If you’re in a hole, stop digging
Fletcher Building shows the law of the jungle and the law of the bungle are very different, writes David Slack.
On a farm you see dead animals all the time and everywhere, and there’s no ceremony to their despatch. But a beloved dog is different. Your parents know that. They know that you and your brother and sister will be sad to learn that Tip got hit by a car, and will want to say goodbye.
So they don’t do what they usually do. Instead they set Tip down on the lawn so that when you get home from school, you can see for yourself what has happened. And after the goodbyes are said, Dad begins digging.
I thought that was very thoughtful of Mum and Dad. Poor old Tip, clever sheep dog that he was, had not been quite clever enough just once, and that was life, and on you go, and that’s how you explain it all to kids.
That is why when our neighbours in our leafy street had the same sad news to share with their kids and asked me what I thought they should do, I told them all about Tip.
I explained how they should leave Sparky (not his real cat name) lying there in state on the lawn, ready for the kids when they got home from school, and then they should let them help dig a hole and respectfully bury Sparky and say their fond goodbyes.
They weren’t quite sure, but I told them I had no doubt it was the best way to do it. They would learn that this was the circle of life and so on. What I was entirely overlooking was that their kids had not grown up seeing rotting carcasses in the paddocks, and all they had ever seen of the animal kingdom and the circle of life was The Lion King.
So they got ready to present the sad news to the kids that their beloved cat was gone, and at three o’clock the kids came walking and skipping back down the street from Stanley Bay Primary School. At one minute past three the wailing began.
On the other side of the fence there was crying and sobbing and the sounds of parents making soothing noises, and more soothing noises, and trying to get a word in edgeways, trying to explain that now they would be digging a hole and putting Sparky (not his real cat name) to rest. And now the wailing subsided as the sounds of digging began, and I thought to myself: there you go, circle of life, that worked out all right didn’t it.
Which it did not, because two hours later my neighbour rang to say hey genius what do we do now. Their 7-year-old boy was out in the garden, tears running down his face, wielding his dad’s enormous spade and trying to dig Sparky back up.
I have been thinking about about all of this as I watch the gyrations of Fletcher Building and I wonder how awful it must feel for the 4229 people who work there who earn $100,000 or more and the 46 who earn more than $400,000 and also the poor old board members, of whom just one possesses anything you might even loosely call building industry experience.
I wonder if they are wondering to themselves, as I did: boy, you can think what you know what you’re doing but then you discover you really don’t.
How did they miscalculate so badly, all those people with all those MBAs and all that experience in banking and accounting?
How did they manage to string together losses of $660 million for the 2018 financial year?
Is it because there is no demand for building and building products? Perhaps an expert in that field can tell us.
When I was freshly arrived in the business world, fresh off the farm, I had the idea that the more senior you were, the smarter and more able you were. Four short decades later, I am amazed to see various people put in charge, and thinking: I remember you, I’ve seen you at work, how has this happened, because no offence but you really don’t have a clue what you’re doing.
This whole circle of life thing is proving to be nothing like The Lion King, to be honest.
@DavidSlack