On choosing mediocrity

Greetings – I put this blog entry on our business website and thought it might be worth sharing here too.  Note the feedback I got from a colleague just moments after posting it.

Businesses today are struggling with their costs and capabilities because of past “sins”.  It may not be evident in the board room either – executives just don’t seem to get it.  But on the shop floor, in the field and in factory settings around North America we hear a similar story.  It goes like this; “about 10 years ago we did all that but we stopped”.  So what happened?

In case after case we hear that past practices were quite successful.  The sort of methods and techniques we teach in our Uptime Training and in our Asset Management training were being done in the past.  Yet along the way, “resources” (usually meaning people) were cut.  In the early ’90′s we saw the emergence of the “re-engineering” craze.  Companies went overboard with staff reductions in the interest of cutting costs.  Somehow the original intent of re-engineering – to eliminate waste and streamline, was misunderstood and interpreted as an opportunity to shed staff and hence cut costs.  People became more of a commodity.  Loyalty plumeted – it’s almost non-existent in some industries today.  The manufacturing sector got the “lean” craze.  It was similar to “re-engineering” in its attempts to get rid of waste and excess.  Both are valid and excellent concepts when properly applied.  But application was anything but “proper”.  Consciousness had shifted in the direction of short term profit taking, get rich quick, don’t worry about the future, selfishly make profit today and hoard it for yourself, don’t worry about the future security of our children – they can take care of themselves.  We had set ourselves up for failure and it is our children that must now deal with the legacy being left.

Two years ago a colleague, Art Rice, CEO of Maintenance Technology, made a statement about “lean” at the IMEC 2008 conference in Toronto.  I don’t have the exact quote but he said something to the effect that “lean” has become “anorexic”.  And he was so right!  Companies had slimmed down, cut staff, cut training budgets, stopped investing in their own future to the point of becoming diseased shadows of their former selves.  And all in the interest of short term cost cutting.

And where are they today?  Baby boomers are retiring now.  Experience and the knowledge of the methods used to keep things running smoothly is disappearling.  Replacements are coming from a younger and very different generation – the children of the baby boomers.  Some older workers lament their poor work effort, lack of dedication and focus.  Although the numbers of boomers can be replaced, one for one, their work ethic (live to work) is being replaced with “work to live”.  I for one think the younger folks have it right to a degree – perhaps it is a bit overboard though.  Life is give and take, not all take.  We have yet to reach a happy medium.  Anyway, workforce experience, knowledge of the “plant” and well-honed skills is diminishing.  The replacements are often better educated, they lack experience, know only the theory of how the “plant” works and they are quick learners.  However, in the endeavor to cut costs, training and development spending was reduced to a bare minimum or even less.  Exploration of up to date methods stopped.  The methods through which knowledge (real useful knowledge, not just data and information) is transferred from experienced to younger are seldom exploited.  The result is that as boomers retire, the numbers of people needed will have to grow.  The very thing that the bean-counting types feared, is exactly what they are bringing on.  And the timing could not be worse.

We are headed towards mediocrity at an alarming pace.  The developing world with its well educated, less expensive and harder working workforce is catching up on our technological lead.  We are heavily reliant on technology and we’ve probably gone beyond our own ability to manage and leverage it fully.  We are slipping.  The developing world is catching up and surpassing us.  Only high fuel prices are keeping shipping costs high enough to protect North America from a flood of cheaper imports of equal or even better quality.  We are on a very slippery slope and we’ve done it to ourselves – we’ve chosen mediocrity.

The developing world is choosing expansion.  They have a lot to gain, little to lose.  They can take advantage of our technology and do so with cheaper resources.  And they started off doing it in companies that were originally North American based but looking for a cheaper source of labor.  That has helped the developing world – but it has done so at our cost.  While we were spending there, we stopped here.  We’ve helped others but drained our own capability.  We did not fill their cups from our overflow – we filled them from our lack.  We’ve reduced, they’ve expanded.  Good for them.  Yet who will help us?  Here we cannot rely on others – we must do it ourselves.

We need to work smarter.  Stop cutting costs in the relentless pursuit of short term gains to satisfy shareholders’ who have no real interest in the company other than it’s profits.  If businesses are to be sustainable they need to think and act sustainably.  Shed the short-termism.  Choose excellence.  Choose sustainability (and I don’t mean just green).  A major shift in business consciousness is needed – it is almost too late.

Feedback:

After reading this, a colleague who works for a large company provided the following feedback.  It’s so powerful, I’ve included it here to underscore the message:

Great article on Mediocrity, James, and as a Zoomer I totally agree.  There’s a middle ground between us (the boiled frogs) and the younger generation.  They have watched their parents give up life to keep that almighty job afloat.  They have seen their parents be downsized (or whatever term they are using these days) and witnessed the devastation this had caused their parents’ sense of identity.  The middle road has to be where family and self gains the footing to reclaim their sense of empowerment over their destination.  Actually, more then ever, it is time for spirituality (might have to call it something else, so it gets a chance) in the workplace to be offered to employees, to assist them to see themselves as the main priority in their own masterpiece of life.  Just started a class at work called “Sharing and Caring” which is gaining traction.  It starts with me presenting an idea like; “learning to disappoint people” and then the class contributes to the solutions.  It’s a small thing, but for me it helps a little bit with the suffering that I’m seeing all around me.  It pains me to see how people struggle to hang onto a job, with a boss who has no commitment to hanging onto them.  Comments coming from bosses like, “Even though you are a good performer, I know you’re the mother of two children and a husband who works shift, which makes you the centre of their universe; you need to let that go!”  Wow where can you go from there as an employee?

Just had to vent, thanks so much for this timely message, which I have passed along.