Charlton owner Roland Duchatelet sneaks out of club to avoid protesting fans

Stig said:

I'm not sure if Roly's original spiel has lost anything through coming to us as a second hand quote (no offence, Louis), but income and resources are quite different things - indeed both can be interpreted in different ways. Normally, you would expect a sixty-nine year old businessman's resources to be considerably more than his income unless you were talking about a very long timescale for the income, or a very bad business man. It strikes me that it would be a unique coincidence indeed if his resources and income matched each other to within 0.5%. So unique in fact, that I'm sceptical as to whether there's any truth in this or whether it's one of those bits of throw away nonsense that you'd normally expect from Meire. Perhaps he has tutored her well in the ancient Flemish art of spouting, and believing, total bollocks.

Let's go with it for a moment though and look at the context in which it was used. According to the quote, he doesn't spend as much time as he could on Charlton because it only equates to 1.5% of some (ill-defined) monetary value. What sort of way is that to run your life? I do not know of one single person who's told me that's how they arrange their time. I've never read one biography of a person who was similarly organised. It seems to be the flawed logic of someone who "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". It's the sort of 'logic' you'd expect from someone who wears duck tape on their shoes - they didn't cost much, so I won't waste my time replacing them. I dread to think how he manages other aspects of his life if this is his philosophy: This toilet paper is so cheap, I won't bother wiping my arse properly. The air that I'm breathing, it's free - complete waste of my time!

To be fair, I can see how it might work for an investor with a broad portfolio of businesses. Of course, they wouldn't want to spend a disproportionate amount of time on one business at the expense of the others. So some sort of financial based time-allocation may just work, assuming that all other things are equal. But, all other things can't possibly be equal. We know that Charlton is losing money hand over fist. According to one of Roland's trusty lap-dogs, he is pumping £1m a month into the club. If a 1.5% ratio of spend is applied across his business he'd be blowing £67m a month all told. An amount that would wipe even Roland out in less months than it would take him to get us relegated. These figures demonstrate why it would be folly to put too much trust in either the 1.5% or the £1mpm. What is not in doubt though, is that he has transformed Charlton from a disappointing business with a great potential, to one that's losing millions, has lost about a third of its customer base, and is now at least one year further away from the promised land than it was. It is, in terms of the Boston Matrix a dog. A complete and utter dog!

Now, the Boston Matrix is a very useful tool for informing marketers how much, and what kind of, effort to put into different products. It strikes me that it would be a far better model to inform Roland's time management than percentage of 'income/resources'. What would it tell him? Well, that depends on whether the club could be turned around and, and if so, how much effort and resource would it take. If it can be turned around relatively easily, it may be worth spending a disproportionate amount of time on that element of the business in order to get things right. If not, and this is certainly the case for Charlton under Duchatelet, the key phrase is 'divest'. Cut-your losses. Get rid of it. Focus your energies on what you do well.

Roland, stop being so vain. You will never make this business work, even if you were to invest a reasonable amount of time on it. Divest yourself of it. Let someone else, someone with the necessary knowledge, skills, willpower and time, have a go. Charlton Athletic could be a very successful business, but it never will be under someone who thinks the way to apportion their time is by calculating a percentage of the money they have in a thing. Just go.

Redrobo said:

One would hope that they pointed out that the biggest barrier to attracting more fans to games was KM.