First, Fire All the Knowledge Workers

A Sage colleague of mine sent me this article from InformationWeek. This gist of it is that last March Circuit City fired 3,400 of its highest paid workers (read knowledge workers) and replaced them with salespeople. Surprise, surprise, they had a terrible Christmas season.I used to be a Circuit City customer, but have switched to Best Buy for this reason — Three years ago if you went into a Best Buy you were trampled with 14 people trying to sell you something, whereas at Circuit City you could find people who were knowledgeable about the products.It has, IMHO, completely reversed. Two years ago, I read that Best Buy did something radical. It eliminated commission for salespeople and instead when to a bonus system based on overall store profitability!This is just reminder that there has never been a documented business case of a company cutting themselves to growth.