This country was not built by men is suits. That was a tag on a Levi add and is 100% true.
I was in my bank the other day talking with the branch manager, and in a room next to his office, a meeting was being held by conference call. The lady on the other end of the phone was going over different ways to achieve greater customer satisfaction. That should be an easy one, don’t you think? The “suggestions” the lady on the other end of the phone was saying were so elementary. She was probably sitting at home in her PJ’s and getting paid a hefty salary to do so. If you want to know how to improve customer satisfaction, ask the customers. I would have been snoozing if I were in that room. I am so glad I’m not in the corporate world!
I received an email a couple of years ago that talked about an American rowing team, and they were beaten by the Japanese. It goes something like this:
The Americans and the Japanese decided to engage in a boat race. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance levels. On the big day they felt ready. The Japanese won by a mile. The American team was discouraged by the loss. Morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found, so a consulting firm was hired to investigate the problem and recommend corrective action.
The consultant’s finding: The Japanese team had eight people rowing and one person steering; the American team had one person rowing and eight people steering. After a year of study and millions spent analyzing the problem, the consultant firm concluded that too many people were steering and not enough were rowing on the American team. So as race day neared again the following year, the American team’s management structure was completely reorganized. The new structure: four steering managers, three area steering managers, and a new performance review system for the person rowing the boat to provide work incentive. The next year, the Japanese won by TWO miles!!!
Humiliated, the American corporation laid off the rower for poor performance and gave the managers a bonus for discovering the problem.
This is so true, and unfortunately, the way corporate America runs business. Committees have to be formed to decide which supplier of toilet paper they will use. I do understand the logistics of a committee, but I believe it has been taken too far. One of my friends worked for a company here in Montgomery, and with this company, nothing could be ordered until the paperwork was filled out. It then went to another person who entered it into the system. From there it had to be approved by another person and documented, then a purchase order was filled out and the part was finally ordered. UGH! The time spent going through the proper channels usually took 10 days, and the amount of money that was spent on the time for all of the paper work, to me was ridiculous. If you are the head of a department I don’t believe you will be ordering unnecessary parts to keep the business functioning.
Big companies take jobs away from the Americans and take them overseas, and I believe this happens because of greed. The number of jobs going overseas has risen 80% since 1982, and the number of jobs created by companies inside the US has risen only 10% in the past 30 years.
Out of the downfall of a large corporation, a new, small business is started. It is the small business that is the heartbeat of this nation and the big business is the heart attack. 20 million new, small businesses have been started from 1985 – 2005.
I got this information from SBA.gov,
Small business:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
• Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).
• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
• Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007.
• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited
As you can tell, I’m not a fan of the corporate world. I know they are necessary, and they do serve a purpose so save the nasty emails. I’m not a suit kind of person; I prefer the jeans and t-shirt quality of life. It is a money game, that’s all, and I am happy right where I am.
This is my journey…
