Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

You talk about the ultimate in mismanagement, and you have it here with the art transporting company that lost the 228-year-old painting by Francisco de Goya called "Children With a Cart." As of now the company hasn't been named who was doing the transporting.

The FBI is leading the search for the painting, and a $50,000 reward has been offered by the insurer for information that results in the recovery of the painting.

This is simply one of those areas that can't be excused by a company. When your only job is to take a physical object from one point to another without anything happening to it, it is something that simply must be done. Who would ever trust you to do it again if you even fail once? 

There are only a couple of touch points that would have to be managed. How could a company not have the proper safeguards in place to ensure that it is managed?  This painting wasn't a small painting either, measuring 5' by 3'.

It reminds of a story of a company asking for advice on how many backups they should have for their data. The answer was: as many as it takes. In other words, have enough so that the question no longer needs to be asked. Evidently this transporting company didn't ask the question long enough.

They are in the business where you can't miss once. Who would ever hire them again to transport something valuable? I wouldn't. It doesn't matter with this type of object whether you get the money it was worth back again; the painting essentially was priceless.

We need to remember in the very essential aspects of our business, that we need the types of things in place that offer complete safety in what we can never afford to lose control of. This art transporting company has learned this the hard way.

The other mistake is that the company seems to have decided to try to cover up their mistake. They should have identified themselves and did everything they could to ensure that they were doing everything possible to rectify their error. To not do it will probably make matters even worse than they now are.