Bulldozer00's Blog

“To solve our decreasing revenue and rising cost problems, we’ll just create a new title and insert the position into the org (thereby adding another layer to the stratified corpo cake). Voila! The problem will be solved (so let’s give ourselves a special bonus for being so smart).”

“But wait. What should the title be? Supervisor, Manager, Deputy Manager, Director, Deputy Director, General Manager? Should we bump it up by attaching a “Chief” and/or VP to the label? “We must be careful because the loftier the title, the more we’ll have to pay our new colleague (who will no doubt accomplish what we have failed to do).”

Such is the mindset of MBA trained corpo elites and their stooge press magazines like Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, et al. Do ya really think parachuting a messiah in to jumpstart an org with:

• an apathetic DICforce that is not as stupid as the head shed assumes and doesn’t appreciate management’s patronizing attitude
• an aging product development and manufacturing infrastructure (e.g. tools, processes, know how)
• an old and tired product portfolio that’s continually being usurped by competitor offerings
• a culture of undiscussable but obvious inter-group rivalry and disrespect

is realistic? Fragmented, hero-worshipping mindsets don’t clean up what Russell Ackoff calls, for lack of a better word, “messes”. Systemic thinking, along with the willingness to skinny dip, fully exposed, into the stinky mess is the only way to understand and clean up messes. Sadly, even if one or two dudes in the head shed junta are closet system thinkers and they try to speak out or take action, they’re promptly put back into their assigned slot….. and business resumes as usual…. while the mess grows ominously larger.

And now, for the bad news….. 🙂