." In the army, enemy soldiers are not called people, but “living force” - so that conscience does not interfere with killing. With similar goals in slang, HR employees are called “staff units” or “resources”.
So you need to make cuts of 13% in these provincial black boxes.
To wait until 13% go away for a long time, but they can hint, for example, cut down the social package.
This is a model calculation, in life it will surely soften - they will cut a little and the “white bone” in Moscow; will reduce not only the number, but also a premium in the branches. They will try not to overstep the psychological barrier of 10% (15%, 20% ...).
For a larger reduction, it would be good to have a reinforced concrete foundation, but we have just the case when doubts remain. (I would know for what - I would kill, and so - from you so far only 10%).
Board of Directors of 10 people.
Black boxes - 50% of the total (the lower the percentage, the worse they will be).
We hire 10 "our" trusted managers in the head office in Moscow. This is only an increase in the total number of 0.1%. But you need 1 million of costs for each "own" per month. There is nothing less - top management, Capital (I know that in reality is higher).
A specialist in the province costs 50 tr. per month (z / p + premium).
Therefore it is necessary to reduce these provincials in the ratio of 1:20 - i.e. total we cut the number of 200 "units."
200 out of 4000 thousand is 5%. Tolerant. You can simply freeze the job, and the natural loss of employees will do everything herself.
Oh, I forgot about the award to the Board of Directors. Annual bonus, at least twenty each more than usual. Total 200 million - i.e. minus another 8% - this is 330 "established units." In the army, enemy soldiers are not called people, but “living force” - so that conscience does not interfere with killing. With similar goals in slang, HR employees are called “staff units” or “resources”.
So you need to make cuts of 13% in these provincial black boxes.
To wait until 13% go away for a long time, but they can hint, for example, cut down the social package.
This is a model calculation, in life it will surely soften - they will cut a little and the “white bone” in Moscow; will reduce not only the number, but also a premium in the branches. They will try not to overstep the psychological barrier of 10% (15%, 20% ...).
For a larger reduction, it would be good to have a reinforced concrete foundation, but we have just the case when doubts remain. (I would know for what - I would kill, and so - from you so far only 10%).
I also propose to consider the truth of a stronger statement:
Almost always, reductions in a large successful company in Russia are associated with the desire of top management to increase their salaries and bonuses.
I ask you only to distinguish such cuts from the filtering mechanisms of the labor market, when the same Google or MS gains thousands, and thousands periodically dismiss.
Take into account that there is such a rule for large stable companies - the total wage fund (FOT) should not grow faster than the total profit. In this payroll, both billions are added up for bonuses to members of the Board of Directors, and pennies on ordinary staff salaries. According to my estimates, top management easily eats from 20% to 35% of the total payroll. And in our country, inflation ... and influential boys want to compensate for it ... but they can do it only at the expense of the rest ...
9. The way to outsource
At some point, management will be sure to visit the idea of ​​minimizing the number of black boxes by combining them. Ideally, there should be only one, and a trusted person should be at its head.Along the way, this association will contribute to reducing the number of staff.
The reasons will come to their mind - such as geographically dispersed teams work worse
etc...
«» 1 . , – , , . , , – 90% .
In order to control the available KPIs of a large black box, the process of regulating the interaction at its inputs and outputs will be launched. They will create a “Single Window” of sending requests to the “black box”. Naturally, right here, near this single window, a “single queue” will arise, for which, in order to avoid conflicts, a “single moderator” will be required, determining the order of requirements fulfillment, etc.
This will be accompanied by breaks in horizontal (not always regulated) links between departments, bureaucratization, a fall in speed and an increase in the complexity of interaction between departments.
In the layers and contradictions of the old and new regulations, it will be harder to work and easier to strike in Italian, not even with the aim of protest "against marasmus", but with the aim of avoiding the likelihood of being accused of violating one of the possible interpretations written in the regulations (difficult, I understand).
For the development of a black box is difficult to protect the add. financing.
Such a request immediately carries with it a conflict - while the director doesn’t feel the need to develop something unknown and incomprehensible to him, and now people come to him and ask for money. And he had other plans how to spend them! Given the flexibility of high-ranking executives in the face of their bosses ... yes, most likely no one will go to justify anything and ask. The subordinates will be told - oh, how I fought for our interests, but Gender, the bastard, refused.
Those units that the head does not understand and considers a black box will not receive development.
In the end, black boxes will be considered non-core for the enterprise and will want to be outsourced to minimize their internal influence, formalize interactions with them, increase manageability and other “advantages”.
Cutting off parts of the company he does not understand, the manager is trying to turn the company into the one whose work he is fully capable of understanding, i.e. which he is really able to manage.
Of course, there is a risk that the parts to be cut off will be very important, and the company will not survive such a castration.
10. Temporary workers squeeze the company. Revenue cuts following spending cuts
"Temporary" can be strictly defined as "the government, gradually destroying / eating the basis of the government."
In large companies, there is always a lag between the consequences of management mistakes and the financial indicators of annual reporting. Especially, if there is an interest to hide negative phenomena.
Financial indicators are no longer talking about the future of the company, but the past.
As one friend of mine said:
Our company is like a big ship - it can float by inertia and generate revenue for several more years, even if the whole team is thrown overboard.
Therefore , a pseudo-efficient manager will always be able to squeeze temporary elevations from a large company - reduce staff, reduce operating expenses to the detriment of quality, and do not update fixed assets.
The flip side of this “savings” is staff turnover, loss of competencies, progressive internal degradation.
Following the loss of quality of work, revenue sags a little, which means there is a reason to further strengthen measures for the so-called “economy” in order to preserve sacred profitability. This is how a spiral of interdependent reduction of incomes and expenses is launched - a suicide of a company.
The larger and richer the company, the longer it is able to conceal the internal degradation, and the longer it can carry on its ridge a team of pseudo-efficient managers.
By the time of the company’s obvious manifestation of problems, a team of effective managers may already “fly” to a new job. They will have a head start - they still have the opportunity to feel the approach of a fiasco before external observers .
After a few years, the true state of affairs finally makes its way through crafty reporting. Then the people who let in the management of incapable people begin to regret.
Jobs told us about his regrets about the appointment of "non-core" Scully.
Jack Ma publicly regretted in general all the “professional leaders” attracted from him.
But often, management failures will all be tried to be attributed to adverse external circumstances, although they already write books aboutCompanies are dying primarily from internal causes .
Look, everyone is talking about external circumstances, as if they don’t see these internal reasons::
1. The results of the survey “what threatens the business and how to avoid it.
2. Megafon spoke about the main threat to its business.
11. Acquisitions and Mergers
Takeovers and mergers are a favorite process of top management.
Often, the director understands that takeovers and mergers threaten the internal environment of the company (the MBA is taught this).
He knows that sometimes it turns out to be a senseless destruction of the affiliated company, and he does this directly to do it.
But the temptation is great, and the hidden motives are difficult to prove.
Yes, and for Whatsapp suspiciously paid a lot compared to Viber ... well, the already mentioned Satyam case is an already investigated case.
So buy companies, and then write off losses.
, ?
, . , , — …
. , , - .
From the cuts of those who understood the IT system, the consequences come: lack of development of the service, lack of technical support, delay in eliminating crashes and software bugs. What is surprising, when it’s banal no one knows where the server is located, or vice versa - there are server-buzzing servers, but no one knows what they are doing. And the monitoring was self-written, and not all servers were covered, and how to integrate it now ...
It looks like this:
1. “VKontakte” does not pay users for the found vulnerabilities, but does not consider them.
2. Why "Vkontakte" does not fix errors within a month?
Yes, I know that they are not merged, but only outbid. But that’s what the model external signs of a
By the way, the social network is also a tool for the work of law enforcement agencies.
… . ? , „“ , ? ?
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12. Beeline
Let us turn to specific examples.
I want to first note a funny nuance.
Often, what looks like theoretical speculation in this article is actually a reality, and individual phrases are generally direct quotes ( I feel that we will not work together, drivers should be clear to management , etc.). But examples with references to specific companies are situations where I judge other people about the state of things and I could be wrong in my conclusions.
So, Beeline VimpelCom.
Until 2011, the director was Alexander Vadimovich Izosimov, who in 1991–1995 worked as a consultant at McKinsey, and in 1996-2001 he made a career in the financial and sales part of Mars Inc., reaching the regional president for the CIS, Central Europe and Scandinavia. In short, the universal manager-marketer-financier, prepared in McKinsey.
After him in 2011–2013, the director of VimpelCom was Anton Vladimirovich Kudryashov, a financier.
The current director of Vimpelcom is Mikhail Slobodin, an economist.
Michael is engaged in improvements in Beeline - he disguises employees in a new form , because he believes that the form will help the appearance of the content. He himself does not shy away from cosplay- this is “charging with positive, and useful for Beeline”. Carries subbotnik with the delivery of waste paper and scrap metal, etc.
As a result, the “financial finance economists and marketing specialists” optimized the work of the technical company Beeline to the following situation:
The IT systems of Vimpelcom are outdated, and the staff of relevant specialists is overestimated by more than ten times , according to the company's largest shareholder. In this regard, the company intends to outsource the maintenance of a number of systems, including billing.
Let's translate from the language of PR into Russian:
Beeline’s management was not able to competently manage its own IT, and this is quite openly recognized.
I will assume that the goals of "saving" on IT systems and IT specialists were set earlier; there was no IT development for several years. Now everything is so bad that it is easier to start from scratch, and give under external control.
Keeping your IT team would be cheaper for future outsourcing billing for, say caution, 5 times. Of course, no one will ever count, how many times in fact - there simply won't be such a task from management, why know such a terrible truth.
The bosses will be ordered another report showing the benefits of outsourcing, and be sure they will count this benefit. As they say, "floated, we know."
In addition, Reznikovich announced plans for Vimpelcom to sell the tower infrastructure used for cellular base stations.
Shareholder and management of Beeline, consider that it is profitable. But this is which side to look at. To transfer IT to outsourcing is how to lay your eggs in someone else's basket. To sell towers is like selling your kidney. But if the consulting doctor said “still to the morgue,” then it’s certainly profitable for shareholders - selling it is still alive.
in the near future, VimpelCom will reduce the number of regional offices
It may seem to you that this desire to reduce the regions and keep the staff in expensive Moscow is somewhat contrary to the policy of reducing costs.
But let me, if the director and his team want to live in Moscow, then it’s no longer commeelrous to remember about savings. "When it comes to family honor, talking about money is inappropriate."
... the company has not yet seen a drop in revenues.
At the same time, according to him, "it is obvious that this industry is under serious risk of movement in the direction of falling."
That's the reason for the dismemberment of the company - the leadership does not believe in the future, hmm, industry, and specialists want reductions for several years to extend the level of profitability. Well, along the way get bonuses from the sale of towers and other liquid pieces. And, who knows, maybe even get settled by the beneficiaries of outsourcing companies who will keep Beeline in the future for those same eggs and kidneys, and at the same time have a margin above Beeline itself.
13. Sbertech
Now conditionally a good example.
The company [Sbertech] was created in November 2011 for the internal needs of the Sberbank and is now engaged in cruel and merciless hunting. The formula for hiring is the simplest - the current salary of a recruited IT specialist is multiplied by 2.5 times. ... by the captured specialists goes on thousands.
I wonder why this non-charitable "business" has become so hastily and a lot to recruit IT specialists?
I suppose that earlier in 2010–2011, the top management of Sberbank was given such signals from a roasted rooster that it was impossible to ignore them. As a result, IT management was given a blank check to recruit the best specialists for any reasonable money to save the situation. Well, in order to isolate IT from the incompetent influence of the top management of the main company, and at the same time not to embarrass other Sberbank specialists with high s / n in IT, they decided to separate their IT into a separate company.
As a result, Sberbank's IT got the opportunity to develop:
Dec 03, 2012.
We are now here in Novosibirsk are developing a new core of the banking IT system, which, if it works the way we plan, will become the largest IT project in Russia and one of the largest in the world in the banking sector.
... we all went together to Milan - to meet with the developers of UniCredit Bank. ... the fact is that we came to learn from them, but in the end they listened to what our guys were telling.
... Sberbank decided to create its own developer company and refuse third-party services
...
- By the way, how much has Sberbank invested in its new creation?
- Exactly as much as he invested earlier in IT development. Just instead of a number of contractors, there is now one Sbertech. It’s just a reallocation of IT budget, no more, no less.
Yes, its IT in big companies is always more profitable than outsourcing, whatever McKinsey doesn’t whisper to Beeline.
By the way, what do you think, starting with how many IT employees are it financially advantageous to have your own IT, and not outsourcing? How about: starting with the size of a typical team - i.e. with 5-7 people, considering separately for each IT profession?
Alas, I see the risk that Sbertech’s good life will end soon.
Gref declared obsolete a new IT-system of Sberbank for billions of rubles
Pay attention to the nuances:
This criticism of Sbertech seemed suspicious to me. Looks like “found it to get to the bottom”. I did not find competitors among banks, so I went to compare with Amazon and Google. At the same time, without understanding what they call a change, without analyzing what financial risks for changes at Sberbank and what Google has, and what is the difference in the staff of programmers, etc.
It looks like an attempt to find a reason for the subsequent so-called. "Optimization" Sberteha (read - a banal reduction of staff and salaries).
Well, according to Gref , the country we have is a downshifter , so all ordinary citizens should have their lives “down”.
And if the economic situation allows you to hire IT specialists cheaper (Beeline and similar IT will expel them to the stock exchange and drop salaries), then the pseudo-effective manager is obliged to do this - fire his expensive employees and hire them from the cheap.
Pay attention to the nuances:
“Last year we made 40 thousand changes to our system. If you look at other cans, we are in chocolate. But, if you look at Amazon, Google, we are terribly behind. Amazon makes 10 thousand changes to its system per day. And the key task facing Sberbank this year is to increase speed. We're late, ”Gref explained.
This criticism of Sbertech seemed suspicious to me. Looks like “found it to get to the bottom”. I did not find competitors among banks, so I went to compare with Amazon and Google. At the same time, without understanding what they call a change, without analyzing what financial risks for changes at Sberbank and what Google has, and what is the difference in the staff of programmers, etc.
It looks like an attempt to find a reason for the subsequent so-called. "Optimization" Sberteha (read - a banal reduction of staff and salaries).
Well, according to Gref , the country we have is a downshifter , so all ordinary citizens should have their lives “down”.
And if the economic situation allows you to hire IT specialists cheaper (Beeline and similar IT will expel them to the stock exchange and drop salaries), then the pseudo-effective manager is obliged to do this - fire his expensive employees and hire them from the cheap.
But a familiar employee from Sbertech denies my gloomy suspicions, and Gref’s more complete interview also softens the impression.
There is reason to hope for the best, but let's not forget what even good ideas are turning on from Gref to ordinary employees and what happens to those who are trying to give him feedback .
14. Western consulting companies
The new leadership will feel that it does not have the credibility of the old employees who understand their site of work thoroughly (and even more so - several sites).
Once I saw the results of an anonymous independent survey among employees - the statistics there was such that the longer the employee worked at the company, i.e. the more he understood exactly how it worked, the less he had confidence in the actions of the new leadership.
You understand that relying on such results of the survey will only increase the desire of the new leadership to get rid of these inert clever people who are resisting their “ingenious” designs to do “as they were taught at MBA”.
A typical solution to the problem of a lack of technical knowledge in a new director and his team is the assistance of western consulting companies.
Already with their help the director is not afraid of any deception from the “black boxes”.
At the same time, these “blacks” will have less nose to bully in front of the new leadership.
A friend of mine told me about Beeline that financing the costs of network development there is carried out according to a certain “Development Model”, which for Beeline was developed by consultants from the international consulting company McKinsey.
Everything supposedly happens like this:
Detailed plans for the development of the company and the layout of the necessary expenses for the next year, calculated by Beeline’s technical specialists for each region, are given to McKinsey consultants “for verification”. And they answer, it corresponds to all of their “Development Models”, or else it is necessary to reduce the planned costs somewhere, since Required too much.
Their model McKinsey kept secret even from the leadership of Beeline, the reason is called ridiculous - so that the technicians of Beeline could not, having studied the model, find a way to "deceive her", and therefore the management of the company. Yes, yes, and then deceived, and they purchase unnecessary equipment, and the connection will be better than necessary, and EBITDA - lower than possible.
Guess what this secrecy really hides?
There are no such secret models. If the model were, then in this case - only linear, and for one, maximum two budget campaigns, all its coefficients could still be calculated.
Most likely, McKinsey does not conduct calculations for its invisible model, which does not exist. Instead, McKinsey consultants take the calculations of Beeline experts and tell Beeline’s management where to cut costs, i.e. degrade network quality in the medium term.
Beeline paid for the development of the model, but instead received external control from a foreign company.
Transferring responsibility for financial and organizational decisions on technical units to Western consulting companies leads to a situation of external management, and without any responsibility for the decisions made.
Yes, this management is not tough, and has big limitations, but if you influence slowly, then in a few years ... we get the result: Beeline ditched its IT, Beeline sells towers, management does not believe in the prospects of the company and the wireless communications industry as a whole.
Oh yes, the ability to directly blow in the ears of a technically illiterate leadership decides a lot.
Google believes in the prospects of wireless communications, Facebook believes , Ilon Musk believes, and Beeline now lost faith.
Do you know what Google, Facebook and SpaceX might need to create a good network of billions of subscribers in addition to their satellites, balloons and gliders? Ground infrastructure. The one that Beeline and MegaFon are now thinking of selling. Plus it would be good to get a data transport network in the kit.
Hmm, an American consulting company recommends selling towers that American companies will need in a few years ... Is there a match here?
The second variant of events - if Google really gets the exchange rate between drones more than 4G 40 times , then the use of ground infrastructure for it will lose its meaning.
In this case, the partial loss of control over their infrastructure by the opsox still plays into Google’s hands - there is a way to convert it into a deterioration in the quality of services, their appreciation, and hence the subscribers ’readiness to switch to the Google network (albeit less speed, but flat tariffs or free , and works more stable).
By the way, another “consultant” - the Boston Consulting Group - is engaged in personnel management in Beeline.
Implements the principles of regulating the number of IT and technical staff, according to which once a year there is an adjustment - to dismiss or redeem specialists. It's so great when IT positions or techies are reduced to open them again and recruit new employees in a year. They are just like janitors - a new form has been issued , 1 day for training - showed the site, and on the 2nd day 100% return is already from them, right, right?
McKinsey and BCG present MelaFon and MTS for Beeline’s “best practices” as an exemplary, already run-in, successful optimization of the company.
If you say that I’ve gotten too close to it, that there can’t be such that Beeline is run by foreign consulting companies, then it turns out that you don’t know exactly about this .
You do not know that the US Central Bank is governed by the United States , and that in all the ministries of the Russian Federation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Delloitte, Ernst & Young are engaged in consulting and auditing.
You do not know that even the laws of the Russian Federation are developed with the money of these consultants , more precisely, they are both the sponsor and the developers .
In these conditions, on the contrary, it would be strange if Beeline were independent.
I agree with the opinion that headings like Killing us with our hands are the goal of America , too “yellow”.
I do not think that pragmatic people will go to such extremes. But our place in the global economy is clearly not advanced, and managing the competitiveness of Russian enterprises is the mandatory goal of foreign consulting companies.
The goal of foreign consulting companies is to build Russian companies into the global economy in the place that think tanks have identified to them of the Western elite. And so that no one jumped above the bar they set, did not create unnecessary competition to Western companies.
For example, one may assign the role of an agricultural superpower , and the other the role of a gas superpower. And why non-core enterprises such superpowers?
At this moment we will stop - this was an article about the typical mistakes of people who turned out to be “not according to Senka's hat”, but a separate conversation is needed about the advice of the consultants.
Further in the program:
- Councils of Western consulting companies. Part 1.
- What should the new director do to correct the consequences of the board of the previous pseudo-effective manager and his team.
UPD. 2016.03.10 - Corrected the errors.
UPD. 2016.10.27 - Put a link to the continuation of the article - Tips of Western consulting companies. Part 1 .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/297678/
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