A few years back I had the opportunity to work with a couple of mechanical engineers who’d spent the bulk of their careers with a Fortune 500 company. We were tasked with reviewing a high tech product from a start-up company, to determine if acquisition of the business was in our best financial interests. I’m not an engineer (nor do I play one on TV), but a visit to the company provided us with the following information:
- The product was built in-house, in a very crude manufacturing facility
- All electronic components were off-the-shelf, and we were unable to identify anything proprietary
- Software was written in house or based on off-the-shelf products
Our company was far larger, with a vast product development budget. From a business perspective, I could see no reason not to pursue the purchase. The question fell to the engineers: could they reverse-engineer the product and put it into production in a reasonable timeframe?
After some careful deliberation, the engineers replied with, “No, we can’t”, without providing any additional information or explanation.
I was stunned, as we clearly had more resources than the company that was manufacturing the product already. There was no doubt in my mind, none at all, that we could have pulled it off within the stated time frame.
It was only later that someone explained the logic of these engineers to me. In their former corporate environment, saying no was not only accepted, but encouraged. It limited the amount of exposure for your department, who were not rewarded for pushing the envelope (but were certainly penalized for missing milestones). The biggest development sin for this company was saying yes, unless you were absolutely certain that you could deliver on time and at budget.
I was educated in a different manner. When senior management came to me with a project or a problem, “No I cannot accomplish this” was never an acceptable answer. Step one was always to figure out how to meet their request in a reasonable timeframe at or near budget. Sometimes I delivered on time, sometimes I delivered at budget and sometimes I delivered both; in any event, I always delivered something.
Larry Summers, the president’s Chief Economic Advisor, appears to be another student of the School of Mediocrity. In an interview last Friday, Summers was quoted as saying, “The level of unemployment is unacceptably high and will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.”
Thank you, Captain Obvious, but I don’t need you to tell me how things will be without change. As an economic advisor, I want you to tell me how to fix the problem, and not just report on it. Something is broken; if you can’t fix it, it’s time we found someone who can.
Even the president, the very man who should be setting the benchmarks, has stated a goal of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of the economic stimulus plan in 2010. This sounds like a good thing, until you realize that 6.9 million jobs have been lost in the past 12 months. And this number isn’t going down month on month; today, creation of 3.5 million jobs would drop the unemployment rate by 50% (not actual numbers, of course, but used for the sake of argument). If we continue to shed 200k jobs per month over the next year, then the 3.5 million jobs created will be offset by 8.1 million jobs lost.
And how about those whose jobs weren’t cut, but whose salaries were? Those numbers aren’t reflected in the 6.9 million above, even though these employees could be in the same dire financial straits as someone who is unemployed.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: unemployment is the single biggest problem facing the country today. Why?
- Unemployment drives crime
- Unemployed people don’t spend money, perpetuating the cycle of business failure and economic collapse
- Unemployed people don’t buy houses, pay mortgages, take loans, etc.
We are faced with a crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. Desperate times call for strong leadership, yet I’m seeing none of this from Washington. We cannot continue to accept or embrace mediocrity, since (quite frankly) we don’t have all that much time left.
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