BF and TL are snowed by his personality and promises. They watch AK fire the people that know what they are doing and made software highly profitable. They buy into his hot air. One year from now when it is clear his execution plan was highly flawed and promises have failed it will be too late to save this company. Does the board pay any attention?
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The secrecy around dividends isn’t all that mystical. Everyone who owns a share of stock knows whether there was a dividend paid in a quarter. That includes a surprising number of non-family Follett executives. The non-family member board members know. Everyone that works in communications and helped produce the annual report. Those same communications people that organize family calls and produce the PowerPoints for them. The exec committee and probably their assistants. Anyone on the annual report distribution or who picks it up off the many desks it sits on in HQ. Everyone that works in finance that sees the balance sheet and P&L statements, including all the young pencil pushers in accounting and internal audit people. Our legal team. We might be a privately held company but we produce the same reports as publicly traded companies. TL doesn’t want us shouting it from the rooftops for fear of mutiny but it’s not a tightly held state secret.
Yet upper management uses the word transparency. Fake transparency and lies and greed. Covid made them accelerate their offshoring greed for the mighty dollar and it is already backfiring. Cannot get anything done with the network unless thousands of customers are down. Will hurt customers more and more as support services and development follow.
There is (was?) only one non family member and a couple of senior financial people that would know what is actually being done with family dividends. So which one are you to know for sure?
At Family Meetings everyone not a family member has to leave the room when financial and other Top Secret matters are discussed.
The board is totally disconnected and has very little business knowledge. Priority one is the continuation of the dividend. Remember that in the height of a pandemic when all employees furloughed one way or another, and cash flow down 35%, the dividend was not changed.
Software was one of the units TL was put in charge of while he was being groomed to mismanage the company. He should have known who was valuable and who was less valuable. Perhaps salvaging software isn't a priority. Perhaps, with no applicable credit, acquiring new tools and paying to maintain old tools isn't possible?
This is a private company. Software is just another part of the business that was sent down the river while someone was given a bonus for their innovation. Failure is not a metric for the family because that would mean that THEY failed. When you own the business and you write the narrative you NEVER FAIL.
It's sad for those that gave the company their blood, sweat, and tears.
Time to let go. The end is near.