The Katrien Meire Prize for incompetence

PragueAddick said:

AddicksAddict said:

The shame of it is, the's obviously not stupid, having got a batchelor's and a master's, so why is she so useless at this job?

It's because she has no previous experience that qualifies her for the job. Unfortunately an awful lot of commercial lawyers seem to think that they know how to run a business. It is the arrogance of the breed to think that, and there are countless examples to show how disastrous it can be if such a person is made CEO of a business. The Czech national airline is one, as it happens.

The bigger problem is that RD would never appoint such an inexperienced person to run one of his proper companies - or more correctly, his board and shareholders would never allow him to. The CEO of Melexis has worked her way up to the position in an entirely normal way. Semi-conductors have been her life. Melexis is a highly successful company.

That is the problem. He sees football as his personal plaything, where he can do what he likes, without all those pesky people around him holding him back.

Calmed down a bit from earlier - but only a bit!

All the above quotes spot on.

Katrien Meire is a subscriber to a group called Chillin' Competiton which is a web-group for those in the Competition Law field. It is difficult for an outsider to grasp the thrust of their debates but the impression I get is that the group see themselves as a forum for those who can debate complex competition law issues at a level above not only the general public (who are seemingly dismissed for the most part as irrelevant onlookers) but also politicians.
I admit that I may be doing them a disservice but it is perhaps possible to perceive a detached arrogance in their members which is one of the characteristics so dislikeable in Katrien Meire and one which she is of course blind too.

No one would deny that she is intelligent in some ways (multi-lingual for example) and knowledgeable but knowledgeable only in a very narrow area of expertise and I would question her 'business' intelligence for the following reason:

In a digitally open world where any public utterance may be recorded and be globally available within seconds Katrien Meire has, on a number of occasions, spoken freely about the business plans of Charlton Athletic or her perception of the Club and its fans (customers) with no real understanding of the consequences of her words mainly because I believe she is so arrogant that she cannot contemplate anyone finding fault with her pronouncements (Remember for example it is us who are stupid for not 'seeing ourselves as customers').

One of the principal training methods given in any field of law will be that of conducting oneself in a controlled manner with reasoned argument and with the ability to react swiftly to counter argument. In the Ireland interview (and I haven't looked at again in recent weeks) Katrien Meire (apart from voicing the player farming matter which if she had any sense she should not have spoken about) loses control when it comes to the customer/restaurant/cinema analogy. The analogy of course doesn't hold up, is a meaningless mess and employs the now infamous word 'weird' which is sure to incite comment. This is not the first time that KM has shot her mouth of without thinking (take the Guy Luzon/Alex Ferguson comment for example and at a major press conference!). There will be other examples and I have long heralded the L'Echo 'don't care about the history of the club' as the worst of these as there is slight recognition from KM that she is going to go too far but then compounds the whole thing by going ahead anyway.................!!!
How much more arrogant can you get? None more.

In effect KM has actually turned her back on her years of legal training in the ability to conduct herself in public forums by assuming that she can say what she likes when she likes without any comeback. It is an utter disgrace that she has been rewarded by her University, who are clearly unaware of her conduct and her several public errors of judgement and her responsibility (as CEO) for the ill-judged sex-on-the-pitch advert fiasco, and no effort should be spared in bringing this to the attention of those in Belgium who have remained blissfully unaware of the disrespectful and foolish actions of their former student.

Finally, and more than ever it is my belief that Katrien Meire would not have sanctioned the explanation given in The Statement regarding the meaning of the word 'weird (meaning unique)'. Her command of English is such that she would without question know that weird doesn't have the meaning of unique and this part of the statement makes her look foolish (or incompetent in her use of English which I don't accept).
No the statement must be the work entirely of Doh-Land and he must have thought he could bale Meire out with this faulty explanation of his own making. That he insisted on its appearance on the web-site against all reasoned advice (for which Mel Baroni resigned) and possibly without KM seeing it (as it suggests she's isn't all that with English) demonstrates the flawed personality traits that drive Roland D. Such a man is a danger to the future of this club whist he presents himself as a sole benefactor.
The sooner we can re-build following this damage the better. How much longer do we have to endure this?