Somewhere along the way...

...I felt something in the air...

"Many companies start out with a clear rationale for any particular transaction. But somewhere along the way, the deal takes on a life of its own—and can keep moving forward even when it doesn’t make sense." - it is a quote from an article on M&A by D&T nevertheless the feeling of "something" went wrong is pretty well described. Something went wrong even though many dedicated and intelligent people worked so hard.... And it actually doesnt matter whether you talk about some failed M&A deals, the financial crises or for instance the Challenger catastrophe.

Holesovice district, 15 February

Last week I spent three days at a motivation and communication skills training. I enjoyed that - not only because of the two trainers who were really good and experienced (an HR director of an automotive company employing some three thousand workers and one of Czech first headhunters) but also because of the other "students". Two of four were CEOs, one CEO-2 level manager from a large Czech bank. Experience in the air. We, of course, discussed the current economic downturn. Somehow our discussions turned to war several times. Strange feeling - usually big things start as small ones. Hopefully this is not the case.

Petr Koubsky, one of my favourite bloggers, wrote: "A water pipe broke somewhere underground. This is how the end of the world will look like: we will be waiting for someone to repair it. And looking for the number of a free of charge customer care."

And Vaclav Cilek (Letat s ptaky), one of my favourite authors, says: "I've always felt that there are two tendencies beside each other - a creative one and a destructive one. Both are big unpersonal powers - ancient Greeks would call them "gods" whereas modern people rather speak about darwinian strenghts of natural selection. Most of the old societies understood well that destruction is not a lack of positive deeds or a mistake, but a real power of its own following its own logic."