Do you want your employees vibrant and excited about working for you again? Or are you satisfied with your neat to eat package of objectives and action items that you can hold people accountable to? And while you've been holding them accountable, have you been watching your sales and profits rise, stagnate or fall? If you're in the first group, don't keep reading. You'll never believe me and you actually shouldn't. If it ain't broke don't fix it. No argrument there.

But if your company is either stagnant or falling in sales and/or profits and you've been sticking to your Management By Objective or similar program you may have to reconsider its efficacy.

Over an 18 year period, I participated in the radical growth and expansion of a company that was run by a benevolent dictator (first 9 years) and then by a strict MBO, consultant based bureuacracy. I was the senior manager of all advertising and marketing, reporting directly to the President. And what I witnessed in the demise of the company coupled with my experiences during its fantastic rise to stardom and success (profits) has formed my philosophies that will guide the "freeing" of your employees and your company to achieve greatness again.

Mine is a fundamentals based belief. A sports analogy may help describe my approach to business. When a player or a team is in a slump, the worse thing you can possibly do is force a completely new learning experience. Or to put it more clearly, change the entire batting stance that got the player to the big leagues to begin with. And if your all-star shortstop suddenly can't fetch an easy two-hopper, you don't call in a consultant who was a former soccer coach to question his heart and his methods. You, as the coach, simply go back to the basics. That's where MBO and its eventual evolutionary mutations took may companies far askew. I will focus your employess on the fundamentals of success. I will get them out of the committee meetings, out of the team building seminars, out of the action item follow up presentations to the management team and get them motivated to work hard and love every minute of it.

I'll even help you figure out what you're going to do now that you won't have a lot of psycho-babble filled, politically correct reports filling your In-Box. To be honest, you might not know what to do with all your time at first. But we'll work on that and the ideas I have will go a long way toward healing the mistrust and skepticism that is at the base of the MBO dysfunction.

The process will be hard and painful, just like kickin' any bad habit that has made you feel good even though it's actually killing you. But it's possibly the only cure for the "MBO" blues that are eating the souls out of your employees and the profits out of your pockets.

Everything "MBO" gave you that was good, now has reared its ugly head in the form of concensus building (agreeing to what no one truly believes in), team building (posturing sessions to impress the boss and make enemies), objective meetings (the coverup of all the things that aren't getting done but you get convinced that progress is being made), committee meetings (great for organizing picnics and fund raisers and it needs to stop there), mission statements (you could buy generic bologna at Safeway) and action plans (how we're going to get nowhere as fast as possible).

Has everyone in your company forgotten how to work after all this? Does anyone have a stitch of a creative thought? Does it seem that no one has really bought into anything because everything that's agreed upon is the result of a compromise or concensus? No ownership. No champion(s) of the cause. There's just responsibility and accountability for things they don't really believe in because they feel they have to "go along" so they are perceived to be a "team player." (Remember the "anonymous" employee and peer survey coming up soon.)

But the best and worst part of the news I have for you is that it will be easiest on your employees and hardest on you, the boss. That is until you see the results on the bottom line growing again. And more than that, wouldn't it be nice to truly enjoy honest interaction with people that work for you again. You can't do that (unless you're still in denial) if they're living with feelings of emasculation and suffocation. And if you've read this far, this is probably happening to you. We can help you turn it around. It'll be hard, and in the end, worth every bit!