Random Thoughts for Friday

by Don Harkey

I thought I'd share a few random thoughts for the day...

- Sween is pretty funny on Twitter (and inspired this article)

- The thunder that just sounded off lasted over a minute. How does that work? (credit to my good friend, "Pinto")

- I know that either Coke or Pepsi causes me to have more phlegm, but I can't remember which... that would be a kinda gross version of the Pepsi Challenge...

- I have noticed that my clients seem more satisfied when they get clarity on a situation than when they save thousands of dollars on a project. Yet potential clients like the 2nd story better than the 1st one.

- With all of the networking and social media available, I am still astounded when I say "No" to the question "Do you know anyone who...". That's called market potential.

- 104.1FM today had 2 broadcasts playing over each other on my way back to work this morning. That station also is known (to me) for having large silence gaps or times where we listen to a computer count down from 30 seconds. How does that happen?

- My daughter loves to imagine that we are monkeys. I am not sure why, but I love it too. Maybe that one isn't THAT hard to figure out.

- My son thinks he beat me in mini-golf last weekend because he scored a 91 and I scored a 52, yet he acknowledges that I won 16 of 18 holes.

Have a great weekend!!!

Comfort

by Don Harkey

I have been thinking a lot about something I heard at the Success Seminar this past Friday. It came from Rebecca Austin, a Corporate Trainer who owns Strive4Savvy. We all have a comfort zone and while in that zone, learning is impossible.

Wow... think about that. When we live within our comfort zone, we don't learn anything new. This means that we only learn when we are uncomfortable. We only learn when we push into new ground. This is significant.

I think about some of the most difficult things I have ever done like going to college, starting a business, or even being a good husband or father. These are also the things that have taught me the most important lessons of my life.

This is true in organizations as well. When we work with a team of people, we work toward being comfortable. We avoid conflict. We avoid controversy. However, it is this very source of discomfort that puts us in positions where we learn and learning leads to true satisfaction.

I recently facilitated a meeting of leaders in an organization that had worked together and met together many times before. However, for the first time in a long time, they didn't avoid conflict. Instead, they made each other uncomfortable. They talked about their problems and they shared their insight. They hurt each other's feelings and made each other squirm. At the end of the meeting, one of the attendees told me that it was the best meeting she had attended in 14 years.

I encourage you to leave your comfort zone from time to time so that you can learn and feel true satisfaction!

The Paradigm Paradigm

by Don Harkey

I recently read an article (reference: RIP My Dear Saturn) by Mike Micklewright, a former engineer for Saturn in the mid-1980's. Mr. Micklewright was involved with Saturn from its early days as an attempt to split from the GE culture and learn from the likes of Edwards Deming and Toyota.

One of my favorite stories from the article (actually, there are 2 articles) concerns the design of the "repair lot" for the new Saturn facility in Tennessee. GE had laid off some of its employees and forced Saturn to hire them on. This mixed new culture with old and the impact was a paradigm shift back toward "old school". GE facilities had a repair lot that was used when cars came off the line needing repairs. The lots were (and probably still are) huge.

GE Engineers wanted to build a lot that would be plenty big to hold all of the cars that needed to be repaired. After all, why would you want to run out of space, right? Seems like it makes sense.

Saturn Engineers followed the Toyota model and didn't want to build a repair lot at all. The repair lot represented a failure in the process that needed to be immediately investigated and repaired.

The "compromise" was that they built a repair lot 1/2 the size of a normal GE facility. As the author pointed out, this was an absurd "lose/lose" compromise since the lot would not be big enough for the GE model and since the existence of the lot would all but kill the Saturn (Toyota) model.

The point of this story is simple. Paradigms are very real. I have heard people say that they had the word "paradigm". This is largely thanks to some past management movements where managers tell employees to "shift their paradigm". Organizational paradigms are often set at the top of the organization and most fiercely followed by management.

You cannot "shift" out of a paradigm. Everyone lives in a paradigm and every organization has one. Thinking outside of it is difficult, but it is critical for long term survival.

Failed to Doom

by Don Harkey

During a break at last week's Success Seminar (which was a great event in Springfield!), a participant lamented all of the examples of bad management within his firm and other organizations. The question he had was "how are we going to overcome all of this bad management?". My answer was simple.

"Failure."

Bad management within a free market will eventually lead to failure. Bad management is like a disease. Bad management creates a system that breeds more bad managers. When an organization is completely overtaken, it will fail over time either under its own inept weight or when it gets outmaneuvered by a better managed organization.

Such occurred with GM and Chrysler... or at least it was supposed to occur.

As organizations such as Toyota and Honda created some of the best management seen on the planet (stemmed from ideas of an American named Edwards Deming), organizations who had grown with almost unlimited resources and a strong cultural backing became more than lame. They became incompetent. We should have forecasted the doom of these companies when their strategy focused on purchasing their products because of where their corporate offices are located versus the true value of their product.

Even in 1986 when my mother from Detroit purchased her "Born in America" Plymouth Voyager and learned that it was actually built in Canada with a Mitsubishi engine, we should have known. Meanwhile, my 1983 Honda Accord (built in Illinois) ran reliably until the bottom nearly rusted out almost 17 years later.

Believe me, I don't blame GM or Chrysler; I believe the American consumer who decided that "Born in America" was good enough is now paying for it again. In a free economy, we get the best products when we buy the best products built by the best companies that utilize the best management and the best people. Reward good business with your dollar and it will succeed.

The cure for bad business in a free market is failure. Government intervention or purchasing products based on anything other than good service or good producs is... well... bad management!