Let's say you aren't into the idea of profitability. Let's say that team-work doesn't appeal to you, and that you don't actually want a successful organisation...
How could you go about creatively dismantling your business? Totally trashing it? It can, in fact, be done quite easily.
Using nothing but your own behaviour as a leader, here are eight ways to totally trash a perfectly profitable team:
Whenever they come to you with ideas, don't focus on the value of the idea itself. Instead, find fault with the presentation of the idea, or with the person presenting it. Always focus on the rough pebbles, and completely dismiss the gold.
Don't see new ideas not as opportunities. Instead, view them as threats to your position and standing. Be defensive when approached with anything new or different.
Establish fiefdoms, and set one department against another. Don't encourage your people to play for the same team; instead, set division against division to the detriment of the whole.
Assume that people know what you want from them. Assume that they have access to the vision inside your head, without ever articulating it. Then criticize them when they don't do it the way you pictured it.
Make sure that all of your leaders are pulling in different directions. Don't ever get together and discuss what the central goal and vision should be.
Never provide real, useful feedback. Just be nice. Be sweet. Be politically correct. And let the issues fester unaddressed in the background.
Make the assumption that differing viewpoints are always bad, to be discouraged and squashed. Operate from the perspective that unless everyone thinks just like you, they are obviously trying to sabotage the business.
Your people pour their hearts and souls into their work. They push themselves and they make personal sacrifices to meet deadlines. Make sure that there is no acknowledgement of their effort; that once they've reached the top of the mountain, there is simply another mountain to be climbed, without praise and without respite.
Do these things consistently, and you will be absolutely guaranteed to trash a perfectly profitable team.
