Good morning all from London.

Well we have good news from all around. The Chinese are showing very strong growth, Goldman Sachs posts record profits and the FTSE 100 has been climbing steadily with the banking sector leading the way. So we must be on the road to recovery? NOT!

Putting aside the so called recovery which in my view is a distant blip on the horizon, I want to talk about Empires Strike Back. No not Darth Vader in his raspy voice and his long lost son, young Luke.

In almost all the companies that I have implemented a change or performance improvement program over the last decade, I have seen a disturbing feature that is hugely detrimental to any business.

Empires!

Empires built by management at all levels within a business, but more prevalent within middle management. Empires that serve no purpose in running a business successfully. Empires that inhibit change, create a static environment and destroy value for all stakeholders.

My definition of an empire is as follows:

"A mini organization within a company that runs semi-autonomously with very little transparency and accountability"

These empires may be a small team or a whole department or even an entire account run by an individual and his 'minions'. These empires are very hard to identify until you come to review what is being done and who is doing what. They are also very hard to penetrate as the top two or three individuals running the outfit are very defensive and protective.

Such empires are run like fiefdoms and performance, efficiency, accountability and other key deliverables are 'managed' by those at the helm.

In my view the main reasons for the existence of these empires are:

1. To hide the weakness and inadequacies of the manager in charge
2. Reduce workload within the department or team, to create a 'cushy' work environment, i.e. lots of tea breaks and web browsing
3. Hide inefficiencies within the division
4. Develop a managers need to feel important and needed, massaging their ego
5. Job protection

I have come across one such incident recently where an account manager had a site manager running the day-to-day activities of the account, who in turn had a team leader running the teams workload, who in turn had a work allocator and also another person writing management reports. This was before we arrived at the people delivering the service.

It was such that the three individuals 'looked out' for each other to massage reports and numbers. When the performance improvement program was implemented, within 8 weeks the account manager moved out taking a sideways job change, the site manager resigned and the team leader was eventually replaced.

What strikes me is that when called upon for greater transparency and a clear measurement of performance these empires fall apart like a house of cards. These empire builders can never rise to the challenge of delivering when asked to, they usually become very defensive or walk away of their own volition.

It also seems that the larger the company the greater the number of empires it will have residing within. Don't get me wrong when a CEO or a senior manager is replaced he/she will bring in their team to make the changes they see fit to improve a companies fortune, but this should not be just so that another empire replaces the incumbent.

I think it is important that teams, departments and the whole organizational structure is reviewed by senior management on a regular basis to identify any unnecessary building of empires. These should be backed up with clear performance indicators that all managers should be held accountable to.

However, I do not believe this phenomenon will go away overnight or ever, it is human nature to create such empires and often these will happen organically and before you know it a behemoth is straddling a section within a business.

Till the next time

Shah Alam