Ah… the quietly decisive board meeting nonchalance. Today, I attended a preliminary meeting to plan mid-year financial landing for a 1000+ employees company. An informal board of director meeting just followed, to confirm orientations. For those not familiar, the board of directors is the governing body of an organization that decides main strategies and validates policies (definition from Business Dictionary here).

The average remuneration of members around the table was 400kUSD / year (6 members), a remuneration level that increased around 4.6% yoy. In comparison, the company wide salary increase has been 4%, de facto mitigated by pyramid refreshment policies (read -> replace mid-high salaries by newcomers), making the average remuneration increase budgeted around 0.4%.

Despite HY1 gross margin dramatically below previous years (excluding impact of Covid); or the large impact from Covid under activity further deteriorating operating results; or massive de-commit on budget and forecast levels on both profitability and cash; despite all of that, words were spoken politely, jokes were shared occasionally, and figures were discussed superficially. Classic board meeting nonchalance because, well:

1. Covid has been the right excuse to dump all poor decisions and bad news. With all mistakes buried under: “impact of Covid”. So much that, the closing decision was to show result worse than the reality. All this in order to overplay Covid’s negative impact over poor management and to keep some buffer to cover future mistakes.
2. A massive 1MUSD restructuring plan was approved by the European headquarter, effectively leaving 100+ staff unemployed while safekeeping directors’ bonus (which are based on result before restructuring).
3. Summer holidays are right around the corner, so there’s no time to engage in real action now, that will have to wait September.

So this strip is just that, wandering thoughts that decorated the mild tone and light nonchalance of that bored meeting. A polite and pleasant meeting, to wisely hide incompetence and leave 100 people home without a job.

G.M.