This is a true story and it needs to be shared with all professionals because one day you could be this man.

But would you behave like him…ah ha, slick, that is the $64 question.

Lal is his name. The owner of a very large vehicle manufacturing company, much in the same manner as you and I own shirts.

Having taken over the company he appoints five senior management executives to run five separate vital departments.

Then he withdraws from the organization, not just in the exercise of authority but in person.

He packs up his things and moves to an office in another building some miles away.

The day he does that everyone thinks he has gone nuts.

You are the boss, you own the company, why are you leaving the office?

His argument is simple. He owns the company but he has no acumen or experience in running it.

So, what he has done is hire the right kind of people to do the right kind of job. And if I want them to get me the results then there is no point in my breathing down their necks. So, I am off to look into other possible acquisition that is what I do best.

Don’t get him wrong. He is no wimp.

There is nothing naive about his assessment.

He knows what he wants and there is no compromise on delivering the goods.

But men like Lal are the reactive new breeds to a generation of nepotism.

The Lal doctrine is evidently based on a completely contrary approach. In a crude way if you want to bark yourself why hire dogs? The more enlightened owners have found a reasonable compromise. They send out their children to the best institutions in the world to get a grounding in various business disciplines.

At least there is a semi professional ability injected into the scenario.

The still very small Lal element believes that owner run companies have a very major downside.

The authority is centralized.

The management can be weak and self-serving in its surrender to ownership. The yes-man syndrome overrides good decision-making.

When Lal walked off one morning everyone thought it was a bit of a gimmick, a clever little ploy and the ‘I spy’ from a distance would commence in due course.

But he has kept his word and stayed out of the day to day running of the enterprise. No orders to countermand orders, no jobs for cousins, no impositions, just deadlines and expectations.

The general corporate feeling is that if you own it then your word has to be the final one. That is a logical imperative. It is your money, your loss and profit and while this sort of ‘hands off’ approach sounds good on paper it is unrealistic and impractical. No one can show the same concern for savings or lowering overheads or cutting costs then the person whose money it is. I

t doesn’t matter how superb the professional abilities of hired help, that’s all it is, hired help...you trust it implicitly and it walks out on you to the higher bidder.

Lal says, nonsense, the bottom line counts, that’s all, professionals can come and go, there is one thing there is no shortage of and that is manpower and skill.

You are paid to do a job, do it. That is why you are called a professional and these days no one can afford passengers, even if they are related by blood.

Owners have become smart, they want results and that means they want you…if you can deliver.