Continuing the theme of employee loyalty, and what drives it, companies, of every size and description, need to look to their upper tiers.
"Oldcracker" pointed out in comments on part one that I neglected to mention the Peter Principle.
Hold on, hoss, I'm just getting warmed up.
For those of you not familiar with it, the Peter Principle says that people tend to get promoted to their level of incompetence, and then stagnate.
Now, I've ranted at some length about Lee Iacocca before, so I won't get completely stupid with it this time, but a brief explanation follows.
...Taking another ride on the Way-Back Machine...
Chrysler, back in the day, was falling apart from the weight of its bloated, incompetent management staff. This was due to the Peter Principle in action.
A manager, for example the manager of my afore-mentioned (in part one) store number one, the good gas station where everyone is motivated and happy, gets noticed by higher.
After all, his store performs, and performs well, right? Clearly he's got this gig down pat; so they promote him, to say a district manager position. And if he performs well there, as well, they move him up again; and then again.
But here's the thing; what if that individual just doesn't have what it takes to be more than a district manager?
He can be a great district guy, but totally out of his depth when it comes to a whole state, for example; but based on his performance, they bump him up anyway.
So, either one of two things can happen from there: either, unable to perform at a high enough level to deserve further promotion, he not only stagnates, but does a bad job at the regional level, or, the company, seeing his lackluster performance at the regional level, bumps him not up, but out.
This "up or out" thing was Lee Iacocca's idea at Chrysler, and in the short term, it worked great; they got rid of the deadwood, and everyone was happy.
The trouble came a few years down the line, when they started getting rid of effective, dynamic managers because they either couldn't perform at the next level up - despite being great at their current positions - or because they couldn't quite get promoted, a few too many times.
And like magic, Chrysler, after a string of bankruptcies, got sold off to Daimler. And just recently got bailed out by the taxpayer.
See, at the entry level this is not a problem. There are some employees who are hard-charging go-getters, and WANT that advancement; they should be allowed to pursue that opportunity. But there are also those who ARE perpetual cashiers, either through laziness, incompetence, or just plain being happy with what they have.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that the same thing is true in management, and very few companies seem to hit that sweet spot where those wanting advancement can go for it, and those looking to stay where they're competent can do so. Most either push their managers forwards, until they're too far ahead, or they bump them out in favor of a guy who used to run a Florsheim Shoe store and thus is clearly qualified to sell electronics.
Personal story.
At any rate, the end result is that, over time, we have created in this country a management culture of institutionalized incompetence; a climate in which even the most feckless manager becomes senior to people who are vastly better equipped than they to handle their office; and those competent subordinates...
...Quit.
And the people down the food chain from those incompetent managers suffer, which lowers THEIR job satisfaction, and their drive to get ahead even in those companies in which that advancement is theoretically possible.
This is the REAL base reason for outsourcing, guys.
The only reason managers think saving a buck by sending your customer service calls to Bangladesh is a good idea, is because they are too stupid to count to twenty with their shoes on. Maybe they were great at the lower-tier jobs, but once they've reached that lofty pinnacle from which they can make such decisions, the altitude gave them the world's greatest brain-freezy, and now they're drooling idiots.
See, when you piss off your customers, they stop buying your products.
This is not difficult to comprehend, but it still took a lot of companies a long time to figure that out well enough to start grudgingly bringing their customer service jobs back over here.
Too many times, when customers stop buying, and start leaving, the response is "raise our prices! We have to earn more on each individual sale!"
Which simply prices more people out of the market, and...
...You have Chrysler.
Again.
If you are providing a lower-quality service, you MUST, not should, MUST, do so at a lower price; otherwise, people will find alternatives.
And until you nationalize all the means of production, they are still free to do so.
This is, ultimately, one of the reasons communist countries are always such unendurable shitholes; because the companies are all owned and operated by "the people," which universally equates to the government, and as such, it doesn't matter what the quality of their goods are, because the customers don't HAVE any alternatives.
Guaranteed monopoly.
And a gradual downward spiral in terms of quality, until you're all driving Opels and wearing Bulgarian shoes made from goat leather.
Thankfully, in this country we haven't yet achieved the "worker's paradise," and as a result, people can still choose not to buy your crappy product.
But management chosen by the Peter Principle does not, cannot, and will not understand that.
Which is one reason we're edging closer to communism; those same idiot managers are the ones hoping the government will guarantee that people will HAVE TO buy from them.
I was in Russia in 1997, guys.
We don't want to be like them.
And remember, that was a DECADE after the fall of communism, and they STILL hadn't recovered from the economic, environmental, and cultural damage inflicted on them by their government.
All in the name of "protecting the people."
So when someone says something about protecting the people - from anything not involving criminals or armed invaders - I cringe inside, and pray fervently that the idiots who say such things might one day read a history book.
