“Business is Bullying, Competition is Catastrophic, Targets are Terrifying.” It’s not a new theme but it is heard more often today than ever before. You don’t go into business for a quiet life and you don’t come out of it happily without a lot of luck and a big dose of SBD*. It’s not your Heart that is being pierced by all this, it’s your Reason. And Reason tells us that life exists beyond today and tomorrow. You’d think business people would understand that. Many do.
What looks to me like an increasing number don’t. One manifestation of this idiocy is targets. We’ve always had a number of clients whose employers have rewarded their achieving their targets by setting higher, unachievable ones. The incidence of this is growing. I recently asked an aggressive business what was the ‘life’ of a successful sales person. ‘Three and a half years’ was the reply. There is something commercially stupid and humanly immoral about that.
I am dedicated to the idea that people need purpose to run fulfilled lives. So I believe in targets. They need to be things that matter, not simply ‘maximum’. When I decided to build the business I had been sent to Singapore to dispose of I thought about what would be the purpose of my doing so for my parent company in Britain. Because they were hell-bent on developing in the USA – a strategy with which I disagreed – they would want to sell any business I developed in the Asia-Pacific.
While profits would significantly determine the value of the business, its main sales value would be the consistency of profits rather than last year’s figures.
The erratic route to the target profit figure might attract a price of 7 or 8 times earnings. The steady profit growth would appeal a lot more. In the event, when we sold the business on the basis of consistent, steady growth, it was for 25 times earnings. Short term staccato profits would have meant a lower sale price.
It’s not rocket science and yet it is consistently ignored by managers. As is the simple idea of trust. Sabotage has always been a tool of the unscrupulous. Even you have used it in some minor ways I am sure, perhaps unwittingly. There are plenty of competitors who would sabotage your business if they could and all the protection in the world doesn’t keep them at bay. Long-term employees are a good answer to this problem. They know the business, sense when normal patterns are changing and alert quickly for many good reasons. Keeping their jobs safe is one of the best.
You build that kind of loyalty over time, not with an instant cheque book.
We are here to live our lives and lots of lives are affected by us. We become worthwhile when we help others lead useful lives, too.
It’s more useful than only a dividend.
Good morning
John Bittleston
*SBD: Sheer Bloody Determination
The profit versus peace argument will vacillate depending on whether a Trump-type or an Obam-type is in control. Do you have a balanced view? We’d love to hear it at [email protected].
31 March 2026
