Corporate Lesson - The 4 Envelopes

Jim was a newly appointed manager at Big Corp Inc.

Jim comes the new office full of energy. He predecessors, Tom, is in
the office packing up his last things. Before Tom leaves he gives Jim
a gift. The gift consist of four sealed envelopes.

They have friendly chat and Tom says to Jim: "I'll give you this gift
to help you when you find yourself in trouble."
Jim: "What shall I do with them?"
Tom: "The envelopes are numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. Open the envelopes
only when you are in serious trouble. Start with number 1, then number
2, 3 and 4."

The gentlemen shake hands and Tom leaves the office.

Jim gets to work but no matter what he does, it is hard to get the
right results and his own position is challenged after 6 months. Then
he remembers the three envelopes in his top drawer. He does as
instructed and opens #1. It reads: "Blame your predecessor."

Jim takes a deep breath and return to his management claiming that it
has taken some time to clean up after the previous manager.

Another six months pass and the problems don't go away. His own
position is again challenged. What to do, what to do? Again Jim
resorts to the envelopes in his top drawer. #2 reads: "Introduce a
reorganization that will address the problems."

Said and done, Jim comes up with a plan to address the problems by
reorganizing. But the darn problems will not go away.

So came the #3 envelope: "Acquire a company." That stirred up lots of
press coverage and analyst enthusiasm, but nothing seems to work
despite another 6 months of hard work.

Again Jim is challenged from his management. Jim is also desperate, so
he resort to the last envelope that reads: "Write four letters and put
them in four envelops number them 1, 2, 3, 4 ......."