When Quality Dies A Corporate Death

I have a friend who just left his job from 123 Integration Inc.  I’ll call them 123 for short.   His office used to be called Triangle Integration as it was Raleigh based, although everyone just referred to it as Triangle.  A few years ago Triangle was purchased by private equity and merged with 123.  Triangle, a family owned company, completely lost its identity as the merger proceeded. In effect it was taken apart in a classic destroy the company to pull out every last cent of value move on the part of the private equity owned Triangle.  There are many articles I have written, in part, about his experiences, as his old company was systematically dismantled by the equity group.  There was one little moment that stuck out with me.  Right after the merger he was put on a project with a big and long term customer of Triangle Integration.  A meeting was scheduled to introduce him as a new key member of the team servicing the customer.  As part of the meeting they also announced the merger to the big customer.   They went through the usual pap about how the merger would create synergies and provide higher quality services for the customer.  What made this meeting so unique was the customer’s reaction.  They had no filter.  They very clearly shared that they disliked 123 and that was the very reason they chose to have a local company, i.e. Triangle, as their vendor.  Their opinion of 123 was that it was  a profit driven company that put dollars ahead of its customers’ needs. Secretly my friend was cheering the customer on in their head as that was what he, and everyone else from Triangle felt, but couldn’t say for fear of losing their jobs.  I also understood the customer’s reaction.  I recently had a similar one while eating dinner at a very high end steak house.  Like Triangle Integration’s old customer, all I could see was quality being thrown away when the focus became enhancing shareholder value.