A fair assessment of something everyone else knew except Ducati. No point being a proud engineer if the bikes you design and build are not performing. The current Desmo and the Pani are well below par in race trim. Dall'Igna will sort it out hopefully.
He will sort it out if people at the top really want to listen to him. And they may not. I have spent so much of my professional career telling management what they don't want to hear and it has changed nothing but my promotion prospects.
Unfortunately Glidd, it appears you have found out what I have and many others have..........Useless wankers in senior positions won't listen to someone who knows better, because it puts their position at risk.......... My favoured analogy is: "I don't own the train; I'm not allowed to drive the train; I'm not allowed to wave the guard's flags; I'm not allowed to stoke the boiler; I'm not even allowed to be a passenger on the train.............." "........but when the effing train comes off the tracks, see who gets it in the neck!!"
It seems management is pretty much the same wherever you go. They spend so much time up their own arses they can't even smell the stench anymore. As the saying goes…. "those that can, do, those that can't, teach and those that can't teach manage".
I think that's a bit unfair, however it would be nice to believe in something so simple. The fact is that organisations exist to protect themselves, no matter what they are meant to do on paper. That means that those at the top are much more interested in protecting their own positions rather than the ideals they have purportedly put in place to defend. Those lower down want to be higher up and act accordingly. It's only naïve fools like myself who actually think they should be doing what they are supposed to be paid to do. It's a dumb mindset with a complete failure to understand the game. But there you are. I just can't help it.
Having some experience of Audi, via Porsche, I believe that there will be a serious session of ass kicking. The German factories do not liuke to be beaten..
I'm not entirely sure what I've said and what you said, apart from your eloquence, is any different. My comment may have been simplistic but it pretty much adds up to the same thing you said, doesn't it ?
Well yes and no. It's not fair to blanket management with never doing anything useful, or you'd never had a 1098, a 916 or any number or other great Ducatis. And many are the companies who make great products, which is partly to the credit of management. But is true that management operates in the way I have described - that is in a suboptimal fashion. And to be fair, commerce might not be a complete meritocracy, but to suggest that all top managers are just talentless arselickers is also overly simplistic. There are a lot of capable people in top jobs - it's just that they know what side their bread is buttered on.
To quote an old one.... A corporation is like a tree full of monkeys..... The ones at the top look down and see a load of smiling faces.... The ones at the bottom look up and all they see are arseholes!
No one, including me, is saying ALL management is bad but, generally, there ARE bad managers in many organisations. Those managers/CEO's/Chairmen that have a vested interest in the company (such as my old company easyJet) tend to be great to work for. From personal experience, Stelios who founded easyJet was a truly inspirational leader. Since he left, they've had a succession of nest featherers and that's one reason why I left and went to pastures new. Management is a reflection of society in general and, as you said yourself, many take the maximum they can get without putting the maximum in. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume the workers would do the same. That's why despite the 1098 or 916 or 1199 or the space shuttle, there's always more that could be achieved if management, at all levels, could act sensibly, lead by example and drive their companies forward.
"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." Known as the Stockdale paradox and referred to in the management study 'Good to Great' by Jim Collins. Should be required reading for all in management.
When ducati were taken over by Audi they did change the management . Out went Filippo Preziosi and in came Bernhard Gobmeier ,who also happens to be a German , Audi admitted it would take several years to rebuild the corse racing team but rebuilt it would be . The new 2015 bike will be the first major change , other changes were fixes to a troubled bike , so we will all have to wait and see what the new management bring in .
Update...Gobmeier proved incapable of influencing anything in Bologna and was replaced by Gigi Dall'Inga at the end of last season
Ah I thought he was top management . So is Gigi now the top man in management at ducati corse and can he do as he wants regarding changes to design .
