Being in the privileged position of meeting hundreds of new people and being exposed to many and varied companies and their inner workings, it never ceases to amaze me that the pressure on the sales people to meet targets and sell more, more and more never lets up. Similarly the every day troubles and issues being experienced by the production staff are written off as negativity and unaffordable.
In a recent example, the sales person lost a contract to the value of R75K due to not being able to meet a deadline. The production manager had been raising the issue of the maintenance (total expenditure of approximately R1K and 3 hours per month) for the last 4 months.
Ouch!
Just made me wonder, how many rocks in our companies are being left unturned because of middle management not being assertive enough and top management not listening enough?