Tactical Errors
Today is July 25th, and I join you in hoping MB's BoD will today accept Arthur T's offer to buy the company. You certainly deserve it. However if that happens, few thanks will be due to the managers of the web site "We Are Market Basket." Why so?
1. You're not. As mentioned on the Owners page here, you the staff are under contract to the company; it does not consist of you. If you were all to quit tomorrow, Market Basket would continue to exist, and to have assets and owners; and it could recruit and train replacements for you all and be back in normal business a few months later. In an important but informal way it can be loosely said that "you are MB" in the sense that you are the helpful and cheerful folk we customers encounter when we come shopping, but that's all. To claim to BE the company, more than that, insults its owners.
2. It's confrontational. Up-front on the web site, the writers deplore the failure of certain politicians to join you in the fight. Politicians, as mentioned on the same Owners page, are in the business of using force. It's all they know. Your leaders were foolish to call them in. Your disagreement with the BoD is about what you rightly see as a bad mistake; you need to persuade them to correct it, not try to force them.
3. It's offensive. In the same up-front spot, and elsewhere, the site accuses the BoD of "corporate greed." Hurling insults like that is not the way to win friends and influence people. You are telling the Board they erred; you have no way of knowing whether its members are greedy or not and that is irrelevant. You need only to show them why it's to their advantage to change their minds. How would you feel, if someone wanting your co-operation called you "greedy"?
Although the word "greed" is in practice ugly, in reality it should not be. We are all greedy. Greed is a prime mover of human progress; as Gecko said, "greed is good." I am greedy, and so are the other million and a half customers who shop at MB each week. We could get by on a quarter of what we spend with MB on food; we would survive and be well nourished. But because we are greedy, we like to buy more than that minimum, and eat and drink some of the good and tasty things on your shelves, which add to the richness and enjoyment of life.
So if it were not for greed, three quarters of you would not have a job.
4. It's w-a-y out of date. The whole tenor of the "We Are MB" web site is that of the loutish, century-old trade union which prospered on the fiction that management and labor is "them" versus "us" - that working for a living consists of a permanent war between owners and employees. W-r-o-n-g. You are selling your services to the Company, and the Company is paying you a fair wage (if it were otherwise, you'd quit for better pay elsewhere.) Your interests are very close to those of the owners; both parts of MB prosper when the whole prospers. You're contracting partners, not enemies in a war.
Home Possible Solutions Who Owns MB? Tactical Errors It's July 26th. Now What? After-July Blog