Up, Down and Around Our Town

There is one benefit to graying hair. It, for no other reason, does give you some degree of street cred when it comes to offering an opinion. Nothing brought this home to roost more than a few queries that I fielded this past week. It got me to thinking about the bigger picture.

Spending time with young people is a great gift. In fact, we sometimes forget what it was like to be 20 and tend to lump lots of those folks into a corner. Sifting out the real message has always been the key and this week, the lock was turned with a couple of decent questions. They both occurred in a class discussion on Management. They both revolved around the perception that management is somehow a pure and exact science. I had to explain that such was hardly the case. In fact, I shared that much of what has been written in the textbooks is probably destined to be totally rewritten in the next few years. Why?

Because we have never seen this type of rapid change in the perception of American Business. There are no chapters on Bernie Maddoff, nor a case study on the AIG mess. It then dawned on me that most of these young people were barely teenagers when it all started. I refer to 9-11.

A dastardly act of destruction that hit our shores both in New York and Washington. As with most countries, we reacted by taking care of the carnage and then vowing to extract our own pound of flesh. The problem is the latter and it had far-reaching effects on the way that business is handled.

Mind you, we enjoyed a wonderful standard of living. In fact, it was this search for the financial holy grail that has perpetuated most of what management is nowadays. The search for money. It has altered forever the fact that all businesses go through ups and downs; now it is all about the bottom line.

9-11 brought us Homeland Security. It also took away lots of our own privacy. Add to the fact that the electronic revolution now can seemingly spy on almost anyone, anywhere and at any time with the presence of nothing more than a cellphone. We all thought we had seen everything there was to see when Rodney King was beat up by the police in California. That would be considered small-time now.

Not only is nothing private, it is hardly sacred. The social interaction pages like Twitter, My Space and Facebook have linked people in all of the right ways. And - all of the wrong. What folks don't realize is that all of that data is now available to anyone with the electronic key. I queried the students as to their use of Facebook. Most of them check that page no less than 30 times a day. And, like a good fisherman, once you get into a school of "good stuff", off it is shipped to another group. It is no wonder that privacy has been sacrified.

But, back to management. We now have a structure that allows for very little presence of error. Make a mistate and out the door you go. And, oh by the way, we have it captured on You Tube just in case you have forgotten.

Promotions? Sometimes. Demotions? Plenty. Why? Bottom Line. It is all about the dollars and that is another legacy of 9-11. The cost of doing business.

Everyone we go, the cost kept going up. Wages didn't keep up and debt was created. Need a bigger or newer car? Credit was the answer. Want a bigger house? No problem. We'll find a sub-prime loan to get you into the $400,000 house that you still can't afford. My favorite? It has to be granite countertops and stainless steel appliances and the norm is anything less is crap.

And so it goes. And what went with it was the sanctioning of greed. Yes, those chickens have now come home to roost in public (see the outrage over the AIG bonuses), but the unforseen management tool was overlooked. And it took out a lot. The fact that Real Estate was now dropping in value sent a shock wave throughout all of the business world and the spending habits of millions of Americans. It is no wonder that the young people are cynical.

Now we are in the compressing stage. Layoffs and downsizing. Adjusting to a market that is anything like the market in August, 2001. From the shores of the oceans to the White House. The Obama administration has bitten off quite a chunk. Governor Quinn is biting the same chunk. Everyone wants "their due" and the price tag may be more than we can afford. Or is it.

They say that we don't understand contractural bonuses. Perhaps we don't. But the management books teach that incentive programs are tied to performance and not projections. Senior Management figured as long as "they got theirs", then everyone else should be happy. Except they aren't.

From housing to retail to personal investing to finding a way to take a vacation, it is all about the bottom line. Management, for the most part, cares little about personnel and only about fiscal performance. That is the biggest death of the business world since 9-11. Spending our money on prevention has cost management its ability to dream and create.

Such is the reason that so many occupy their times with their own electronic pacifiers. Whether on their iPod or playing with the iPhone or lugging their iMac all over the place, we have certainly connected. My question is connected to what?

Now the bottom line. Then the managers. Later the employees. Soon the retirees. Housing, vehicles, jobs, drugs and long-term care. The core of what makes us successful is now buried in governmental regulations that makes it, at times, impossible to come up for air. To plan. To dream. Perhaps those attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were perceived as military; in reality, they have become economic. What lessons have really been learned?

Greed. Retention of dollars. The Bottom Line. I shared with the students that all have a place in every successful business. In proper perspective. Using history to understand what balance is all about. Giving people time to learn how to produce and then producing. That is the function that has been lost with us being so distracted over the continued rewarding of bad behavior with more money. Believe me, if the bonuses for AIG were in the hundreds of dollars, it wouldn't warrant a word. But the perception is that these dollars are being paid out for performance not realized; they still got yours while you still have a formica counter top. It's just not right. Or so it looks.

Food to digest in a tense time. Better food to digest will come this week when Grammy celebrates her birthday. This time complete with friends, cakes and our collective heroes. The latter, I might add, just adds personality by the gallon seemingly every day. Not to mention her comedian brother who stirs the pot with great ease. And yes, the cake will be prepared in an off-white, anything but stainless steel oven, and served from a pretty blue formica countertop. Whether or not it ends up on You Tube isn't up to me. But you never know.

Enjoy spring; look after those who are hurting and try to keep perspective in mind as we wrestle with the major problems. We'll talk about more of them next week. Promise. Till then, and as always, I remain.....