Hi, my name is Andy, and
I have the misfortune to work for a large American corporation.
Is there a 12-Step program that can help with this affliction?
Undoubtedly, there are probably a great many people who
are quite content with earning a living in the corporate
sweatshop, and to those of you who are I say, knock yourselves
out. Literally. Because you see, American corporations
do not live in the real world. I’m not sure which
world they do live in, but it sure as hell isn’t
one I want to inhabit.
Five years ago the mega-corporation I work for decided
it didn't want part of its business group anymore and
sold it off, of which the part I work for was included.
I believe the euphemism used was "refocussing their direction",
or some such business-speak nonsense. We splitters were
picked up by an investment group and formed into a new
company, with a new and completely ridiculous name made
up of two words combined together to make a silly new
word. It took them ages, and no doubt many millions of
dollars to come up with that. If you've seen the movie
"Office Space" you'll know exactly what I'm talking about,
and if you haven't, go rent it. Now. Anyway, up to that
point it wasn't too bad working in the corporate world.
Though we were part of a large organisation, they pretty
much left us alone to do our own thing with little involvement
from the "Big Boys". We knew what we were doing and we
did it well, consistently beating our budget by a considerable
margin year after year. So they left us to it - it wasn't
broke, so they didn't try to fix it. That all changed
a year or two later when we got a new CEO who was an ex-GE
man.
Now, General Electric, so I'm told, is THE model for success
in the mega-corporation world. So naturally, ex-GE man
brought the GE manifesto with him, along with an awful
lot of his GE buddies (can you say "rampant nepotism"
kids?). So much so in fact, that I began to wonder if
we were going to change direction entirely and start making
light bulbs, electrical appliances and jet engines.
Now all of a sudden, the “Big Boys” started
making themselves known to us like there was no tomorrow.
There was the slow but ever-increasing trickle of VIPs
visiting the site. Then came an increase in metrics reporting,
none of it of any meaning or value of course, but we still
had to take time out to compile and submit it on a regular
basis. Then came more and more teleconferences, webexes,
Town Hall Meetings (oh, how I love those), filling out
spreadsheets, requests for information for projects that
never seemed to go anywhere, surveys, etc., etc., etc.
It seemed we were spending more time reporting to the
Americans than we were actually doing any real work. And
we still are, even more so.
Then came the dreaded Kaizen events and... Progressive
5S. 5S, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure
of having this crap forced down your throat, is a 5-Step
program for cleaning and organising your work area. I
can’t tell you exactly what the 5 Ss are, because
I immediately and permanently removed them from my memory
as soon as I saw them. It is a juvenile, condescending
bit of communist-esque doctrine to turn people into little
corporate automatons who have no independent thoughts,
creativity or individuality. Which of course is exactly
what coporations value in an employee. 5S is the kind
of thing you’d write on the blackboard for a bunch
of 4 year olds. “Look kids, this is how we clean
our play areas. Later on, if you’re good, we’ll
draw a big picture of a fish and write some words on it”.
And it doesn’t stop with telling us how to clean
up, it also deems that we label everything in big words
so we know exactly what everything is and where it is.
It’s not enough to have to go out and buy shelves
and cupboards to put things in, they must be labelled
so we know where all the things are that we’ve hidden
away out of sight. I tore the sign off my cupboard in
a fit of pique one day and declared my little corner of
the office a “5S-Free Zone”.
Some, I’m told, even go as far as taping lines all
over their desks to designate areas to put things in.
“Stapler go here” , “Pens go here”,
"Noose for hanging yourself go here", ad nauseum.
Fortunately, the site I work at has not succumbed to that
level of madness – yet. A note to our “Continuous
Improvement Manager” (a made-up title if ever I’ve
heard one): if you come anywhere near my desk with a roll
of tape make sure it’s quality stuff, because you
will quickly find yourself dangling out the window by
it.
Progressive 5S is supposed to improve efficiency and therefore
allow us to get more work done, but it doesn’t do
anything of the sort. It actually decreases efficiency
because it forces people to work in a manner they are
not accustomed to and in an environment devoid of any
individuality and personality. This demoralisation causes
resentment and frustration, which means we work even less
efficiently. Plus, of course, we spend more time cleaning,
organising, labelling, inspecting and being inspected,
which means we get even less real work done.
Naturally, the American corporate types have jumped on
this nonsense like a Labrador on an inflatable Poodle
smeared in liver paté. One of our visiting VIPs
even told us she’s 5Sed her house. All I can say
to that is, I feel very sorry for her family.
Then we come to the other big corporate fad, the Kaizen
event. Kaizen is some sort of Japanese problem solving
model that is all the rage in the business world these
days. Americans foolishly believe that if they adopt Japanese
tactics that they will actually stand a chance of competing
with the Asians in business. This is about as flawed as
thinking that if I wear a red cape and blue tights I will
be able to leap over tall buildings and run faster than
speeding trains. The Japanese, Koreans and Chinese are
kicking American and British butts in business because
they come from a culture steeped in hard work and discipline.
Americans and Brits on the other hand, are lazy bastards
who will down tools at the first hint of industrial malcontent.
Think British Leyland in the 1970s. You can run all the
Kaizen events in the world, but until you change Western
culture and thinking, you will never compete with Asia.
Let’s face it, that just ain’t gonna happen.
As further proof of the fallacy of Kaizen, I need only
say two things: Toyota and Fukushima. Kaizen didn't do
either of them much good, did it?
I take a pragmatic approach to problem solving. If it’s broke, find
a solution and fix it. Job done. The Kaizen approach on the other hand,
is to put teams together to find a problem – or to create one if none
can be found - then put more teams together who will then spend hours covering
the insides of meeting rooms in sticky notes, flow charts and pictures of
fish (anyone unfortunate enough to get sucked into a Kaizen event will know
about “the fish”) and even more hours in teleconferences spouting
nonsensical jargon until eventually the problem loses the will to live and
commits suicide. Problem solved.
We don’t need teams, meetings, sticky notes, flow
charts, business jargon or crudely drawn pictures of sea
life to solve problems, especially when the result often
causes more problems than it has solved. However, this
suits the American business philosophy to a 'T' as they
seem to think that the more time you spend in meetings
talking about business, the more productive you are. If
you get to draw pictures and speak in trendy but meaningless
jargon at the same time, then that's just about as good
as it gets. Is it any wonder then that they’ve been
getting their asses kicked for decades by countries who
just get on with it, rather than sitting in meetings talking
about it?
Similarly, we don’t need a 5-Step program spelling
out in child’s terms how to clean our little play
areas. It’s bloody obvious, or it should be. To
me, a person whose desk has nothing on it, is a person
who doesn’t have enough work to do. The bottom line
is, do we produce the work required and in the quality
expected of us? If the answer is yes, then clearly it's
of no consequence how neat and tidy our desk is, how many
labelled cupboards we have or how devoid of individuality
our work area is. We get the job done and that’s
what it should be all about. If you demoralise and dehumanise
us by inflicting these ridiculous iron curtain doctrines
on us we will resent you for it, and resentment breeds
contempt. Contempt breeds low productivity. So, if we’re
not actually producing anything worthwhile, or indeed
anything at all, then what’s the bloody point of
going to work??
I propose modifying Nike’s famous “Just Do It” and creating
a new company slogan. “Don’t Do it. Just Talk About It”.
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