It is a major international company that has a long track record of managing major contracts in a variety of industries. Whilst very few of its contracts would be regarded as ground breaking, there have been very few total failures.
However, performance of late has been marred by a large amount of infighting, not only at the board level, but also on the shop floor.
What makes this all the more surprising is that a market research survey, which was carried out nearly three years ago, gave a clear indication of customer requirements.
However, a majority of the board and the workforce lacked enthusiasm for the defined customer requirement and many wished to follow a totally different strategy.
Even those that were in favour of the customer defined requirements wanted to go much further and produce a product that was clearly not going to gain traction with either the board or the workforce.
The result was that the managing director decided to follow their own path in defining the new way forward, along with a few of the administration staff, and to side line the board and the workers.
Understandably the board rebelled and the workers started to approach the competition. As the time approached for the company to put an acceptable product before the customers, things got much nastier.
The purists stuck to their original, unachievable design, the board members and trade union officials started to try and wrestle the leadership role from the incumbent, whilst the competition took advantage of the disarray and staff started to leave.
Not surprisingly, customers have become totally disillusioned with the company and many are already switching to competitive products. Meanwhile the mess goes on.
Now, of course you wouldn’t want to invest in this business, and any business that behaved like this would soon find itself bankrupt both financially and morally.
But this isn’t a fictitious business but one that the whole of the UK has shares in. This company is the British Parliament, and this behaviour is how they have approached Brexit.
This does rather feel like Nero fiddling while Rome burns, and I cannot help wondering if the person who wrote the slogan ‘Guy Fawkes come back, we need you’ didn’t have a point.