All right. I ignore the fact that I will be fired, do what I want in a way that cultivates the most customer happiness, get fired, post on the internet about it, then go back to what I was doing, a little richer for my stint, laughing at the PR shitstorm Hasbro has once again called down on itself. Then I go play Pathfinder.
I feel like you could still make hella profit if you gave people what they ask for instead of ignoring them.
Like instead of firing all your workers to save money on wages, you let your artistic people cook and do what you fucking hired them to do instead of sticking your corpo hands into it and making it a bland piece of shit nobody wants.
You could still make hella profit, indeed. but when you are as big as WotC and, more importantly, Hasbro, hella profit may not be enough to make more profit than previous fiscal year. Shareholders only care about growth, not ethics.
Yeah. Start by chopping any seven figure (or more) executive salaries in half, then rehire all those people who actually create products for the company. Then go back to making products people actually want rather than overpriced collector sets of material with almost no actual content in them or turning preexisting products into subscription based services. Coming up with new stuff is one thing but when you have literally fifty years of history to see what people like from your primary products it shouldn’t be difficult to not alienate a massive customer based.
And on the way shareholders fire you for not doing what other companies are doing, or exert pressure to force you to adopt the practices they want because they heard they bring profit
Just start by giving a speech with a bunch of BS buzzwords about traditional brand value recognition and proven growth practices and they’ll wait until the financial reports come in before calling for your head. Much like many executives, shareholders rarely actually understand how the companies they own and operate actually function. They just want to be reassured that they will be getting money without having to actually do anything and the little people can take care of the nitty gritty “work” stuff.
Rebel shareholders such as Alta Fox have been touting the radical concept of investing in the business, creating good products, and selling them.
You know, instead of screwing up relationships with long-term business partners, sending hired heavies to their fans’ houses, and driving their customers to their competition.
The meme refers to the landmark Ford case where the shareholders successfully sued him to prevent the company from issuing a bonus to share profits to employees. This nefarious precedent turned corporations into the monsters they are today.
Obligatory Ford was a POS that did some things right.
I mean, let’s not pretend Ford was paying his employees well and setting workweek standards because it was the right thing to do either - he did it because he wanted to retain productive employees and also to make them customers, and that it happened to actually be beneficial for them and the working world at large is a byproduct. Not often mentioned with that $5 workday is the fact that he would send agents to employees’ homes to ensure they were being kept clean and that the employees themselves weren’t drinking.
Ford for all his flaws had plenty of revolutionary ideas that actually improved workers conditions. Even if he only did it to capture the workers and “lock them in”, it was much better than what any of the competitors were offering and it forced the competitors to improve their conditions to retain workers.
The worst part of that ruling was that some of the minority shareholders were actually competitors and they used that money to start up their own competing factories.
Just goes to show how focusing on the business long term is always in the shareholders interests and most of the time focusing on shareholders interests aren’t in the best interest of the shareholders themselves. Modern day short sellers being the most egregious example of this.
Adhering to fiduciary duties to shareholders also includes protecting the company’s relationship with its customers and its long term sustainability. Cashing out while burning out all the bridges is the opposite of protecting the legitimate rights of the shareholders.
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