[baldfat]

Burn the furniture outside. Its losing you business.

Fire the marketing team. (Seen this happened at colleges before)

Hire someone within from the floor as upper management that is the furniture expert. Give them actual power to ruffle feathers.

Hire outside a few middle managers from successful companies and pay them well.

CEO talks about how everyone needs to love what we make and do, furniture.

Company has managers work the floor for two weeks on a rotating schedule for the first 6 months. Each manager does two different jobs for a week each. Pepsi does this every year. Friend of mine was in upper management and he drove a truck and delivered products a week a year.

Restructure after 9 months and get rid of people who don't buy in who more then likely will leave on their own.

[thirdsun]

> Company has managers work the floor for two weeks on a rotating schedule for the first 6 months. Each manager does two different jobs for a week each. Pepsi does this every year. Friend of mine was in upper management and he drove a truck and delivered products a week a year.

I like that idea. Let managers deal with the details of the product or service. Have them exposed to countless, tiny, everyday pains and problems, which are invisible when handling big picture ideas.

For companies that deal with digital goods instead of physical products temporary low level support rotation might be a chance to get higher level positions down in the trenches. Basecamp seems to use such a system: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3676-everyone-on-support

[kamaal]

You are suggesting great action items. But who is going to implement them? Whom do you get to make this happen?

Management?

Why do you think those 300 people will work against their own interests?

[baldfat]

> But who is going to implement them?

Well the question is if you were the CEO. The CEO is going to have to roll up their sleeves and be the change maker. The environment will have to change. Staying the same is not an option in the long run.

> Why do you think those 300 people will work against their own interests?

When the company environment is one of empowering people to change themselves or help them move out of the way, because change is coming, allows current management a choice. Believing the best about people and that they also want the company to succeed and that deep down they also are frustrated by the low profits. That they actually just need someone to guide them to the promise land. I guarantee you that this management team is totally in paranoid "How are we still in business?" mode. If you can say, "We are turning this ship around and making this company survive through hard work and tough decisions will get people to leave or to actual apply themselves.

You have to change the work place environment and pretty much that will take care of the majority of the 300 people. The hardest thing to do is to change the workplace environment that really can only happen from the top down.

One thing about change, good or bad is that change is difficult. In environmental change at work it is unbearable for months and months. You keep meetings with fewer and fewer people and they will start looking for greener pastures and search and find these articles.

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-tips-for-deal...

If people are comfortable they will not look for new opportunities.

I guess I am saying that people don't take a self-assessment of their work till they are feeling left out or can't meet some challenges. Either way you have a better company from your management when they do. People will either flight or will challenge themselves, but staying the same is not an option.