Charles Darwin.
This quote summarise sadly our current situation at work. At a time when we would have to change our consuming habit or we will disappear at a relatively short term, the reluctance to changes is never been so strong. C. Darwin did not invent a new concept with this sentence; he just described a fixed law of the Nature. And it applies to anything on the surface of the Earth. If something does not work on a long term basis, it would have to change or be changed or die. The problem with people is that they are conservative, too conservative. We do have a linear conception of our environment. Things are like this today, they will remain the same tomorrow. Since I'm working for money, I've alternated periods of work and periods of unemployment. The ability to adapt myself to an new working environment each time I did get back to work helped me to develop a great capacity to deal with Change. Last year I was unemployed (again), but not scared at all. I think I'm far away of being able to understand people who fight for their job. If your position is withdrawn then you'll find another job, this is it. This reminds me the Theory of Chaos, nicely described by Michael Crichton in his novel Jurasic Park (the book, not the movie who is cr#p comparing to the book): any state of equilibrium cannot persist indefinitely. There was only a only series of states of equilibrium punctuated by periods of chaos. For anyone, chaos is a transition stage like the time between two jobs. The most you can adapt your behaviour during a period chaos, the highest are your chances to survive. And so is personal employment.
Nature's laws govern everything that is on the surface of Earth. Nothing is out of scope of it. Learning knowing them helped me to cope with them, even taking advantage of the situations that it generates. Being prepared, because those laws never changed it makes them so predictable.
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.
This quote of Albert Einstein does summarize quite well my career up to now. Since I've officially started to work in 1998, I've mainly worked as temporary of contractor. I've experimented more than a dozen of different working environment in different sectors (petrochemicals, financial services, telecoms, manufacturing, ...) all in the Finance department.
Finance department is the only one where you can monitor the entire company's activity. But it is also anus industria: all the issues eventually end up in the Finance department. At this level, you are in front line to evaluate the impact of the decisions made in the company, and get very frustrated about them! As temporary staff member, I've experienced many crisis situations: I was always called once the saturation point has been reached for a while. You know, this kind of situations where people are struggling so much with their daily tasks that they cannot even cope with the standard thing, so much overwhelmed than they finally realize they need an extra staff, at least temporary one, the time things are cooling down. This department is the worse regarding that: as it is a non-value added department, generating no direct cash for the company, the increase of the headcount is just considered as an unnecessary increase of dead costs.
That's incredible the kind of unefficient decision people can take when they start to deal with any plan for cost reduction. So many experienced people fired for young beginners, in the name of Cost Saving. The concept of "hidden costs" is totally ignored by so many managers. I've seen some key operational position with turnovers over 400% per year just because they had decided a salary cap at those positions. The saving was obvious, but the hidden cost was scarrying: on month training per person by four different person at a position plus hiring costs and plus he time spend downstream to search and correct the errors made by the beginners. That's the current trend now: what can be counted exists and has to be reduced, what we can't count doesn't exist (otherwise we would be able to count it).
In all position I've worked before, I've witnessed situations where people tried to make more efficient,cost effective and easyer to use, but eventally made them more heavy than ever. Few people did really reach their target in that case. Each time I encounter one of them, I really did enjoy working with them. The problem is that the biggest the company is, the less you've got them, because it requires more energy and courage to have thing done efficiently. The more people involved in the change, the more negative reactions you'll get and the more time you'll spend to sell you idea.
Finance department is the only one where you can monitor the entire company's activity. But it is also anus industria: all the issues eventually end up in the Finance department. At this level, you are in front line to evaluate the impact of the decisions made in the company, and get very frustrated about them! As temporary staff member, I've experienced many crisis situations: I was always called once the saturation point has been reached for a while. You know, this kind of situations where people are struggling so much with their daily tasks that they cannot even cope with the standard thing, so much overwhelmed than they finally realize they need an extra staff, at least temporary one, the time things are cooling down. This department is the worse regarding that: as it is a non-value added department, generating no direct cash for the company, the increase of the headcount is just considered as an unnecessary increase of dead costs.
That's incredible the kind of unefficient decision people can take when they start to deal with any plan for cost reduction. So many experienced people fired for young beginners, in the name of Cost Saving. The concept of "hidden costs" is totally ignored by so many managers. I've seen some key operational position with turnovers over 400% per year just because they had decided a salary cap at those positions. The saving was obvious, but the hidden cost was scarrying: on month training per person by four different person at a position plus hiring costs and plus he time spend downstream to search and correct the errors made by the beginners. That's the current trend now: what can be counted exists and has to be reduced, what we can't count doesn't exist (otherwise we would be able to count it).
In all position I've worked before, I've witnessed situations where people tried to make more efficient,cost effective and easyer to use, but eventally made them more heavy than ever. Few people did really reach their target in that case. Each time I encounter one of them, I really did enjoy working with them. The problem is that the biggest the company is, the less you've got them, because it requires more energy and courage to have thing done efficiently. The more people involved in the change, the more negative reactions you'll get and the more time you'll spend to sell you idea.
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