Everything went smoothly for Mrs A. on her first day back at work. She will be getting help one hour a day, and will have every Wednesday off.
When she got back to work, she found out that two of her friends were quitting and going elsewhere. When the experienced, skilled help starts moving on, management needs to take a good hard look at what's going on.
I look at the "Lean Model" like this: Management keeps cutting people out of the equation, and if things don't break down, they don't replace them. They keep this up until they have eliminated everone but the most basic and essential people. This model saves money in the short term, but in the long term, it is shortsited and delusional. The model is built on the idea that nothing is going to go wrong. When it does go bad, the resources don't exist to fix things. The whole house of cards comes crashing down.
Witness the whole sub-prime mortgage crisis. The whole business model is built on the belief that the economy and housing market will expand at the rate it had for the last couple of years. When the economy stopped expanding, the whole thing fell apart, and the banks and Mortgage companies are left holding the bag.
Very poor business. And to think that kind of delusional thinking was approved by Management of some of the biggest financial concerns in the US.
Scares you, doesn't it?
9 comments:
And that's exactly why John and I decided not to buy a house!
Good luck to Mrs. A!
Sarah: Now would not be the best time to sell, but if the economy stays stalled, you might be able to pick up a bargain. But it would be a blind faith buy, betting that housing rebounds.
And given that we only know we're going to be in the bay area for the next 2-3, possibly 5-7, years, and then would likely want to move, I don't think it'd be worth it. John did all the math, and we can make more money just paying rent and investing the down payment.
Sarah: It all depends on the economy. I bought my house for $60,000. Supposedly it is now worth $300,000.
Today's business model is tomorrow's toilet paper. Speaking of toilet paper, you ever notice how management always gets the top floor of the two-story outhouse?
Rick: And we all know what rolls downhill.
I can remember when I started at "the big company" we took pains to make sure that management didn't hear complaints from internal customers of our processes. Now, we tell our internal "partners" (they aren't customers any more) that they *should* complain to prevent management from shuffling any more staff off our project. The new mantra seems to be that if there aren't at least a few complaints, there's excess capacity and we can cut a little more.
Michael: And if you aren't working mass overtime, you don't need any more people.
Exactly.
Glad she got along okay.
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