BETTER THAN BEFORE
It’s no good beating around the bush. Volvo Group Australia (VGA) boss Martin Merrick and I did not hit it off. Not at all!
To my mind, blunt questions and dismissive answers were the first problem at the first meeting during a press conference some six months or more after his September 2018 arrival as VGA’s newest president and chief executive. A clash of professional egos perhaps, or maybe different agendas and the desire for different outcomes. Or, most likely, just a case of uncompromising corporate intransigence banging heads with irreverent media intrusion.
Whatever, it didn’t go well, and went far worse sometime later when more than 130 jobs were coldly cut from VGA and a cynical editorial took sharp aim at a Scot obligated to doing Sweden’s dirty work.
But, onward and upward, and with a handful of hindsight and hint of empathy, it’s blatantly apparent and easy to appreciate that Merrick’s arrival was also a brutal blueprint of
