Resolving the basic debt management problems
A classic example of this happened to a client of mine: an appliance manufacturing company. The sales and production departments worked together to ensure that stock was delivered on time to cover sales promotions. Things were going well, customers were buying appliances through the promotions, and back orders almost ceased to exist. Yet, while sales managers were making record bonuses, production managers were not seeing any change in their bonuses.When the partnership met, this gap was brought to the attention of the Sales and Production vice presidents. They were told that production managers and supervisors were starting to get angry that salespeople were making huge bonuses while they did all the hard work. The two partners decided to split the promotion sales bonuses evenly between Production and Sales to deal with the inequality and provide mutual benefits to both partners. As a result, the partnership between
Production and Sales worked so well that after a two-year period, both groups got record high bonuses. The partnership moved from resolving a logistics issue to making design improvements based on customer feedback that Sales passed along to Manufacturing. The partnership worked so well, in fact, that the vice president of Sales told me one day: “I can’t even remember what it was like when we were not working together in partnership.”