This week, I was having a very interesting conversation with my brother about Bolivia, companies and the world economic crisis. We were specially talking about international companies that are particularly touched by this bad season. My brother taught me how these things happen with a very nice analogy that I would like to share.

However, my disclaimer, the analogy is related to religion and my apologies for this but we didn’t find another better example to understand the process ….

Here it goes

The restructuring in a company happens like, for example, in the Christian times. Christ had in earth many apostles and disciples, like the Director and its Senior Managers. Obviously, between the disciples you have some leaders who are closely related to the apostles (the relation between managers and Sr. managers).

So, when Christ was in the Via Crucis or when He died (very bad times), the apostles had the duty to spread the news and Christ message to their disciples (communicating bad news and restructuring the company).

After such bad news, urgent and important meetings are held by the apostles between themselves, and then with the other disciples.  Many disciples are asked to spread the message to other parts of the world (relocalization), other disciples are asked to stay at home for their own safety (unemployment). Due to the magnitude of the news, some pro-active disciples choose to go in Missions to spread the world of the company and perhaps to created their own congreagation (new oportunities inside the same company).

However, because the news are quite bad, some people don’t trust anymore the apostles and they choose to come back the Roman traditions (switch companies). After some time, these or other disciples might create their own religion and traditions based on what they believed (new companies and start-ups).

In summary, the analogy is that in bad times, companies, directors, senior managers and managers might behave like the apostles in that time. It seems that human beings have not changed that much during bad times….

Hope you liked the analogy

Marcelo