Belgian Television station VT4 is broadcasting “De Topmanager” and I can’t help but watching it. It’s the CEO of Capco that is selecting a manager out of originally 16 candidates; 8 men and 8 women. In the pilot, the candidates were divided into 2 teams, men against women, and every broadcast delivers a winner and a looser. The winning team gets a prize; a fancy dinner or an outing, while the loosing team is summoned by Mr. CEO and one of its members dismissed. The first 3 rounds have been won by the women, and 3 men have had to leave.
The show itself is not as interesting as the smashing way it completely confirms my stereotype of Belgian leadership. In my experience, your average Belgian manager will assume a position of authority, not communicate with his team, let the team take charge and hereby create chaos and when things go wrong, blame it on someone completely different. “Yes, we promised to deliver your parking permits upon payment within 3 days, but the printing company did not let us know that they would not be able to make the badges in less than a week, so I’m afraid you are going to have to wait”.
Last time, the mission was to buy low and sell high. The groups got 1000€ each, 2 days, and the group to make the highest profit would win. The men selected a project manager, spent most of the first day not agreeing on what to buy, none of the members cooperating, everybody pushing for their own ideas and eventually they lost, making nearly no profit at all. The whole time, the Project manager was trying to act like a manager but could direct the group in no way. When confronted, he blamed a 3rd party for the loss, and he was, of course, not dismissed.
By Lovain
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment