![im on the road to nowhere im on the road to nowhere](https://putchka.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Walking-Train-Tracks-Bolivia2.jpg)
He described a team that didn’t or couldn’t decide where it was heading and so all of them ended up on a long, hot journey to Abilene, Texas. In 1988, another writer, Jerry Harvey, a consultant from Washington DC, wrote about a fateful team journey that illustrates one of the drawbacks of working in a group. But it’s a maxim that many modern teams still need to take on board. ‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there,’ said Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat as long ago as 1865. None of them wanted to ask the necessary but disruptive questions that might further threaten the business. The company had entered a phase of complacency that even its shareholders tacitly accepted. Meanwhile John had switched from heading his organisation towards a clear destination, to keeping it bobbing along, hoping that any movement was a good sign. Their meetings had become predictable and boring. That’s because everyone in the executive team wanted to protect their own priorities, each defending their roles and areas of ownership. Nevertheless, slowly and inexorably, the business was backsliding and no one was confronting the decline. True, the cash reserves from his early cuts had cushioned them and it wasn’t as if they’d reverted to the bad old ways.
![im on the road to nowhere im on the road to nowhere](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/2b/2d/73/2b2d73a13c396846684a6626093c67a2--nature-pictures-nature-animals.jpg)
It took guts, but it was worth it and in the end the business stabilised.īut that was five years ago and now he and his executive team had grown complacent. He’d been given the mandate to do it and the freedom to make tough calls and cuts. He’d been recruited to overhaul this business, turn it around and make it lean and mean.