The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Buying People  When we buy a company, we are buying the people and all the “assets” - plant and equipment come with them, rather than the other way around. The due diligence gets done, the books are looked at carefully for any signs of “cooking”. Hidden debts, secret undertakings, compliance and regulatory issues are scrutinized. The people part however is given a “once over lightly” look because this is much harder to do thoroughly, than the other investigations. HR can tell us a lot about the structure of the pay arrangements, who are the high potentials, previous performance review results and the current staffing levels. Gauging staff productivity however is much more obtuse. The silly part though is that this is exactly what we are buying – staff productivity.   Often, the perceived productivity gap is “fixed” by firing staff to reduce costs and at the same time drive the leaders to push the team harder for higher revenues. This scenario usually doesn’t happen straight away. It takes time to get a sense