Profit Blog

Jarmo Manninen & Muutosdraiveri Oy


Are your company's operations guided by random needs or systematic profit-making?

6. toukokuuta 2025

When I started working in loss-making companies during my career as a change manager that lasted over 30 years, either as a CEO or a management consultant, the initial situation in the companies has typically been as follows:

1. The company's financial management conditions have not been in order.

2. The company's financial administration has focused on invoicing, paying invoices, calculating and paying salaries, and preparing the company's accounting. The company's financial administration has regularly produced the company's operational management with the company's income statement and balance sheet. In practice, the company's financial administration has only maintained contact with the company's operational activities to the extent that it has been mandatory. The company's financial administration has not understood the company's business, but has lived its own almost isolated life without producing any development proposals on how the company's financial administration could, through its own actions, help the company's operational management achieve the company's financial goals.

3. The company's operational management has focused on preparing the company's budget proposals, which have been approved by the company's board of directors, and after that the company's management has focused on reporting to the company's board of directors on the company's business results using the company's income statement and balance sheet. Reporting has taken place by inventing explanations without knowing the exact reasons for the companies' financial problems and without any concrete action plans to solve the company's financial problems. The company's operational management has lived its own life, almost separate from the company's financial management and other operational activities.

4. The company's operational activities have lived their own life, almost isolated from all other activities of the company, with the exception of communication between sales and production.

In practical work, all of the above means that in these companies, the company has operated in such a way that the company's operations have been guided and managed by occasional needs to fulfill promises made to customers. In this way of operating, the company's operations have been guided and led impulsively by individual momentary needs. It is quite clear that a company's operations should always be guided by the promises made to its customers, but in addition, a company's operations should always be guided by a systematic approach aimed at continuously achieving the company's goals.


Did the above make you think?

I encourage you to share this blog post of mine on social media. If you have any suggestions for the topics of the next blog posts, I will gladly accept them.

I hope that you were interested in this matter and that you can continue to be involved.


I have written four books on creating the conditions for the company's financial management, and they are available in well-stocked bookstores and online bookstores in Finland, for example from BoD (Books On Demand) at:





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