I’m cranky about certain things. It could be my age…or it might be that, like you, some things just tick me off. This time I’m ‘cranky’ about yet another big company telling big lies.
Fiat Chrysler, North America has reported sales increases for each of the past 75 months. The problem is that many of those sales increases were simply made up.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Fiat Chrysler for fraud. Six months ago one of their own customers, a major Illinois auto dealer, sued them in federal court for manipulating and inflating its vehicle sales numbers in the United States. The Department of Justice is looking into whether the automaker, a publically traded company, deceived shareholders with fake sales numbers and, therefore, committed securities fraud.
As business people, collectively, we’re in charge of ‘Brand Business’ and we’re not doing a very good job of nurturing our Brand. We need to attract and engage talented young people to aspire to a career in business. But, more and more, young people are ‘turned off’ by business. They see us as deceitful, irresponsible or evil. Many of them are working for incompetent bosses in mediocre or dishonest companies and they don’t want to be part of it. Either they’ll just show up at work and go through the motions or quit, go work for the government and vote socialist for the rest of their lives. Either way we’re in big trouble.
As business people we need to get our act together, play it straight, build trust and inspire greatness. We need to adopt a simple philosophy in our business, “No games…no tricks…no lies.”
What might need doing, fixing or improving in your business to earn the trust, respect, full effort and commitment of your team? If you’re not sure, ask them.
