The Melancholy of Management!?

Hello.
Carriere Consultants, I am Haruhiko Sado, a career consultant.

"Don't think you'll get paid with sales like these!"
"Don't come back to the office until you make a sale!"

These were the words hurled at me by my General Manager (GM) about 15 years ago when I was a salesperson at a foreign-affiliated equipment company.

You might have a smart, meritocratic image of foreign companies, but the company I was at was truly gritty, and the atmosphere was such that those who were good at internal politics and getting into the good graces of their boss (the GM) were the ones recognized by the company.

Nowadays, if a boss said those opening words to a subordinate, it would be considered power harassment.

*By the way, this story is from 15 years ago; the GM has since changed, and I am not certain if this atmosphere persists today.
I am mentioning this just in case.

At that time, the term "power harassment" had not yet permeated society, and it was not uncommon for bosses to use their status and superiority to hurl abuse at subordinates like this GM did.

Back then, the manufacturing industry was hit hard by the Lehman Shock, and orders decreased significantly.
Companies began to refrain from capital investment.
My sales performance, which used to be 10 to 20 million yen in orders per month—or at worst 5 million yen—sometimes dropped to under 1 million yen.

I endured the GM's verbal abuse while thinking to myself that I could understand why the company wouldn't want to pay a salesperson with these results.

What was even more extreme and feared by salespeople were the sales meetings.

When the budget was not met, the president would thoroughly grill us on why we weren't selling, questioning our past sales activities.
Salespeople feared this as a "hanging meeting."
Someone would become a "sacrificial lamb," having the reasons for missing targets questioned and being subjected to a public hanging.
They would be isolated and unilaterally blamed by the president.

The fact that corporate investment had plummeted due to the Lehman Shock was not accepted as an excuse.
If orders were plummeting, we were blamed to go find markets where other companies were investing.

About 15 years have passed since the Lehman Shock.

The economy showed signs of recovery for a while, but
then, from 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the global economy.
The Ukraine crisis is also a factor.
Now, there is also the issue of the weak yen.

If young business people today were subjected to verbal abuse like in the era when terms like "power harassment," "maternity harassment," and "sexual harassment" did not exist, they would surely quit the company or go to the Labor Bureau to file a complaint.

Laws to prevent "power harassment" and "sexual harassment" have been enacted and are now applied to small and medium-sized enterprises as well.

I truly feel that times have changed.

Also, while young employees are less likely to be subjected to verbal abuse, managers, even when they want to say "You idiot!" for a moment, have to worry about power harassment, hold it in, and guide the young staff.

Managers who cannot say "You idiot!", why not talk about your daily frustrations through career consulting?

Surprisingly, talking to someone can make you feel refreshed.

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