This morning reading the news three things struck me more than anything else. Those three things were; the closing down and laying off of workers at Blue Bell Ice Cream, the denial of a woman's attempt to use her phone to reply to a suicide message from her husband by Southwest Airlines flight attendants and the ongoing problems concerning cost overruns at the new VA hospital being built in Denver, CO. I can see a common thread running through each of these. That thread is a lack of understanding about the role of management within an organization.
In the first instance, that of Blue Bell, they have been hit by a listeria outbreak. People have died. Blue Bell has had to furlough almost half of its workers. They are spending a lot of money to try and assess their production process, while they are at a complete production halt. Trouble is, they knew something was amiss. They've been having this issue for at least two years now, which is clear they knew about because of test results from as far back as 2013 they didn't tell regulatory agencies about.
Secondly, Southwest has gotten into the news because a woman who was on board a plane that was about to take off suddenly got a text message from her husband. It was a kind of suicide note, but he hadn't killed himself yet. The flight attendants, seeing the woman's desperation to return the message and attempt to persuade him not to kill himself, or maybe to call the police, decided to enforce the rules about turning off your devices. For two solid hours the woman was crying on their flight. It was only when the plane touched down that she was able to call police in her city. They found him dead at that point.
Lastly, the VA is embroiled in controversy in Denver because a hospital project there is undergoing cost overruns, severe overruns. It turns out that much of it is because of mismanagement and bickering over control. Bids weren't properly done, such that companies to which those bids were submitted refused to respond. There appears to have been a general atmosphere of lack of cooperation between the VA and the general contractor concerning the project. There may also be a discovery of the general contractor's take it or leave it attitude toward what kind of economic equation they were willing to operate under. Normally, they would have been able to manhandle their sub-contractors, but they weren't able to this time.The subs would not work for the money on offer because of two things, apparently. Those complications being slow pay by the VA and the uncertainty they could see about being paid period due to the obvious conflict between the general contractor and the VA. Otherwise the general contractor could have done the usual thing, and made the subs all eat the price difference. Somehow, probably because of the public nature of it, that became too obvious to the subs and they proceeded to act as if they were organized or something. They probably weren't organized, but rather all under the sway of a situation common to them.
All of these things have happened, I propose, because of management practices that have gotten away from humanity and striven to appease some financial agenda. When I was going back to school recently one of the things that really struck me was the teaching concerning management I heard there. They advocated a management style of empowerment, saying that was far more effective than nut cutting. There were many case studies presented to back that up. The thing is, looking at the real world that isn't so much what you see. Most companies continue to operate under the idea that management is about nut cutting. The perception is that people are all lazy and don't want to work. They need to be compelled by rough means sometimes. Rough management is acceptable. That whole empowering thing costs too much at the point of impact. It's cheaper to let any problems present themselves and then deal with them when they do. It's cheaper, that is, until those problems are inherent to the nature of the management philosophy, then when they present they might be too expensive to continue.
When everything is about the moment, and not the bigger picture, and the moment is designed to come with too heavy costs should it necessitate slowing down and taking a look at the bigger picture, then the risk of doom to an operation is higher. That risk may materialize as an actual event or trend, the workers will do it to you, and they will be carrying out the expectations you have set for them, or it may not. If you encourage it those people may act also to prevent these kinds of things, maybe making less real-time profit but enabling better the concept of the going concern. I find it strange that companies, however, can't see that this kind of risk exists.
This is a complex topic. I guess I bring it up for the obvious opportunity to criticize the actions of those who had to perform under each of the systems, as well as any examples people might know elsewhere. There is also an element of this going on within the framework of the app economy, and its severe cost cutting atmosphere which may potentially be driving people to make similar decisions in the context of how they cooperate with it. I also want to give conservative minded business people a chance to rebut this, so that they can argue their form of Capitalism. That's what I think it is, a form of Capitalism. It's the most successful form to date, I think, but possibly about to undergo a change. If it(modern empowering management) isn't a potential groundswell, because the pace of it might be too slow, it may be a kind of issue that does come up and influences the flavor of business decisions going forward, hopefully for the better.