Volkswagen has just put a new spin on backstabbing.
Customers buy Volkswagen for a variety of reasons – among them, safety.
Now it is revealed that its diesel-powered cars have intentionally falsified emissions testing results.
In reality Volkswagen diesel cars emit ten to 40 times more pollutants than advertised.
Its CEO’s head – some smart guy with a PhD – rolled.
Other heads will roll too apparently.
But of course; more than 10 million cars are affected.
Customers feel betrayed – backstabbed.
If you sense seismic shifts of your environs, you owe it to yourself to investigate and sit down with those whom you suspect of backstabbing you.
We conduct training and counseling and coach you how to do that. How to end the backstabbing, nail the culprits and mitigate the damage. Hopefully not many of you require that kind of tutoring.
Those who do are usually victims and these victims know that, as someone working in an organization, being backstabbed can lead to disastrous results. Innocent people have served time because they were backstabbed.
Your career may be affected.
Your life may be ruined.
For companies who backstab their customers, it often means the end of the business and the total destruction of its reputation.
Backstabbers themselves get hurt too.
What goes around comes around.
The Germans, are, in excelsis, engineering perfection.
But the Volkswagen scandal will hurt the entire country – the German economy evolves around the auto industry; Volkswagen alone employs more than 600,000 people globally. What will happen to them and the hundreds of thousands of others employed by companies who are suppliers to Volkswagen?
Moreover, Germany as a country known for the quality of its cars, will take a terrible hit reputation-wise.
I hope it won’t end up with a reputation like that of Australia.
A recent letter to The Financial Times by Bernard Casey of the London School of Economics is worth quoting in full.
He wrote:
As Lady Bracknell might have said: To lose one prime minister through a knife in the back may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. But to lose three is positively Australian.
The problem is once the reputation of an industry within a country has been tarnished, all other industries are affected. Will other German manufacturers get hurt too?
It’s very likely they will.
Don’t get me wrong, the Germans are not chronic, serial backstabbers.
But there are diabolical people who are.
To them it’s BAU – Business As Usual.
Indeed, some people backstab to where they are today – at the top of the food chain – unlike the rest of us who worked our way up.
Backstabbing should never be BAU.
Ever.
It should never be part of a person’s DNA.
Unfortunately it appears to be, for some.
This includes course providers and their customers.
Just in case you are wondering, allow me explain: I spent years earning post-grad degrees and 30 years training senior execs and helping organizations lead and manage change but now kids still wet behind the years get a “certificate” allowing them to add alphabets after their names and voilà, they are now adult learning specialists and change management experts. Sorry, you can’t buy your way into this profession, you’re only helping course providers get rich and deceiving yourself that you are now as much an expert as someone with a PhD in Psychology, someone with a proven, measurable track record, someone who actually help saved million for companies all over the world, someone who actually did the work, real work.
Calling yourself something doesn’t make you something – put a lipstick on a pig and it’s still a pig. Call the tail of a dog a leg and the dog still has four legs. Most people know a few tricks of the trade and they think they now know the trade. They are just backstabbers, that’s all. They pull the rug from under the master’s feet, they throw their mentors under the bus.
Yes, they are backstabbers. In my dictionary they qualify as backstabbers. And companies make tons of money helping them acquire the “certification” to do so.
Are you a backstabber?