Re-applying for your own job

Last night was the Gala dinner associated with the Leadership Summit at Cranfield. I was told an interesting story over dinner which I think should be a lesson for us all. One of our MBA alumni is now a director of a private company employing around 3,000 people and he was telling me the tale of their recent re-structuring. Like many companies this involved redeploying people and people reapplying for their job. There was one particularly good salesman who was worth a significant amount of money for the business and they told him his job was safe but asked him to polish up his CV, which he did. However, when he saw his own CV he realised how good he was and got himself a really good job elsewhere.

That reminded me of the time I was trying to by a quarry in Essex some 20 years ago. I approached the owner who was close to retirement and we had several long discussions about the business and its potential. Just as I was about to make an offer for the business, Geoff kindly told me that he had really enjoyed our chats, but they had made him interested and excited about the business again so he didn’t want to sell any more.

So everything we do has consequences, not always the ones we were expecting

Mike Bourne