Ability before age

Words: 418
Reading Time: 1 min. 24 sec.s

The whole idea of retirement is a recent by-product of the factory-led economy.

In societies before the industrial age there was no set age at which folk ceased to seen as productive. Only illness and infirmity might mean someone was supported by the community. Even then, their experience and wisdom was valued, so most individuals continued to contribute to the community in some way.

With the dawn of the factory age came the debilitating demand that everyone work at the same relentless pace. It was man as part of the machine. Anybody not able to match that pace was inevitably seen in the same way as a component that could no longer meet the burden place on it. At that point the component person was scrapped.

The idea of retirement has been largely sold and accepted as the just reward for years of toil at a thankless task. Of course, it is no such thing. To industry retirement is simply preventive maintenance – get rid of the component as it approaches its MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure).

The fact that ageism persists in the workplace, even when the task is not physically demanding and would benefit from long experience, just shows how deeply engrained this paradigm has become. Few even think about it anymore; it's received wisdom.

65 years old? Finished - get an apprentice in for a fraction of the cost.

Fortunately, for those of us running our own businesses, there is no fixed point at which we absolutely must stop enjoying ourselves and go sit in an armchair. This is one of the many points where small business will always triumph over big business. We can favour ourselves and our customers, rather than favouring the insentient corporation.

If business in general could learn to recognize ability instead of age, ability instead of favouritism, ability instead of appearance, ability combined with attitude, it would gain immeasurably. And that applies at both ends of a working life; but I’m not holding my breath.

For those who are listening, there are a number of things you could do.

Business suggestions:
1) Scrap any fixed age for retirement;
2) Reward contribution rather than length of service;
3) Recognize the value experience has;
4) Make sure experience does not hinder innovation;
5) Reconnect with the talent you’ve scrapped;
6) Check that people enjoy, rather than endure, what you ask them to do;
7) A business is only as good as the people who are part of it;8) There is no functioning business without people.

Packaging should be a pushover

Words: 420
Reading Time: 1 minute 24 seconds

Blister packaging, particularly around small products like pills, is a frequently recurring source of exasperation to me. I am glad to find I am not alone.

According to a British study, over 60,000 people receive hospital treatment each year due to injuries from opening food packaging. When you add in similar injuries from opening packages on products other than food – including medicines themselves – then the cost to the British taxpayer is staggering.

In 2003 the Daily Telegraph coined the term “wrap rage” for this ingredient of consumer anger and disgust, but the march to encase everything on the planet in plastic seems relentless.

Sometimes regulations dictate that some OTC drugs have tamper resistance to deter people opening them in the shop; other regulations are aimed at child-resistance as an adjunct to health and safety. But these are a minority of cases.

Frequently packages are intentionally made difficult to open to reduce pilfering and shoplifting. Hard plastic clamshell packs also protect products while they are being shipped. This is more about saving the retailer and the manufacturer money. There is no element of either healthy and safety, or consumer interest.

There are many possible solutions to allow easy access to package contents and many products that simply do not warrant blister packs. Pills where there is no place for day-labelling is a good example. If vitamins can come in a single, tamper-proof pot, why not these too?

However, this relies entirely on the goodwill and commercial interests of manufacturers and retailers. I cannot recall a single instance of a product moving from blister packaging to some other form of container.

And how many service companies also make product-access equally difficult in less obvious, but equally deleterious ways? Unanswered calls, limited availability, poor tenders, untailored offerings – the list goes on.

In many cases use of blister packs is a result of a we’re-here-because-we’re-here-because-we’re here mentality. Everybody does it in this industry. It’s standard practice.

The sound of minds clanging shut is deafening.

Why change? Here are three good reasons:
1) The first in any product field to break ranks and make life easier for consumers will clean the plates of their competitors;
2) An increasing percentage of the population is among those who have great purchasing power, but suffer disproportionately from this problem – the grey vote;
3) Not removing an adverse experience at the point of consumption, when there is ample opportunity and advantage in doing so, is simply bad for business – and you are supposed to be in business, aren’t you?

Knowing Is Not Enough

Words: 561 Reading time: 1 minute 52 seconds

It isn’t what we know that determines the outcome; it’s what we do with what we know.

Example 1
Prior to “Operation Market Garden” in September 1944 the senior Allied commanders knew that the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions were located on the corridor that the Allies planned to use for their narrow-front thrust. This made achieving the objective highly unlikely.

More than 16,800 Allied troops were killed, wounded or captured in a fruitless effort that was essentially targeted at assuaging a bruised ego.

Example 2
In December of the same year the Germans launched a tactically brilliant offensive through the Ardennes, inflicting heavy losses on inexperienced Allied troops.

Just like Market Garden 'It was not intelligence (evaluated information of the enemy) that failed. The failure was the commanders and certain G-2's, who did not act on the intelligence they had,' according to one of Patton's subordinates.

Although both of these failures to listen came close together, they are by no means unique. Similar failures had preceded them in earlier times and others have followed in later times.

Example 3
The North Vietnamese Easter Offensive of 1972 was similar and as one author has pointed out "Though the location, numbers and types of forces were not the same, the command assumptions, the weather and the use and misuse of intelligence had almost the same catastrophic effects in both clashes.... "

Example 4
Ten years later, in the South Atlantic, the Falklands war may have been avoidable. In any event it was undoubtedly made more costly and riskier by the intelligence failure that preceded it. British officials were unresponsive to warnings that diplomacy had failed and invasion was imminent.

Example 5
In 2003 it was Iraq. As the White House has acknowledged, intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs did not drive its decision to go to war.

The intelligence on Iraq was there. It did not get things wrong and thereby mislead policymakers. Once again the leaders were insensitive to information that suggested that the course of action on which they were embarked was likely to lead to disaster.

These examples are drawn from the military sphere simply because mistakes there tend to more visible and better documented than failures in business. But similar failures in business abound. Failures where the enterprise does not give sufficient weight either to facts within its purview, or relevant facts easily revealed.

Many people, let alone businesses, are uneasy acknowledging that many of the conventions and principles they operate on are unwritten, unspoken and unconscious. Psychologists estimate that 95% of the things we say and do each day are done on “autopilot”, that is automatically, unthinkingly and routinely.

And the very familiarity of such actions mean they go unrecognised and unquestioned long after they cease to be either safe or appropriate. Thus it is that we wake up one day to find ourselves in an awful mess without realising quite how we got there.

The tragedy is that working with either a business coach, or an NLP Practitioner for even a short period of time will begin to raise awareness of the subconscious paradigms we are running and what the implications might be.

Make just one New Year’s Resolution – start working on raising your awareness of yourself and your business so that you can improve your chances of recognising the warning signs before it is too late.