Last week, I discussed how so many CEOs earnestly create a business culture, only not to practice what they preach. This results in employee disgruntlement, lost motivation and eventually a draw down on the bottom line of the P&L statement.

I do want to mention the latest article by Dr. Robert Brooks, which was posted a few days ago. He noted just how many people appear to be unhappy at work. He suggests four possible responses or changes in habit that can result in an emotional reappraisal of the situation. I suppose that they can be applied by either side of the table.

However, what happens if the roles are reversed? What can be done if an employee takes advantage of the culture for their own benefit, much to the annoyance of management? Maybe company policy or etiquette is threatened. This was the gauntlet thrown down to me, as a business mentor, by an owner of a factory far away from Jerusalem.

For some reason, I automatically thought of my daughter. Many years ago, she had felt humiliated by a senior teacher at school. She devised a plan of revenge for the following day. While not seemingly sinister, the result was that the headmistress was scared out of wits and I was immediately summonsed.

Let me be clear. What she had done was wrong, and I made sure that my “little girl” understood this from me in front of the staff. However, I had previously asked those in charge if a similar incident had already taken place. When they answered in the affirmative, I questioned why their response had been inappropriate. Why had the matter been left “unsorted”?

In other words, why had they allowed my daughter to move the goal posts – push back the boundaries? My teenage daughter had not been responsible for their inappropriate actions.

Now, I do not know the hard details of the story, which is evidently bugging my challenger in his factory. And I would guess that the issue is clouded by employment legislation. That said, I would argue that the first thing to do is to make known precisely to any “troublesome employee” what is and is not acceptable under the corporate culture.

Those lines cannot be broached, for the sake of the colleagues and for the benefit of the company as a whole. It is the responsibility of the CEO to ensure that those landmarks and their implications are understood by all.