Consequences of Mismanagement

The scale of the destruction is simply unimaginable. The Annelies Ilena - which I've discussed before - is a giant factory ship that can capture 400,000 kilograms of fish in a single day. It's a giant death factory. But that's not all, supertrawlers have a much bigger impact. 1. Overfishing and Ecosystem Collapse Super trawlers and bottom trawlers contribute to the overexploitation of fish stocks, depleting populations faster than they can recover. The Bay of Bengal study found that increasing trawler activity leads to habitat destruction and threatens the entire marine food pyramid, including top predators. 2. Bycatch and Marine Biodiversity Loss Trawling is highly non-selective, capturing and killing many non-target species (e.g., sea turtles, dolphins, sharks). A review on trawling and bycatch highlighted that endangered species often fall victim to these nets, and that bycatch reduction devices are not widely used. 3. Habitat Destruction and Seafloor Damage Bottom trawling scrapes the ocean floor, causing irreversible damage to benthic ecosystems. Studies on seabed trawling found that it flattens marine habitats, reducing biodiversity by eliminating slow-growing species like corals and shellfish. Trawling in the Mediterranean (Gioia Canyon) led to the destruction of vulnerable marine ecosystems like deep-sea coral forests. 4. Changes in Seafloor Chemistry and Ocean Health Trawling disturbs the seabed’s natural biogeochemistry, affecting nutrient cycles and oxygen levels. A study in the North Sea found that repeated trawling leads to long-term disruptions in nutrient cycling, causing habitat degradation. 5. Impact on Seabirds and Marine Mammals Seabirds alter their natural foraging behaviours due to fishery discards from trawlers, increasing their dependence on human activities. A study in the Mediterranean found that seabirds’ movement patterns were significantly altered when trawlers were active, affecting their long-term survival. 6. The Scale of Trawling’s Impact Studies estimate that bottom trawlers disturb up to 15 million square kilometres of seabed annually - an area 150 times greater than global deforestation. 7. What Can We Do? - More protected marine areas, which when enforced (many of them aren't!), can help ecosystems recover. - Introduce stricter fishing quotas. - Change behaviours so people eat a LOT less fish. Image via Leon Simons SOURCES: - Trawling's a Drag for Marine Life (Malakoff, 2002). - Environmental Impact of Trawling in the Bay of Bengal (Das, 2018). - Trawling and By-catch: Implications on Marine Ecosystems (Kumar & Deepthi, 2006). - Fishery Discards and Seabird Movement Patterns (Bartumeus et al., 2010). - Impact of Trawl Fisheries on Marine Benthic Biogeochemistry (Percival, 2004). - Effects of Trawling on Coral and Sea Pens (Pierdomenico et al., 2018). - Assessing and Mitigating Bottom Trawling Impacts (Rijnsdorp et al., 2017).

Your Procurement Team Is Not a Fire Department🔥 Stop Celebrating Heroics and Start Preventing Fires. Procurement Excellence - FEB 2026 - Firefighting in procurement is the reactive, crisis-driven practice of addressing urgent, unplanned issues such as supply shortages, late contract renewals, or emergency purchases rather than following proactive, strategic processes. Are you constantly putting out fires in procurement? You’re not alone. While firefighting feels heroic; 🚫It drains resources 🚫It burns out teams 🚫It hides the real problem Here are 9 Common Sources of Procurement Fires: (Root Cause & how to extinguish them FOR GOOD): #1. Late PO Approvals ↳Bureaucratic workflows & unclear authority. ↳Extinguish: Streamline approvals; delegate thresholds; use digital workflows. #2. Supplier Shortages ↳Single-source over dependency & poor risk monitoring. ↳Extinguish: Diversify suppliers; implement real-time risk dashboards. #3. Invoice Mismatches ↳Manual data entry & poor PO-invoice reconciliation. ↳P2P automation; 3-way matching tech. #4. Maverick Spending ↳Maverick buying & unclear policies ↳Enforce P2P policy; user-friendly catalogs; spot-buy controls. #5. Talent Burnout ↳Chronic firefighting leads to high turnover ↳Automate low-value tasks; invest in upskilling #6. Cost Overruns ↳Scope creep & poor demand forecasting. ↳Robust change orders; cross-functional planning. #7. Emergency Purchases ↳Reactive planning & no buffer stock strategy. ↳Predictive analytics; safety stock optimization. #8. Supplier Performance Failures ↳Lazy SLAs & no performance tracking. ↳Clear KPIs; regular reviews; penalty clauses. #9. Contract Non-Compliance ↳Buried terms & poor stakeholder awareness. ↳Centralize contracts; automated alerts; regular audits. #Bonus I: Data Silos ↳Fragmented systems, no spend visibility. ↳Integrated tech stack; centralized data lake. #Bonus II: Specification Changes ↳Siloed stakeholder input, late-stage revisions. ↳Early stakeholder engagement; change control boards. Stop Spraying Water & fighting fires Fix the source. Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is your fire inspector. ✅️ 5 Whys Technique: Uncover layered failures. ✅️ Data Mining: Find spend patterns, delays, & exceptions. ✅️ Fishbone Diagrams: Map process, people, tech & policy flaws. Audit ONE fire this week. What’s the biggest fire in procurement function? 🔔 Follow Frederick for more procurement insights ♻️ Share solutions with someone in your network. #Procurement #ProcessImprovement #RootCauseAnalysis #ProcurementTransformation

Leaders, if you're going ahead with mass layoffs, you can't seriously be thinking that your #diversity, #equity, or #inclusion work will have any credibility left after the fact. Fundamentally, DEI work is about showing people that they matter by building a workplace where they can thrive. And fundamentally, mass layoffs communicate the exact opposite: that no matter a person's skill, experience, productivity, contribution, passion, or loyalty, they ultimately are just another cost to be cut. That people mean nothing in the face of short-term profit. The consequences of mass layoffs on your people, your biggest assets, are immediate and catastrophic. 📉 One study found a 41% decline in job satisfaction among survivors of a layoff, leading to a 36% decline in their desire to stay with the workplace. 📉 Another study found that a 1% workforce layoff resulted in a 31% increase in voluntary turnover. 📉 One study found a 20% decline in job performance, with another finding that 77% of layoff survivors see more errors and mistakes made. 📉 Another study found that layoffs tanked the quality of products, the safety of the workplace, and the quality of layoff survivor mental health and wellbeing. 📉 A bevy of other studies find a cascading set of issues triggered by layoffs that create a vicious cycle: worse morale and wellbeing leads to poorer job performance, overwork and forced productivity drives mass exoduses of skilled workers; reputational damage and loss of trust dampens the ability to hire fresh talent. Trying to achieve any sort of DEI impact amid this kind of avoidable chaos is like trying to renovate your house after setting it on fire. It's downright offensive to employees, especially those with marginalized identities, to be asked to continue their unpaid, voluntary efforts to benefit the business after you've destroyed any reason for them to undertake this extra work. It's a moot point—they're far too busy applying to your competitors, anyways. This is the point in time when those workplaces and leaders with empty promises and performative actions will be weeded out from those that get ahead by doing right by their people, their customers, and the world. There are many ways for a workplace to earn a spot in the latter group, but in case it wasn't clear? Mass layoffs aren't one of them.

This Indian mother got an Income tax notice of ₹20 lakh for her daughter’s FD. A 61 year old homemaker in India once opened her mailbox to a shock: A tax notice for a ₹20 lakh deposit. (Source: Business Standard) Except she never deposited a rupee. Her daughter had made a joint fixed deposit in her name. What was meant as family convenience turned into a compliance headache. This is more common than you think. India today has more than 2.5 billion bank accounts, and joint FDs are popular in almost every household. Families open them with parents or spouses for: > easy access during emergencies, > safety and convenience, and > succession planning if something happens. It feels like the safest option. But under our tax reporting system (Rule 114E), it can backfire because: - Banks must report all deposits above ₹10 lakh. - Every PAN on a joint FD has to be reported. - Result: The same ₹20 lakh shows up in both holders’ Annual Information Statements. - The system flags it as duplicate income → and a notice gets generated. Now, you can’t fully escape tax notices until CBDT refines AIS rules, but you can protect yourself by staying proactive with these steps: 👉 Always check your AIS before filing returns. 👉 Use the feedback option to mark “belongs to another PAN.” 👉 Maintain proofs like bank statements or gift deeds. 👉 Respond promptly to compliance notices online. If you ignore it, the issue can escalate into: - a demand notice, - penalties, or - reassessment under Section 148A. A small clarification can save you months of hassle. Also, a tax notice isn’t always bad. It’s simply the system asking for proof. If your records are clean, it’s only about providing clarity. Would you still put a parent’s name on an FD after knowing this risk? #IncomeTax #BankAccounts #Deposits

Procurement teams forget more than they remember. And that's because the organisation forgets faster than individuals can hold the memory. Every 18–24 months, someone re-learns a lesson the company already paid for. ✔️A supplier that failed a project in 2019 gets back in the door by 2022. ✔️A contract clause that caused a dispute is re-used, unchanged. ✔️A workaround created for “just this one case” quietly becomes default practice. ✔️Stakeholders bypass procurement again using the same rationale they used the last time it failed. If you ask around, people remember these things but their memory isn’t institutional. It lives in inboxes, handovers, Teams chats, and resignation letters. This is the quiet cost of poor knowledge retention in procurement which is often mistaken for a talent problem. Procurement memory is the collective, institutional ability to retain: - What went wrong (and why) - What worked (and how) - What we’ve already tried (and who with) - What we learned from suppliers, markets, and projects - Which workarounds quietly became norms Most of this is undocumented. Or trapped in post-project reports that no one reads. And so when a new team member joins, or someone shifts categories, or a project comes up that’s just like something we’ve done before… We start from zero. When procurement forgets, the business remembers procurement as slow, reactive, and unstrategic, even when the team did exactly what was needed. What’s missing? We have data. We have dashboards. We have supplier portals and ERP records. But we rarely have context or the data narrative We don’t keep the story of what happened, why it mattered, and what we learned. We don’t have a culture of procurement storytelling, just reporting. That’s why mistakes repeat. That’s why we can’t defend decisions from three years ago. That’s why every new CPO spends the first year “re-evaluating the landscape.” So how do you build memory? You build memory with habits. ☑️ Capture lessons in a way people can read and reuse ☑️ Log supplier outcomes beyond the scorecard ☑️ Keep short, human write-ups of key projects ☑️ Store reasoning, not just results When people leave, do memory handovers not just task ones ☑️Make “what did we learn?” a standing agenda item ☑️Revisit closed projects before starting similar ones ☑️Assign memory as a role, not an afterthought And above all, treat memory like a capability. Not a bonus, not a nice-to-have but an actual risk if missing. Procurement's memory is one of its most strategic assets. Without it, the work gets done but the value disappears the minute people do. ----- Did you enjoy this post? Then you may also like my biweekly free newsletter, The Procurement Blueprint! Subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/eg5C2b5i

The "High Performer" who is also a "Low Trust" individual is the single greatest threat to your organization’s long-term viability. In my three decades of navigating corporate structures—from the early days of Software programming to today’s "Intelligence First" AI era—I’ve seen one mistake repeated across every industry: Valuing the "what" (#performance) while ignoring the "how" (#trust). Simon Sinek famously illustrated this using a Navy SEALs metric: Performance: Skills on the battlefield. Trust: Character off the battlefield. The SEALs, one of the highest-performing organizations on the planet, would rather have a Medium Performer of High Trust than a High Performer of Low Trust. Why? Because the latter is a toxic leader. They are the "performance superstars" who deliver results while simultaneously destroying the morale, psychological safety, and culture of everyone around them. The Lopsided Metric Trap In business, we are obsessed with measurement. We have millions of KPIs for quarterly earnings, delivery velocity, and ROI. But how many organizations have a rigorous metric for trustworthiness? When we promote based solely on numbers, we are often "bonus-ing" toxicity. This creates a culture where: Short-term gains mask the rot in the team’s foundation. Top talent leaves, not because they can’t do the work, but because they refuse to work for an "asshole." Innovation dies because trust is the prerequisite for the risk-taking required in AI and digital transformation. If you are leading a team today, you must address toxic behavior regardless of the performance metrics. A leader who hits every target but leaves a trail of broken spirits is not a leader—they are a liability. Protect your #culture. Protect your #people. The "High Trust" individual is the one who has your back when the chips are down. They may not always be your #1 individual contributor on a spreadsheet, but they are the reason the rest of the team performs at a 10/10. My challenge to you: Go to your team and ask two questions: "Who do you trust more than anyone else?" "Who is the person creating a toxic environment?" They already know the answers. The question is: Do you have the courage to act on that intelligence? Don’t let short-term gains blind you. Your company’s future—and your legacy as a leader—depends on the trust you cultivate today. DC* #Leadership #Culture #Trust #Strategy #DINWINS #IntelligenceFirst #Management #SimonSinek #OrganizationalHealth

7 Reasons Micromanagement Isn’t Leadership: (and what real leaders do instead) Micromanagement isn’t attention to detail. It’s a lack of trust in action. And it’s destroying morale one team at a time. Here’s why micromanagement fails—and what to do instead: 1. 𝗜𝘁 𝗘𝗿𝗼𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 → Constant oversight signals you don’t believe in your team. → People stop taking initiative when they feel scrutinized. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅: Give autonomy and judge by outcomes, not inputs. 2. 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 → Micromanaged employees don’t experiment—they execute. → Innovation suffers when there’s no room for risk. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅: Create psychological safety and reward curiosity. 3. 𝗦𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 → Every task needs approval. Every choice gets delayed. → Teams become reactive, not proactive. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅: Empower your team to make decisions within clear guardrails. 4. 𝗕𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗢𝘂𝘁 → The manager becomes the bottleneck. → The team feels anxious and disengaged. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅: Trust your team, delegate meaningfully, and focus on coaching—not controlling. 5. 𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝘆 → High performers want freedom to operate. → They’ll leave if they feel stifled. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅: Hire well, then get out of their way. 6. 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲 → It says: “I don’t think you can do this without me.” → Confidence and morale take a hit. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅: Use language that builds belief, not fear. 7. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 → Micromanagement breeds dependence, not development. → It trains people to wait, not lead. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘅: Coach your team to grow their own confidence and skills. Micromanagement is rooted in fear. Leadership is built on trust. Choose wisely. What else would you add? Let me know in the comments below 👇 --- ♻️ Find this helpful? Repost for your network. ➕ Follow Dr Alexander Young for daily insights on productivity, leadership, and AI.

Your most experienced lawyer just gave notice. Suddenly, nobody knows where anything is. The panic that follows: "Where did she keep the template agreements?" "How do we handle IP assignments for contractors?" "What was our position on that regulatory issue?" "Who has the login for the trademark filing system?" This scenario happens at every company. Senior legal talent leaves, and institutional knowledge walks out the door with them. The real cost: junior lawyers spending weeks recreating work that already existed, making mistakes that were already solved, and reinventing processes that were already optimized. Most legal teams store knowledge in three places: -- Individual lawyers' heads -- Email threads from 2019 -- Folders buried in shared drives When knowledge is trapped in people instead of systems, every departure is a crisis. Here's how winning legal teams prevent this: → Document standard processes and decision trees → Create searchable templates and clause libraries → Maintain decision logs for recurring issues → Build internal playbooks for common scenarios → Record the "why" behind policies, not just the "what" The goal: any lawyer should be able to handle any issue with access to the right information. Knowledge management feels like busy work when you're overwhelmed. But losing a key team member without proper documentation feels much worse. Start small: document one process this week. Your future self (and your team) will thank you. How does your legal team capture and share institutional knowledge? What happens when someone leaves?

𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 ‘𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤-𝐀𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐚𝐱’ Your Engineers Are Burning $4.5 Million. And You Can't See It. 🔥 Your VP mentioned "documentation issues." Translation: Knowledge workers spend 30% of their workday, 2.5 hours daily, searching for information. That's a $4.5M productivity tax hidden in the "Engineering Black Box." 💰 But here's the Real Kicker: 70-80% of a product's total cost is locked in during design, yet only 5-10% is spent there. The other 90+%? Incurred downstream in manufacturing, procurement, and field service. Every bad engineering decision, a missing revision, an outdated BOM, a misaligned configuration, doesn't blow up your engineering budget. It explodes downstream, where you've lost control. The Problem? You Can't See Inside the Box 📦 Your board sees: Engineering delivered. ✅ They don't see: 30% of time spent hunting for information; 20% spent on rework. While your CFO tracks every penny in ERP, engineering's "invisible costs" detonate downstream. Bad data doesn't show up on the Profit & Loss statement until manufacturing produces parts that don't match their design, procurement buys obsolete components, or warranty claims spike. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 "𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤-𝐀𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐚𝐱" 𝐌𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 💸 When engineers can't find the right component, they recreate it. When manufacturing is not involved in the change, costs can increase significantly due to production-line disruptions or costly rework. When procurement orders from outdated outlooks: $2M in wrong components. For 100 engineers at $150K, the search process wastes $4.5M annually. Add rework (20% of project value), and margins drop 5+ points. 𝐂𝐌𝟐: 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 🔍 Configuration Management prevents engineering decisions from becoming downstream disasters. Traceable information from cradle to grave supported by closed-loop change management, enabling accurate “as-designed,” “as-built,” and “as-maintained” baselines at all times. When CM2 is applied: → CFO sees accurate cost-to-complete (prevents downstream explosions) → COO scales globally (validated configurations prevent chaos) → CEO decides faster (traceable from design to field) 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐓𝐮𝐫𝐧 🎯 Does your leadership understand that engineering "saves" 10% but locks in 80% of costs? How do you make engineering's downstream impact visible? #CM2 #CM #ConfigurationManagement #PLM #Quality

A few weeks ago I posted about the quiet "takedowns" of high-performing talent, especially women, inside organizations. It struck a chord. The response was overwhelming. Tens of thousands of views and my DMs full of women (and a few men!) from around the world who reached out to share personal stories of being sidelined, overburdened, lied to, gaslit, and ultimately pushed out—not for underperforming, but for being too honest, too bold, too willing to challenge the status quo, too unwilling to play along. Listening to their stories in an effort to help others has been an incredible privilege. That got me thinking: How are Boards assessing the true cost of this behavior? Because while these takedowns might be invisible to most, they leave a trail: - Severance and legal settlements buried in G&A or hidden in a different P&L - Leadership tables that are suddenly younger and less diverse - Costs related to recruiting and onboarding replacements (often more than one!) - Loss of institutional knowledge and momentum - Erosion of culture, innovation, and trust - Leaders who consistently churn talent but escape scrutiny Boards are responsible for more than financial performance—we're stewards of people, reputation, and long-term value. If we’re not asking the right questions, we might be missing the red flags that are eroding performance from the inside out. Questions worth asking in the boardroom: - As executives are hired, what reputation do they bring with regard to talent?  - How are executive turnover patterns being monitored and explained? - How are executives measured with regard to talent? - How is the organization surfacing cultural risks in a way the board can see? - Are we rewarding leaders who build resilient, trust-based teams—or just those who hit short-term targets? It’s time to connect the dots between talent risk and enterprise value. What else would you want Boards to ask? #BoardOversight #Governance #ExecutiveAccountability #WorkplaceCulture #TalentRisk #WomenInLeadership