The Economist - USA (2019-12-21)

The EconomistDecember 21st 2019 Business 91

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Bartleby An inspiring holiday message

Economist.com/blogs/bartleby

D

ear partners,colleagues and (dare I

say it) close personal friends. As the

new boss of Multinational United Sub-

sidiary Holdings (mush), I am proud to

look back on another year of success at

our great company. Our performance is

largely down to you and your efforts, and

we hope that next year those efforts will

be rewarded with the end of our long-

running pay freeze.

Under my tenure, ceodoes not stand

for Chief Executive Officer but for cheer-

leader extraordinaire. I feel passionate

about reaching out to as many of you as

possible (if not quite as passionately as

our Chief Technology Officer, who is still

on suspension until the employment

tribunal makes its decision). The door to

my office is always open, especially now

that we are in an open-plan building.

When it comes to 360-degree feedback, I

have unlimited bandwidth.

What was my highlight of the year? It

has to be the arrival of cultural facilitator

(and part-time rapper) Monica Strutt, aka

the “monster”. We all remember how we

felt when we heard her first freestyle

slam: “Use your energy/to create more

synergy/our transformation/will be a

corporate sensation/all your learnings/

will boost our earnings”. Inspirational at

the meta-level.

I am also excited about the reorgani-

sation that saw the appointment of our

first Chief Diversity Officer, who ticks all

the boxes—as should you when the latest

employee-satisfaction survey hits your

email address. The revamp also saw the

creation of two new senior roles: Cor-

porate Responsibility Advance Principal

and, pushing the envelope, our Thinking

Outside the Silo Head. I expect plenty of

both crapand tosh next year.They will

be cascading memos down the corporate

waterfall as they try to define their roles.

Admittedly, 2019 has had its share of

painful experiences. My predecessor’s

decision to centralise all group functions

did not work, resulting in some exception-

al and extraordinary losses for the fifth

year running. This forced us to close a few

factories. On the bright side, our carbon

emissions fell considerably as a result. Just

doing our bit for the planet. I plan to return

more power to the remaining staff by

delegating control to the individual busi-

ness units. Going forward, we will be

moving backwards.

This means that now more than ever we

need your input and inspiration for 2020.

Please ideate 24/7. We need greater granu-

larity and more thought leadership. Let us

create a snowstorm and see what lands. If

we architect successfully and get our

ducks in a row, we can blitzscale mush and

impact the market via a paradigm shift.

Business is getting a bad press at the

moment for prioritising shareholders

above all else. As our results make clear, we

have managed to avoid this. What’s more,

our company has a purpose, and next year

we intend to find out precisely what it is.

Those of us in the C-suite have been

kicking around some ideas, starting with

the creation of a cross-disciplinary task-

force. Does becoming part of that win-

ning team fit into your wheelhouse? If so,

let our hrdepartment know and some-

one from the staff interface community

will circle back to you.

Where will our corporate journey take

us in 2020? Hopefully, to the sunlit up-

lands where a thousand flowers bloom

amid blue-sky thinking. For that to hap-

pen, we must join the dots and create a

toolkit that will do the heavy-lifting to

allow us to leverage our collective skill-

set. Forget the doomsters and the nay-

sayers, and the investment-bank an-

alysts with their tricky questions about

balance-sheet strength and cashflow.

Our management consultants say that

we are one of the best clients they have

ever had and they look forward to seeing

us again next year.

As well as a cheerleader, a chief exec-

utive needs to be a chef. At mush we have

wonderful ingredients. With the right

mixing, we can create a soup-to-nuts

banquet that will have consumers and

investors salivating. Does this vision

speak to you? Then speak to me in Janu-

ary when I return from my Bhutanese

meditation retreat.

In the meantime, have a great holiday

season. Many of you are entitled to annu-

al leave. I like to think we are all members

of the mushcommunity, even those of

you on zero-hours contracts. Remember

that, in 2020, all your hard work can pay

dividends to our shareholders.

All the best to anyone in the group’s

employment space.

Stay awesome. Buck Passer

Buck Passer, cheerleader extraordinaire, reaches out

ing Benz—a tidy 10bn yuan ($1.5bn) in

2018—into “the bottomless pit” of baic’s

domestic brands, which lost 6.5bn yuan.

A bigger stake in Daimler may be an at-

tempt to restore the perception that baic,

not Geely, is the Germans’ main partner. A

spokesman for Daimler says it welcomes

long-term investors, especially those it

knows well. The German firm owns 9.6% of

baic Motor, the Chinese company’s Hong

Kong-listed subsidiary, and 3% of Blue-

Park, another baic affiliate that makes

electric cars and batteries.

Many Germans nevertheless worry.

With another 5% or so the Chinese duo

could block some strategic decisions, says

Marc Tüngler of dsw, an organisation

which represents the interests of German

private investors. The pair could easily join

forces. Geely may be privately owned but,

Mr Zhu says bluntly, “both ultimately rep-

resent the Chinese state.”

Geely and baic may shun separate hold-

ings above 10% to avoid triggering a review

by BaFin, Germany’s financial regulator.

But Daimler is apparently already worried

that an enlarged Chinese stake may invite

scrutiny from an American government

body which vets foreign deals, including

those between foreign firms with Ameri-

can subsidiaries. Another of Daimler’s Chi-

nese joint ventures, with byd, a maker of

electric cars, may come under strain as

Congress tries to bar federal money from

paying for Chinese buses, which byd sells

to America. On December 15th China’s am-

bassador to Germany threatened to retali-

ate against its car industry if the country

bowed to American demands to bar Hua-

wei, a telecoms-equipment giant, from its

networks. For Daimler, this requires some

deft handling. 7