Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

The three are so inter-related that they cannot be separated, so to speak. To discuss a great idea, or an important event, spells discussing people, and their various mindsets and motivations: the three cannot be divorced from each other.

The following story will upset a great many. However, and to be perfectly honest, this Old Boy could not care less. He is not in the writing business for the popularity stakes. He will speak the truth as he sees fit. He will speak his mind. When a man passes the first 50 years of a short life, he does not get too perturbed by the sensitivities of status quo. Sleeping sweetly at night is the reward for telling it like it is, for this writer, freelance journalist, and columnist. 

OK: here goes. And the fact is this: one of the features of some of the big boys in the Virgin Islands telecoms industry is that they possess a Machiavellian type management culture.

The MACHIAVELLAN MANAGEMENT MODEL – management by deception- is out of date. Machiavellian management was a rendition to sleaze, deceit, and cold hearted ruthlessness that was probably the way many organizations behaved in the 1980s, 90s, and even early 2000s. Think of Enron as a classic example of the Machiavellian prototype. Today, looking to the Borgias’ of Medieval Italy as an organizational example will not do a modern business any good.  Dallas and J.R. Ewing are a bygone era.

The present is an age where a simple GOOGLE SEARCH will dig up all the DIRTY LAUNDRY a company, and even a government attempts to bury. Disagree? Look at the British press. The stench of pedophilia- child sexual abuse and assault- within the UK establishment, that was covered up for decades, is spilling into the street.

This uncovering of a great evil, and attempted cover up could never have happened, without current technology.

This 2014, a poorly treated employee can hand over a company’s top secrets at the click of a mouse. In the era of digitization and supercomputing, transparency and accountability is the order of the day. Better it is for a management that is thoughtful, ethical, transparent, and accountable in today’s world.  

Another thing: do a bit of reading, and it becomes clear that companies that glory in the Machiavellian model are not too concerned about competence and integrity, least of all customer service. The best and most ethical employees leave these organizations over the years. The underhanded and unethical remain, and thrive.

These are organizations that place integrity and competence at the bottom of priorities lists. They are predatory cultures that view the marketplace and customer as simple prey. Jack Customer is simple fodder to these vultures.

Be very weary when a business stresses marketing and promotional hype, over a focus on customer service and product development. If all the talk is about marketing and sales promotion, over and above the nuts and bolts about how the business will deliver a better product and service, over a given time span, then Jack Customer better take his business elsewhere.

Yes, that would be difficult in these Virgin Islands, despite 3 companies to choose from. The system remains rigged against Jack the Customer. In a top down economic model the vulnerable customer is frequently sidelined in the interests of the FATCATS that own the telecom infrastructure. Choice is very limited in the sector.

These are businesses that possess a culture that reeks of deception. It is a Modus Vivendi that celebrates the psychopath. The sociopath advances swiftly in this corporation.

One employee of one of these businesses stated once, and very overtly, that her best asset for advancement in the organization was her ability to lie without effort to customers. In other words she would pass a lie detector test with no problem. This was her boast. She would not blink an eye telling a customer a ‘heap of bull.’ She remains in place: a model of the type of employee cherished by the business’s senior managers. This information is courtesy an excellent source.

On the other hand, another employee, a telecom engineer in his early 40s, with many years of exceptional service with the organization, one of the best and brightest in the industry, and an excellent personality- one will discover this if one meets with him- was passed over for a key position.

He told this Old Boy Journalist that this was so, that ‘’a friend of the BOSS get the position.’’ Apparently, this other person had zero experience. Obviously, cronyism is the order of the day at the Fred Flintstone Telecom Company. 

The man passed over quit, quite understandably. He will probably find no challenge getting a good job in one of the other telecom businesses. That will be to a competitor’s great advantage. In the meanwhile the new chap at Fred Flintstone Telecom will deliver his inexperience to Jack the Customer. This will arrive in the form of incompetence and poor customer service.

The Machiavellian organization model is a veritable beehive of deceit. In other words: it is a dog eat dog management orthodoxy. It is not about customer service at all. It is about watching the proverbial behind, and ensuring that the next thrust of the dagger misses the back.

Yes, it is a terrible culture indeed: a totally dysfunctional environment. One should pray that one’s child never ends up working for this type of organization. The best thing this type of dysfunctional organization can do to step back from the abyss, and pull itself out the sewer, is RETRAIN its top management team. This should entail a programme highlighting ethics and corporate integrity from a good business school.

The company should then place a list of good business ethics behind the door of each manager’s office, for Tom Manager to meditate on daily: ideas about honesty, integrity, transparency, great service delivery, diligence, courtesy, respect, and consideration, just to name a few factors that spell business effectiveness in 2014.  

Check Fred Flintstone Telecom’s employee turnover rate over the years: it has got to be a world record. The average manager with this firm probably lasts for at the most, 12 months. So expect that gung ho, trigger happy, culture to pervade its markets and customer base. One of the features of a very poor management culture is quick employee turnover. 

Yes. Poor customer service is the direct result of a poor management culture, and a dysfunctional organizational model. This poor management culture gets passed on to Jack Customer in the form of terrible service delivery. The poor internet services that one suffers day after day, and the questionable cell phone service is courtesy the man at the top and his senior colleagues. That is where the buck stops after all.

This frustrated internet user firmly believes that local telecom businesses would be better off investing their profits in upgrading their inadequate cable and wireless infrastructure, and poor digital networks. This would be wiser than spending hundreds of thousands on sales and marketing hype, in an attempt to hoodwink Jack Customer while Jack is being ripped off paying through the nose for a very poor telecom service.

In essence, bull s..tting Jack Customer about Mickey Mouse type telephonic and tablet products that work off a digital platform last upgraded in the Stone Age. These companies should stop putting the cart before the horse. Customers are not stupid. Sooner or later Jack Customer smells the strong coffee. Jack is fully aware when he is being taken for a Jackass by Mickey Mouse the salesman, with his briefcase filled with horse manure.

To be continued

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