Brad, How true! I'd just like to add my observation of businesses over the last 20 years. It seems, IMHO, that the major path to profits has become to externalize costs. That is to make someone else pay your costs. You do that you are a successfull corporation and get rewarded by the market. It has little to do with service or product.
Bruce -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Brad McCormick, Ed.D. Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 7:34 PM To: Thomas Lunde Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: A story (true or not) Once upon a time there was a company that was all gung ho and lean and mean to beat the competition and make big profits and succeed, succeed, succeed! Rah! Rah! Go us! Cut costs (including low level employee salary costs, while staffing up upper management!)! Maximize revenues! --You know it all. Profits are the raison de etre for business, right? And this company was all into it! Well, one day the company held an "all hands meeting". (Actually, the company has several of these each year, but this was only one of them, but they are all indistinguishable from one another.) All the employees had to attend. And the top executives droned on and on -- while smiling and looking satisfiedly into each other's eyes when they were not seriously lecturing to the "all hands" -- about past successes and future challenges to be met -- ever onward and ever harder.... There must have been nnn employees there, all getting increasingly bored, as the top executives kept trying between themselves to say something more so that the meeting would never end. One person multiplied heads by cost per person hour and figured the meeting cost the company probably about $100 x nnn. Finally, came employee recognition time! (No, the meeting was not over yet!) A couple of the top managers got special awards for exhibiting leadership (or, although it was called leadership, in one case it sounded more like martyrdom). One lowly employee thought to him or herself that giving special awards to the top leaders for being top leaders really didn't accomplish anything, since the people who need to be motivated to lead are the lower level people, and if the top leaders aren't leading, what use are they any way, so why reward them for doing what they are supposed to do? .... Of course, after more than an hour, the meeting finally ended and everybody got to do what they had been wanting to do for an hour -- anything else but sitting there and wasting their time. Because, of course, while on the one hand, the information the executives told them did not include the company tactical and strategic secrets, on the other hand, it does not contain the details which will focus each employee's work, either. It's neither the forest nor the trees -- just a kind of fog or maybe underbrush.... And one employee thought that this showed what the real motivation of business is: "Profits" are used as an excuse for the top managers to do get opportunities to preen -- to do things like get up in front of lots of employees and have the employees worship their [the execs'] golden words about being lean and mean and making profits. Let's face it -- nobody sells anybody anything by droning on and on and feeling smug in him or herself about it. If profits were *really* the goal, the executives would have boiled it all down and presented "the net" to the employees, in a really intersting "hard hitting" key facts and what they mean in 25 words or less meeting that would have kept them on their seats' edge in rapt attention, instead of staring off in space, rolling their eyes, whispering to each other, etc. And all the other material would be available in a hierarchically organized way (like the first sentence of a news story tells you what it's all about, and the first sentence of each paragraph summarizes its paragraph, etc.), on the company Intranet. And the leadership awards would have gone to individuals in non-leadership positions who took initiative far beyond their tightly circumscribed job descriptions, and thereby really did make money for the company beyond what they got paid. -- My father was a sales manager. He was pleased when any of his selesmen earned *more* than he did. \brad mccormick -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
