The heart of business

I've been reading the E-Myth Revisited and had a monstrous epiphany. I know what is wrong with my day job. The man who started the business, who had the dream and the vision is no longer working there. He retired a few months ago and things seemed to have gone down hill since. The financial side was always rough, but the spirit is gone now too. The moral is in the dumps and doesn't show any sign of turning upward. I realized that the reason things seem so terrible, is that the passion behind the company is gone. It is now being run by "businessmen" who are all about the business of business and have forgotten that real people with heart, soul and spirit work in those buildings. So in spite of the fact that there are 400 bodies inhabiting the shops for eight and a half hours a day, the space feels empty.

Some of the blame must fall on the same man who had the dream, however. He was folly in his belief that the friends he hired to work with him in the beginning would see his vision through without the direction of a solid, written plan. After 12 years in business, I watch every day as more operating procedures are put into place, more policies are written scrutinizing every little thing employees do, oppressing them instead of encouraging them. Instead of going back and starting from the beginning, they keep throwing paperwork at it, hoping it will get better. It hasn't and it won't. There is always hope, however with the mindset of the current management, there is little. A prime example of what not to do.