Sherlock Holmes, the omniscient, begat Dashiell Hammett whose grandchildren solve problems simply by being themselves, often clueless, but of the right social order. Once the villain could be anyone in the reader’s closest social set; now it is the butler recast as the outsider, the parvenu, the upstart who threatens the status quo with guile.
The cultural transition from the hope for discovering the solution to the pragmatic acceptance of the possible is reflected in data processing. When I began in the 1970s, programmers were supposed to collect all the requirements for a project, then implement them. Every contingency was supposed to be considered. Now, companies buy packages, maybe with consultant services, and bumble through.
The goal of the perfect application written by employees was well neigh impossible, and often produced systems that were far more complicated than necessary. One critical problem was that one person was supposed to talk to users about their needs; design, write and test code; write documentation and do training.
An equally serious problem was that it assumed users could articulate what they wanted. Since many found it difficult to extract the general from the day-to-day, one either found people who talked grand rhetoric with no details, or found people could not be found. Words like "blue sky" and "bells and whistles" became common, and were to be avoided.
Programmers were either trained in math departments or community colleges. Both focused on teaching how to code, the one with more emphasis on theory, elegance and efficiency. Few taught students to do user documentation or training. And certainly, no one offered classes in interviewing techniques, not even for anthropologists or social workers.
Companies began to talk about how to manage failure. At my last job, our customer sent us a video that told us more than 80% of the information systems projects were never completed. The rest weren’t what was needed, came in late and/or were over budget. I don’t remember if the sample was government projects or projects in general, local or national in scope.
The perception that managers were handling failure prone projects caused by creative individuals like Holmes has persisted. My last supervisor loved to tell me the problem for GM was that engineers would spend too much money creating the perfect vehicle if left alone. It was the duty of a good manager to keep them under control. He, of course, had never worked in Detroit, and was passing on received wisdom. The memorat probably goes back to Frederick Donner who was chairman in the 1960s.
In that last shop, my supervisor’s managers believed a new release of an application should be installed exactly as it already existed. Then, in a later phase, users could request some of the added features. He couldn’t make them understand that not planning for those changes meant implementation decisions were made that made some enhancements impossible.
Users were unhappy in the 1970s and are still unhappy, but the costs in the last shop were exactly as predicted. Higher level managers who look at budgets were happy, even as they blamed their subordinates who couldn’t produce desired reports. The costs for the future change were the problem of the next manager. A new phrase appeared, "foul up, move up."
In the planning phase, my supervisor created a set of specifications which I was supposed to read to the users. He modeled it on the list of requirements provided by the purchased package he hoped would be chosen. He told me I could not add anything, even if it was what someone needed, because the salesman would get too creative and use any modifications as an excuse to raise the price.
I persisted in the old-fashioned methods and asked the man who ran the warehouses how he wanted to run his operation. I told him, nothing he wanted was likely to be in the application, but if we didn’t know what he wanted, it would be difficult to plan a future transition path. My underlying purpose was to get him to talk about his department in concrete terms so he would pay attention to the predigested specification. I was taken off the project.
Once the application was installed, the inventory manager wanted to know why he couldn’t change his costing method, and discovered what he wanted was not available. The already contracted vendor was more than happy to quote a price to write the code, and he somehow managed to convince whoever controlled the budget to sign the contract addendum. Then he left before it was available. The supervisor had already gone, and the IS managers had been replaced.
Failure was transformed from a problem into a marketing strategy. The software company would charge us the full cost of development. If other companies asked for the same thing, they could make minor modifications and recharge them for development costs. If the modifications were useful they could introduce it in a future release with no development costs.
Failure became an ad hoc means of defining user requirements. Programmers were told to convert all existing reports, but not find out if they were used.. The assumption was that if something was important, users would tell them when it was missing, and that would set the priorities.
Needless to say, report problems were never discovered until they were needed, and the programmers lived in constant crisis. When they stayed late to get something ready for the next morning, the success of the department was highly visible. Managers hoped their responsiveness would disguise their failure to plan; if not, replacing a programmer would show their willingness to improve.
All that happened in the years between the time I worked for Shatterproof and my last shop is expectations for programmers were lowered, and, hopefully expectations by users were lowered to an equal level. Once the goal was set at the attainable, success was guaranteed, especially if the initial costs were kept within budget.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Failure - Part 1 - Superstition
How can a company continue to fail and still survive?
In the 1980s, Roger Smith said General Motors’ problems included long gestation times to bring new vehicles to market. In addition to engineering delays, plants were not designed for quick retooling.
Today, we’re told GM has problems with long lead times and its plants can’t switch from one model to another. Indeed, the chairman, Rick Wagoner, didn’t even know eight flexible plants existed when he announced it was a new priority.
Smith opened a plant in Fremont, California, with Toyota to learn better manufacturing processes. Micheline Maynard reports that no one from GM attended a plant walk through with Toyota executives to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the joint venture, although some did show for the public ceremony.
When Chrysler was bankrupt, Lee Iacocca said one problem was benefits, and wanted to transfer the cost of health care to the federal government, like its rivals in Japan and Europe. No one listened. Today the answer is manage automobile prices by eliminating medical insurance, but don’t try to manage medical costs.
Observers like Daniel Arst claim GM’s problems 20 years ago were its union contracts, and that it’s still too compliant. Union members complain the UAW’s not assertive enough. When Chrysler was bankrupt, the union demanded a place on the board. The adversarial model was more familiar, but has reached a crisis with suppliers who superintend labor by sending productive work to other countries.
When Ford and GM first noticed the Japanese were doing things differently, they experimented with some of their methods. R. P. Coe, a Ford worker in Indianapolis, claims
Back when I was an undergraduate taking courses in education, I was told people who learned things easily also relearned easily, but those who had problems learning something had an even harder time relearning.
Financial and engineering curricula both have sequences of challenging courses. Some schools deliberately increase the difficulty to weed out students and enhance their reputations. Those students who survive will either be very good, or those who may become too committed to what was so difficult to master.
From the first hiring freezes in the 1970s, many have feared for their jobs. In periods when there were more applicants than jobs, those who were hired felt lucky. Each time companies announced layoffs, those who survived felt lucky to stay.
Luck is not predictable, and does not produce rationale behavior. Gamblers like John DeLorean may respond with bravado. Most are more conservative and respond to the unpredictable with superstitious behavior that stresses repeating what worked before. When rituals fail, men look for what they did wrong, analyze how they deviated from the past.
Nothing has worked because no one committed to any solution long enough for it to work. Coe complains Ford abandoned Japanese employee relations, Maynard reports GM abandoned manufacturing innovation, Arst tells us companies and the UAW abandoned non-traditional agreements, shareholders claim managers abandoned a commitment to cost containment.
When one listens to people discussing today’s problems at GM, one hears the same things one heard 30 years ago. One could be excused for thinking the problems are still the same. Instead, I suspect the problems today are the direct consequences of 30 years of reaction, and that constant retrenchment has created its own view of the possible.
Superstition does not encourage permanent change; it promises quick techniques for perpetuating what worked in the past, and reinforces the view the past was a golden age that needs to be restored. Men who’ve come through rigorous training programs may be even more likely to hold to what first worked.
It would seem as soon as something worked, and things improved, people didn’t just feel safe reverting to what they did before, but felt compelled to return to the previous mode as evidence of success. When problems resurface, they never reconsider the last thing tried, but look for a new charm. Today’s solutions, sending as much work overseas as possible, are as much ritual as measured response, but with more severe consequences than 30 years of insecurity.
Sources
Arst, Daniel. “Hand in Hand, Over the Precipice, The New York Times, 2 April 2006.
Coe, R. P. “Ford Mood,” Detroit News, 27 January 2006.
Maynard, Micheline. “At G.M.’s Helm Or Going Under?,” The New York Times, 29 March 2006.
In the 1980s, Roger Smith said General Motors’ problems included long gestation times to bring new vehicles to market. In addition to engineering delays, plants were not designed for quick retooling.
Today, we’re told GM has problems with long lead times and its plants can’t switch from one model to another. Indeed, the chairman, Rick Wagoner, didn’t even know eight flexible plants existed when he announced it was a new priority.
Smith opened a plant in Fremont, California, with Toyota to learn better manufacturing processes. Micheline Maynard reports that no one from GM attended a plant walk through with Toyota executives to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the joint venture, although some did show for the public ceremony.
When Chrysler was bankrupt, Lee Iacocca said one problem was benefits, and wanted to transfer the cost of health care to the federal government, like its rivals in Japan and Europe. No one listened. Today the answer is manage automobile prices by eliminating medical insurance, but don’t try to manage medical costs.
Observers like Daniel Arst claim GM’s problems 20 years ago were its union contracts, and that it’s still too compliant. Union members complain the UAW’s not assertive enough. When Chrysler was bankrupt, the union demanded a place on the board. The adversarial model was more familiar, but has reached a crisis with suppliers who superintend labor by sending productive work to other countries.
When Ford and GM first noticed the Japanese were doing things differently, they experimented with some of their methods. R. P. Coe, a Ford worker in Indianapolis, claims
The Company quit investing in the workers, who drove business success through employee involvement programs. These programs saved Ford millions and led to many cost reductions and help improve manufacturing processes.How can so many smart people fail to learn?
Back when I was an undergraduate taking courses in education, I was told people who learned things easily also relearned easily, but those who had problems learning something had an even harder time relearning.
Financial and engineering curricula both have sequences of challenging courses. Some schools deliberately increase the difficulty to weed out students and enhance their reputations. Those students who survive will either be very good, or those who may become too committed to what was so difficult to master.
From the first hiring freezes in the 1970s, many have feared for their jobs. In periods when there were more applicants than jobs, those who were hired felt lucky. Each time companies announced layoffs, those who survived felt lucky to stay.
Luck is not predictable, and does not produce rationale behavior. Gamblers like John DeLorean may respond with bravado. Most are more conservative and respond to the unpredictable with superstitious behavior that stresses repeating what worked before. When rituals fail, men look for what they did wrong, analyze how they deviated from the past.
Nothing has worked because no one committed to any solution long enough for it to work. Coe complains Ford abandoned Japanese employee relations, Maynard reports GM abandoned manufacturing innovation, Arst tells us companies and the UAW abandoned non-traditional agreements, shareholders claim managers abandoned a commitment to cost containment.
When one listens to people discussing today’s problems at GM, one hears the same things one heard 30 years ago. One could be excused for thinking the problems are still the same. Instead, I suspect the problems today are the direct consequences of 30 years of reaction, and that constant retrenchment has created its own view of the possible.
Superstition does not encourage permanent change; it promises quick techniques for perpetuating what worked in the past, and reinforces the view the past was a golden age that needs to be restored. Men who’ve come through rigorous training programs may be even more likely to hold to what first worked.
It would seem as soon as something worked, and things improved, people didn’t just feel safe reverting to what they did before, but felt compelled to return to the previous mode as evidence of success. When problems resurface, they never reconsider the last thing tried, but look for a new charm. Today’s solutions, sending as much work overseas as possible, are as much ritual as measured response, but with more severe consequences than 30 years of insecurity.
Sources
Arst, Daniel. “Hand in Hand, Over the Precipice, The New York Times, 2 April 2006.
Coe, R. P. “Ford Mood,” Detroit News, 27 January 2006.
Maynard, Micheline. “At G.M.’s Helm Or Going Under?,” The New York Times, 29 March 2006.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Design - Part 1 - Engineers
Mustang, Corvette, Muscle Car. What’s the last car you remmber from Detroit?
Who’s the last creator you remember? How about, Lee Iacocca, Ed Cole, John DeLorean? Afficionados, Detroiters prefer men like Harley Earl and Bunky Knudsen.
Who’s the last CEO you recognize from one of the Big Three car makers? Alfred P. Sloan, Robert McNamara? Business historians will name others like Roger Smith and Arjay Miller.
Who mattered most to you when you bought your first car? Which do you associate with failed enterprises?
As car dealer Hoot McInerey said, when asked about the latest reorganization at Ford, "If you've got the right product in the right market, any fool can be a hero."
But why hasn’t General Motors or Ford been able to produce a vehicle consumers want?
Ed Cole was lead engineer for Corvette in 1953 when he was 44; he became president of General Motors when he was 58, in 1967, and retired at 65.
He was the one of the last engineers to rise so far. Since, production men have had their careers stymied.
Lee Iacocca was behind the introduction of the Mustang in 1964 when he was 40. He became president of Ford in 1970, at 46, and was fired by Henry Ford II eight years later.
John DeLorean developed the Pontiac GTO in 1964 when he was 41. He aborted his promotion path when he divorced a second time and began dating celebrities. He left General Motors when he was 48.
Today, the top men and lone woman at Ford and GM are in their 40s or 50s, but their experience is in finance and international operations. Almost none mention time in a plant on their resumes. None are associated with a single product innovation, but several are credited with salvaging operations by downsizing.
The talent of several generations rose in the 1960s and left in the 1970s. What was happening in the 1950's when the young men were coming of age who would be in their 40s then? What’s happened in the 1970s that stopped those men from getting new projects? What suppressed the culture of mechanical innovation and design since?
When I was growing up, sons of storekeepers and professionals did not consider engineering. It was the route to upward mobility for children of plant workers. Then, in the Nixon years, the aerospace industry laid off highly paid engineers. Parents who valued education for concrete, pragmatic reasons began to question the wisdom of their ancestors.
The oil embargo by OPEC and quality problems publicized by Ralph Nader should have been challenges, not insurmountable crises. The reaction of automotive executives was panic, the first of the hiring freezes and layoffs. Kids began to see their parents’ jobs threatened, and saw accountants were more valued than engineers.
When GM transferred its data processing functions to EDS in 1984, engineers feared they would be next. Teenagers either saw their fathers lose their jobs, or saw cousins and older brothers have problems finding berths out of college. No doubt, parents advised their children to consider other fields.
The number of engineering students in the United States peaked in 1983 in the United States with 441,000 baby boomers, and fell to 361,000 in 1999, according to Ed Cohen. Using rough calculations that multiply the percent of the population between the ages of 5 and 19 by the total population, it appears the actual decline was from .78% of available young people to .67%.
Statistics on engineering enrollments are tricky, because they combine disciplines. ASEE reports nearly a third of the 394,148 students in 2003 were in computers and electrical engineering. If we only count a third of those as traditional engineers, then the current total falls to 306,107 students, or .52% of the available young people.
A quarter percent decline in engineering students nationally seems statistically insignificant, but the percentage of truly creative men in any generation is even smaller, and they may be the ones who first considered computer science or business administration.
The more critical problem is the thirty year dearth of jobs. ASEE tell us the state of Michigan had 22,865 undergraduate engineering students in 2003. Two years later, Michael Ellis reports GM employs 22,000 engineers world-wide, and is planning to transfer more work to Brazil and eliminate more positions at its Tech Center in Warren.
Students know they have to leave. Michigan ranks 4th in the number of engineering students but 37th in the percent of residents with bachelor’s degrees. Even immigrants know there’s no future. GM says it is transferring engineering work because it can pay lower wages and admits it’s recruiting Indian nationals at Wayne State, hoping to lure them back to Bangalore.
How long can an industry deny opportunity to those critical to its success before it finally discourages too many? How long before the ambitious and creative are gone, leaving plodders to fill the slots? GM and Ford can still recruit engineers, but they can’t produce exciting cars.
It may be the only culture GM and Ford have been able to change is the one they need to survive, the one that produces men who might create the next generation of muscle cars. Once the formative environment is gone, it’s almost impossible to recreate. Detroit may become the equal of the places it sends work, Brazil and BangalPrismore.
Sources:
American Society for Engineering Education. "State of Engineering,"
Prism 13 (2) October 2003 on internet.
Cohen, Ed. " Enrollment Trends: Too many students are choosing the same academic paths. What's a college to do?," Notre Dame Magazine Winter 2005-2006 on internet.
Evans, Michael. "Engineers' work goes overseas, GM says," Detroit Free Press, 6 April 2006.
George, Mary Anne. "Michigan’s College Graduate Rank Sinks to 37th in Nation," Detroit Free Press 29 March 2005.
McInerey, Martin. Quoted by Tom Walsh, "New team to drive F"ord," Detroit Free Press, 7 April 2006.
Who’s the last creator you remember? How about, Lee Iacocca, Ed Cole, John DeLorean? Afficionados, Detroiters prefer men like Harley Earl and Bunky Knudsen.
Who’s the last CEO you recognize from one of the Big Three car makers? Alfred P. Sloan, Robert McNamara? Business historians will name others like Roger Smith and Arjay Miller.
Who mattered most to you when you bought your first car? Which do you associate with failed enterprises?
As car dealer Hoot McInerey said, when asked about the latest reorganization at Ford, "If you've got the right product in the right market, any fool can be a hero."
But why hasn’t General Motors or Ford been able to produce a vehicle consumers want?
Ed Cole was lead engineer for Corvette in 1953 when he was 44; he became president of General Motors when he was 58, in 1967, and retired at 65.
He was the one of the last engineers to rise so far. Since, production men have had their careers stymied.
Lee Iacocca was behind the introduction of the Mustang in 1964 when he was 40. He became president of Ford in 1970, at 46, and was fired by Henry Ford II eight years later.
John DeLorean developed the Pontiac GTO in 1964 when he was 41. He aborted his promotion path when he divorced a second time and began dating celebrities. He left General Motors when he was 48.
Today, the top men and lone woman at Ford and GM are in their 40s or 50s, but their experience is in finance and international operations. Almost none mention time in a plant on their resumes. None are associated with a single product innovation, but several are credited with salvaging operations by downsizing.
The talent of several generations rose in the 1960s and left in the 1970s. What was happening in the 1950's when the young men were coming of age who would be in their 40s then? What’s happened in the 1970s that stopped those men from getting new projects? What suppressed the culture of mechanical innovation and design since?
When I was growing up, sons of storekeepers and professionals did not consider engineering. It was the route to upward mobility for children of plant workers. Then, in the Nixon years, the aerospace industry laid off highly paid engineers. Parents who valued education for concrete, pragmatic reasons began to question the wisdom of their ancestors.
The oil embargo by OPEC and quality problems publicized by Ralph Nader should have been challenges, not insurmountable crises. The reaction of automotive executives was panic, the first of the hiring freezes and layoffs. Kids began to see their parents’ jobs threatened, and saw accountants were more valued than engineers.
When GM transferred its data processing functions to EDS in 1984, engineers feared they would be next. Teenagers either saw their fathers lose their jobs, or saw cousins and older brothers have problems finding berths out of college. No doubt, parents advised their children to consider other fields.
The number of engineering students in the United States peaked in 1983 in the United States with 441,000 baby boomers, and fell to 361,000 in 1999, according to Ed Cohen. Using rough calculations that multiply the percent of the population between the ages of 5 and 19 by the total population, it appears the actual decline was from .78% of available young people to .67%.
Statistics on engineering enrollments are tricky, because they combine disciplines. ASEE reports nearly a third of the 394,148 students in 2003 were in computers and electrical engineering. If we only count a third of those as traditional engineers, then the current total falls to 306,107 students, or .52% of the available young people.
A quarter percent decline in engineering students nationally seems statistically insignificant, but the percentage of truly creative men in any generation is even smaller, and they may be the ones who first considered computer science or business administration.
The more critical problem is the thirty year dearth of jobs. ASEE tell us the state of Michigan had 22,865 undergraduate engineering students in 2003. Two years later, Michael Ellis reports GM employs 22,000 engineers world-wide, and is planning to transfer more work to Brazil and eliminate more positions at its Tech Center in Warren.
Students know they have to leave. Michigan ranks 4th in the number of engineering students but 37th in the percent of residents with bachelor’s degrees. Even immigrants know there’s no future. GM says it is transferring engineering work because it can pay lower wages and admits it’s recruiting Indian nationals at Wayne State, hoping to lure them back to Bangalore.
How long can an industry deny opportunity to those critical to its success before it finally discourages too many? How long before the ambitious and creative are gone, leaving plodders to fill the slots? GM and Ford can still recruit engineers, but they can’t produce exciting cars.
It may be the only culture GM and Ford have been able to change is the one they need to survive, the one that produces men who might create the next generation of muscle cars. Once the formative environment is gone, it’s almost impossible to recreate. Detroit may become the equal of the places it sends work, Brazil and BangalPrismore.
Sources:
American Society for Engineering Education. "State of Engineering,"
Prism 13 (2) October 2003 on internet.
Cohen, Ed. " Enrollment Trends: Too many students are choosing the same academic paths. What's a college to do?," Notre Dame Magazine Winter 2005-2006 on internet.
Evans, Michael. "Engineers' work goes overseas, GM says," Detroit Free Press, 6 April 2006.
George, Mary Anne. "Michigan’s College Graduate Rank Sinks to 37th in Nation," Detroit Free Press 29 March 2005.
McInerey, Martin. Quoted by Tom Walsh, "New team to drive F"ord," Detroit Free Press, 7 April 2006.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Corporate Culture - Part 2 - Line Tales
"Ten Dilbert Managers" is currently making the rounds of email and internet graffiti. It’s a list of memorable quotations submitted for an unnamed magazine’s contest. Some are funny, some trite, and one from Delco Corporation is too painful to be anything but true.
Shared ideas sometimes pass to companies like Delco, a machine tool maker in Akron, when people migrate from one company to another. They may also diffuse through consultants who move from company to company, much like peddlers of the past who carried city ways to the countryside.
Often the most common mechanism for cultural integration is not personal experience or formal training, but stories retold in bars and over lunch. At work, I would hear them when the person directing a meeting would shift his position, signaling an informal break. Like many corporate folktales, their rendering depends on the story telling ability of the narrator and the recognition by the audience that the themes are important.
In the days before Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed, the sanctification of keeping the line running was the source of tales passed well beyond Detroit. I heard them from a salesman who sold material handling products to GM for the company where my father worked in the early 1960s. We didn’t consider ourselves an automotive town, and were more than 100 miles away, but we heard the stories.
Accountants had calculated the cost of stopping the assembly line, and no man’s job was worth halting production for poor quality, lack of parts or preventive maintenance. Anecdotes featured the ingenuity of men who saved the day. One tale I remember concerned how GM considered building an air fleet to deliver out-of-stock parts. Of course, the Japanese attacked the root problem with a new inventory system, and new relations with their suppliers.
One reason Nader and, later, Ross Perot could make their points so easily is they could draw on the local narrative tradition, and rebroadcast it to a national audience.
I had a friend who was having problems with her Oldsmobile in the 1980s. The dealer had her sign away her future litigation rights in return for one free repair. She later discovered her problems were known and came from line substitution. The dealer may have outsmarted her, may even have turned her into a tale he could retell, but I imagine she never bought another Oldsmobile.
Parenthetically, no one will ever buy a new Oldsmobile again. GM abandoned the brand as unsalvageable in 2004.
When I worked in a GM plant in the 1980s, it had new employee classes in quality management. The first day the instructor told us, if we learned nothing more, remember GIRTFT stood for "get it right the first time."
We were also told, in Japanese plants, anyone could stop work if there were problems, could actually stop the line. This was power that was tested, perhaps abused, but freedom, none the less, to upend hierarchy, to stand up to absurdity.
Still, twenty years later, a manager for an automotive supplier’s supplier, who can’t have been more than a child, may not even have been born, when line stories were evolving, is still trying to reconcile two competing messages within a failing industry: the mantra that caused the problem, and the koan that was the solution.
Delco’s home page repeats the quality training I had:
No wonder the quoted manager sounds confused. The sad thing is he is right: quality and production should not be incompatible. If things are done right, a schedule can be met.
When folktales deal with production, it is quality that’s the problem. For preproduction projects like Delco it could be the schedule that’s wrong, that wasn’t right the first time, or, more likely, wasn’t adjusted when problems occurred in earlier phases, leading to undue pressures for later phases to make up lost time and the impossibility of doing things right in half the time.
I had another friend who was working for a engineering subcontractor in the 1980s on a project to build a new plant. He said that at one meeting, every subcontractor in the room knew the schedule could not be met, but not one would say anything because they knew that whoever said the obvious would get the blame. Instead, each filed private minutes with his team leader reporting the true status of the project. There was no freedom to stop the line: everyone had to wait until GM said there was a problem.
We’re still waiting, because our freedom to stop the line, to stop buying does not oblige managers to pay attention. The retold anecdotes, polished into memorats, were the only way powerless workers and consumers could protest. Folklore does not arise in a vacuum. When motifs coalesce into a common narrative, anyone who respects local folk traditions knows something’s changed, knows there are serious troubles.
Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.I happen to receive the email the same day The New York Times business section was running another article on the disintegration of General Motors. The quotation illustrates how widely the conflicts of central institutions percolate through their spheres of influence, and how difficult it is for companies and the managers it fosters to genuinely change.
Shared ideas sometimes pass to companies like Delco, a machine tool maker in Akron, when people migrate from one company to another. They may also diffuse through consultants who move from company to company, much like peddlers of the past who carried city ways to the countryside.
Often the most common mechanism for cultural integration is not personal experience or formal training, but stories retold in bars and over lunch. At work, I would hear them when the person directing a meeting would shift his position, signaling an informal break. Like many corporate folktales, their rendering depends on the story telling ability of the narrator and the recognition by the audience that the themes are important.
In the days before Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed, the sanctification of keeping the line running was the source of tales passed well beyond Detroit. I heard them from a salesman who sold material handling products to GM for the company where my father worked in the early 1960s. We didn’t consider ourselves an automotive town, and were more than 100 miles away, but we heard the stories.
Accountants had calculated the cost of stopping the assembly line, and no man’s job was worth halting production for poor quality, lack of parts or preventive maintenance. Anecdotes featured the ingenuity of men who saved the day. One tale I remember concerned how GM considered building an air fleet to deliver out-of-stock parts. Of course, the Japanese attacked the root problem with a new inventory system, and new relations with their suppliers.
One reason Nader and, later, Ross Perot could make their points so easily is they could draw on the local narrative tradition, and rebroadcast it to a national audience.
I had a friend who was having problems with her Oldsmobile in the 1980s. The dealer had her sign away her future litigation rights in return for one free repair. She later discovered her problems were known and came from line substitution. The dealer may have outsmarted her, may even have turned her into a tale he could retell, but I imagine she never bought another Oldsmobile.
Parenthetically, no one will ever buy a new Oldsmobile again. GM abandoned the brand as unsalvageable in 2004.
When I worked in a GM plant in the 1980s, it had new employee classes in quality management. The first day the instructor told us, if we learned nothing more, remember GIRTFT stood for "get it right the first time."
We were also told, in Japanese plants, anyone could stop work if there were problems, could actually stop the line. This was power that was tested, perhaps abused, but freedom, none the less, to upend hierarchy, to stand up to absurdity.
Still, twenty years later, a manager for an automotive supplier’s supplier, who can’t have been more than a child, may not even have been born, when line stories were evolving, is still trying to reconcile two competing messages within a failing industry: the mantra that caused the problem, and the koan that was the solution.
Delco’s home page repeats the quality training I had:
Our products are produced using the highest quality standard recognized by our industrial community to ensure your job is done right - the first time!But elsewhere the company tells us it is known for "offering quicker turn-around time in mold building production and for operating with greater production and cost efficiency."
No wonder the quoted manager sounds confused. The sad thing is he is right: quality and production should not be incompatible. If things are done right, a schedule can be met.
When folktales deal with production, it is quality that’s the problem. For preproduction projects like Delco it could be the schedule that’s wrong, that wasn’t right the first time, or, more likely, wasn’t adjusted when problems occurred in earlier phases, leading to undue pressures for later phases to make up lost time and the impossibility of doing things right in half the time.
I had another friend who was working for a engineering subcontractor in the 1980s on a project to build a new plant. He said that at one meeting, every subcontractor in the room knew the schedule could not be met, but not one would say anything because they knew that whoever said the obvious would get the blame. Instead, each filed private minutes with his team leader reporting the true status of the project. There was no freedom to stop the line: everyone had to wait until GM said there was a problem.
We’re still waiting, because our freedom to stop the line, to stop buying does not oblige managers to pay attention. The retold anecdotes, polished into memorats, were the only way powerless workers and consumers could protest. Folklore does not arise in a vacuum. When motifs coalesce into a common narrative, anyone who respects local folk traditions knows something’s changed, knows there are serious troubles.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Culture Consultans - Part 3 - History
Cultures often have origin myths. Such narratives existed in the two companies I worked, where consultants convinced managers they could eliminate self-destructive behavior. No single story was retold, refashioned into folk art, but shared history existed as a common font of experience that could be referred to with truncated parables and mottos.
In Detroit, one absorbs legendary names and motifs growing up. At the other place, the company retold its key story during its first attempt to address safety and security problems. Indeed during those early days of organization-wide video training, it was the only transmission that was slowed by too many viewers. By the time the culture consultants arrived, many had refreshed their memories, and some used the legend as a mantle to cloak their obstreperousness.
Creation myths do not exist everywhere. In most places I’ve work, people don’t even know the name of the founder, and the most typical narrative is bureaucratic gossip. In Detroit, the legends are recognized by their first names: Michael Moore filmed Roger and Me; Harry Bennett wrote We Never Called Him Henry, a furrier advertised with imagined conversations between Roger and Ross, then Roger and Roger. The caste organization used only last names.
Cultures are rarely homogenous. Most contain competing elements which may be channeled through social structures like clans who alternate power, like the summer people and winter people. Folk narratives often recall past incidents of conflict that disturbed the equilibrium before suggesting ideal solutions.
In Detroit, internal stresses are most clearly seen with Henry Ford. When he first succeeded, his investors criticized him because they believed automobiles would only exist as luxury vehicles. When Ford wouldn’t compromise, they changed to Henry Leland and formed Cadillac Automobile Company in 1902 with the belief the best way to operate was high profits on few sales. William Durant absorbed them into General Motors which he organized to sell different styles to different markets. When he proved too flamboyant, the banks took over.
Ford reorganized and introduced the Model T in 1908. After a few years, his partners, John and Horace Dodge, rebelled because they believed Ford sacrificed quality to quantity. When they died from prohibition alcohol, bankers absorbed their company into what became Chrysler.
Ford reorganized and avoided banks.
When Roger Smith became head of General Motors in 1980, it had a long organizational tradition of selecting the chairman from financial men, the president from production men. Lee Iacocca could never do more at Ford because the family held the top spot. His success at Chrysler violated this industry wide compromise between cost and quality, but was prompted by the only crisis financial men understand, bankruptcy.
Smith faced the same challenges and tried, at least with Saturn and Fiero, to shift the balance towards quality and inexpensive products. His greatest opposition came from those descended from Leland who believed the best strategy was expensive vehicles like Cadillacs and pick-up trucks with low production costs.
Smith’s replacement, like Iacocca, violated the stasis between the groups. Robert Stemple was the first man to rise to chairman from production. He was widely seen in the ranks as the last, best chance to turn things around. When he was forced out in 1992, the company pursued the low cost, high priced strategy with SUVs that haven’t survived market saturation, safety problems, and high operating costs anymore than American vehicles did during the oil embargo of the 1970s.
The collective history at my last employer evolved during a period of heightened national security. Most tales goes back to early conflicts between the military, seen as dampening parasites, and technocrats who saw themselves as creative overachievers.
The conflict between the moieties receded when national priorities changed. The subcontractor where I worked continued to hire retired military men, but they were ones who had learned the way to promotion was to do what was expected. They were seen as harmless tokens, since the customer was happy to pay us to relieve it of the need to hire them to appease a critical constituency.
The equipoise was disturbed when reporters made safety and security problems sound intractable. Suddenly the customer’s customer saw a military man as the only solution. It was a time when corporations were recruiting generals and admirals for top spots to exploit their contacts for contracts. By coincidence, our subcontract brought in a military refugee as our business manager.
Unlike previous military retirees, the new men were ones who believed their role was to give orders, and take action when they were disobeyed. Their first response was mass meetings where they could abuse us as a group, and make implied threats to shape up or ship out. Since any military man is available because he is not going to rise any higher in the Pentagon, the men were ones who knew how to give orders but not how to develop strategies to be obeyed.
Their actions awakened dormant emotions. In some cases, among children who had grown up in abusive environments, the response was instinctive. Among others, it recalled the cultural conflicts of the early years.
The military men couldn’t deal with civilians who simply did not share their institutional history. At out customers shop, it was the military man who was replaced, but not without more threats by our customer’s customer that it had to change or worse would come its way.
In our layer of their caste world, we were the ones delegated to act out their drama for them, and so our military manager is one of the few men brought in by the subcontractor who has survived. The contractor isn’t concerned that he has made mistakes; perhaps, to reinforce its superiority, he’s supposed to. It cares less that he has fired or forced so many out; as an organization we are its inferior, and anyone within our institution is, by definition, subordinate to the counterpart in the parent organization, and expendable to its function.
Indeed many were probably glad he removed so many. During the interregnum when no one was running parts of the subcontract, people who had talent and experience rose, and became counterparts to people at the customer’s who would never mix with the social groups they represented. They were as disruptive to the tribal structure as Lee Iacocca and Robert Stemple, and their removal reinstated the prelapsarian balance.
The result in both Detroit and where I last worked is a heightened sense that dualistic vertical organizations have bifurcated into the masses who know there are problems and leaders who have no idea how to solve them. Estrangement strains the institutions, but not the historically inherited analysis of the situations. The contours of the cultures are clear in the crises that won’t go away.
In Detroit, one absorbs legendary names and motifs growing up. At the other place, the company retold its key story during its first attempt to address safety and security problems. Indeed during those early days of organization-wide video training, it was the only transmission that was slowed by too many viewers. By the time the culture consultants arrived, many had refreshed their memories, and some used the legend as a mantle to cloak their obstreperousness.
Creation myths do not exist everywhere. In most places I’ve work, people don’t even know the name of the founder, and the most typical narrative is bureaucratic gossip. In Detroit, the legends are recognized by their first names: Michael Moore filmed Roger and Me; Harry Bennett wrote We Never Called Him Henry, a furrier advertised with imagined conversations between Roger and Ross, then Roger and Roger. The caste organization used only last names.
Cultures are rarely homogenous. Most contain competing elements which may be channeled through social structures like clans who alternate power, like the summer people and winter people. Folk narratives often recall past incidents of conflict that disturbed the equilibrium before suggesting ideal solutions.
In Detroit, internal stresses are most clearly seen with Henry Ford. When he first succeeded, his investors criticized him because they believed automobiles would only exist as luxury vehicles. When Ford wouldn’t compromise, they changed to Henry Leland and formed Cadillac Automobile Company in 1902 with the belief the best way to operate was high profits on few sales. William Durant absorbed them into General Motors which he organized to sell different styles to different markets. When he proved too flamboyant, the banks took over.
Ford reorganized and introduced the Model T in 1908. After a few years, his partners, John and Horace Dodge, rebelled because they believed Ford sacrificed quality to quantity. When they died from prohibition alcohol, bankers absorbed their company into what became Chrysler.
Ford reorganized and avoided banks.
When Roger Smith became head of General Motors in 1980, it had a long organizational tradition of selecting the chairman from financial men, the president from production men. Lee Iacocca could never do more at Ford because the family held the top spot. His success at Chrysler violated this industry wide compromise between cost and quality, but was prompted by the only crisis financial men understand, bankruptcy.
Smith faced the same challenges and tried, at least with Saturn and Fiero, to shift the balance towards quality and inexpensive products. His greatest opposition came from those descended from Leland who believed the best strategy was expensive vehicles like Cadillacs and pick-up trucks with low production costs.
Smith’s replacement, like Iacocca, violated the stasis between the groups. Robert Stemple was the first man to rise to chairman from production. He was widely seen in the ranks as the last, best chance to turn things around. When he was forced out in 1992, the company pursued the low cost, high priced strategy with SUVs that haven’t survived market saturation, safety problems, and high operating costs anymore than American vehicles did during the oil embargo of the 1970s.
The collective history at my last employer evolved during a period of heightened national security. Most tales goes back to early conflicts between the military, seen as dampening parasites, and technocrats who saw themselves as creative overachievers.
The conflict between the moieties receded when national priorities changed. The subcontractor where I worked continued to hire retired military men, but they were ones who had learned the way to promotion was to do what was expected. They were seen as harmless tokens, since the customer was happy to pay us to relieve it of the need to hire them to appease a critical constituency.
The equipoise was disturbed when reporters made safety and security problems sound intractable. Suddenly the customer’s customer saw a military man as the only solution. It was a time when corporations were recruiting generals and admirals for top spots to exploit their contacts for contracts. By coincidence, our subcontract brought in a military refugee as our business manager.
Unlike previous military retirees, the new men were ones who believed their role was to give orders, and take action when they were disobeyed. Their first response was mass meetings where they could abuse us as a group, and make implied threats to shape up or ship out. Since any military man is available because he is not going to rise any higher in the Pentagon, the men were ones who knew how to give orders but not how to develop strategies to be obeyed.
Their actions awakened dormant emotions. In some cases, among children who had grown up in abusive environments, the response was instinctive. Among others, it recalled the cultural conflicts of the early years.
The military men couldn’t deal with civilians who simply did not share their institutional history. At out customers shop, it was the military man who was replaced, but not without more threats by our customer’s customer that it had to change or worse would come its way.
In our layer of their caste world, we were the ones delegated to act out their drama for them, and so our military manager is one of the few men brought in by the subcontractor who has survived. The contractor isn’t concerned that he has made mistakes; perhaps, to reinforce its superiority, he’s supposed to. It cares less that he has fired or forced so many out; as an organization we are its inferior, and anyone within our institution is, by definition, subordinate to the counterpart in the parent organization, and expendable to its function.
Indeed many were probably glad he removed so many. During the interregnum when no one was running parts of the subcontract, people who had talent and experience rose, and became counterparts to people at the customer’s who would never mix with the social groups they represented. They were as disruptive to the tribal structure as Lee Iacocca and Robert Stemple, and their removal reinstated the prelapsarian balance.
The result in both Detroit and where I last worked is a heightened sense that dualistic vertical organizations have bifurcated into the masses who know there are problems and leaders who have no idea how to solve them. Estrangement strains the institutions, but not the historically inherited analysis of the situations. The contours of the cultures are clear in the crises that won’t go away.
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