LITMIR.BIZ

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      What concerned him much more than the numbers was Charles’s leadership style and its impact right through the business. Steve had seen executives ‘burn the furniture’ to make the figures look good. Invariably they killed the culture and the company in the process. Charles was a furniture burner if ever he’d seen one.

      Steve would bide his time. There were things that could be done, and after three years in a bigger and more complex job in London he, more than anyone else in the room, saw huge opportunities in the challenges confronting O’Donnell’s.

      Never one to miss a chance to push his agenda, Ron Grisham, head of Corporate Services and self-appointed ‘finance guru’, took the opportunity while others were deep in thought to run through the numbers to support Charles, who he knew loved financial models.

      ‘Our sales are down by more than 30 per cent quarter on quarter’, he said, waving a complex-looking spreadsheet, ‘and despite some minor productivity improvements in Operations I can’t see an upside. My recommendation is that we make cuts now in Sales and Operations and don’t wait until the April board meeting’.

      Ron was pleased with how authoritative he sounded and looked to Charles for a nod of approval. It wasn’t there.

      Jimmy Goh, the dynamic head of Sales and Marketing, peered at Ron with a mixture of contempt and anger. This would be a poor choice of timing to tackle Ron’s relentless pessimism, but Jimmy was almost angry enough to take him on anyway. Charles’s clipped manner broke his thoughts.

      ‘What’s the real outlook on sales?’ he asked, not even referring to Jimmy by name.

      A Singaporean national with a Harvard MBA, Jimmy’s energy and track record of success with confectionery companies in the United States and Asia earned him respect from all but Ron. As he replied to Charles’s question, more than one member of the team was pondering why someone with Jimmy’s CV would put up with this.

      ‘The social media campaign has been revamped and is ready for launch early next month, and our multichannel partnering strategy is a potential game changer, so I anticipate a more than 20 per cent lift in revenue on the back of that in the US, Australia and Asia.’

      He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts.

      ‘The sales teams are up to the challenge, and if IT and Marketing get together and deliver on the channel partners’ platform, I’m confident that we’ll claw back what we’ve lost in market share and be ahead again within twelve months. It would be a mistake to overreact, particularly as the financial data we’re getting is way out of date and our in-store and online customer numbers are already trending upwards.’

      ‘With the greatest of respect’, began Ron, running his hands through his thinning grey hair and bristling at the implication that his financial information was out of date, ‘you haven’t got within a mile of any of your sales forecasts for over a year, so why should we believe this one?’

      Jimmy leaned forward and looked him squarely in the eyes. ‘If you had any feel for the market instead of gazing out the back window and telling us where we’ve already been, you’d know that forecasting over the past twelve months has been impossible because the whole industry is being upended by competition and new technology. The real numbers tell us that we’re on the cusp of a breakthrough so only a fool would lose their nerve now.’

      Ron was no match intellectually for Jimmy and certainly not in a verbal sparring match. He was fuming but knew enough not to take on Jimmy in this situation. He’d deal one-on-one with Charles and get those cuts in the Sales and Marketing budget that were long overdue.

      Watching all of this unfold was Emma Tomkins, head of Research and Development, and the quietest member of the Executive Team. She joined O’Donnell’s as a food technologist fresh from university and was appointed to her current role two years ago. Emma had been a superb number two in Research and Development, and very strong in project management and scientific rigour. A clever and insightful scientist, no-one but Emma was surprised when, at the age of thirty-two, she was appointed to an executive position, although to this day she preferred delving into an experiment to the cut and thrust of senior leadership conversations. Emma flicked documents across the screen on her tablet, hoping that someone else would break the silence.