I sometimes really do think that the people who know least about a company are the people who run it.
That's why there's such an industry in advising on and supplying the skills for managing change.
We went along assuming that we were selling well because of what we saw as our core qualities, but we were wrong.
It was just that we happened to have got our pricing right, so when we changed that, it all started falling apart.
Things got decidedly grim for a time, and drastic action was required.
A merger was considered, and an aggressive takeover had to be fought off.
In the end, it was easier to accept an offer for the Budget Products Division, and avoid major redundancies, than to go on trying to keep the whole thing afloat.