personal finance He is having a go at the Managing Director about this; the latter is something of a defeatist but defends the Company's products stubbornly arguing that the former Board ruined the range after the last war. The General Sales Manager, a genial optimist, is full of confidence. He doesn't agree. He feels that the products can't be too bad because he has lately had an excellent order from a large and developing retail chain called Multistore Ltd. But his anxiety is that he hasn't got anybody really competent to handle such a contact and sees himself, as usual, having to cope. The General Production Manager was in the factory 250 miles away. Had he been in this gloomy meeting he would have contradicted everybody and lost his temper. As a result of this meeting it was decided to call in the help of an outside adviser who would see the problem objectively and would, if it were not already too late, make recommendations of a constructive nature. Company X, making branded consumer goods, had once been leader in its field and was still well known. When it asked for outside help, however, the fourth successive trading loss had been announced, the dividend was in arrears, and bankers were exchanging glances. The decline was the result of bad management past and present. The Board Chairman, Managing Director, and three parttime directors had been in office for two years. It had taken over after the shareholders had expelled the previous Board. The two senior members kept tight central control over the Company. Its recovery was prevented by the weaknesses in their management methods and was typified in the particular meeting that has been described. I. Lack of Leadership The Board had inherited a difficult situation. Quality had been debased to enable quick profits to be made in the sellers' market. When supplies became more plentiful this policy had rightly rebounded hard enough to unseat the old Board. The new directors had the level of quality restored and awaited results. They did not come. The Chairman thus blamed the factory, the Managing Director his predecessors, and each privately blamed the other. The fault, in such a situation, lay with both. The only hope of success was to give confident leadership to the Company and especially to the sales side. In this competitive market a minority of discriminating buyers knew that the products were good; the rest had a prejudice against the Company which only inspired salesmanship could overcome. Inspiration is not often a selfgenerated quality. To sit in Head Office criticizing the product or those formerly responsible for it is not the stuff of inspiration. Unusually able and enthusiastic leaders might have overcome the history of the product, but these men were frightened. They also disagreed among themselves. The General Production Manager, in particular, took as little notice of the Board's authority as he could. Household