Vultures

[xoxoxoBruce]

Corruption as taught in business school. How many here have been taught corruption. What is the purpose of a business? To make a profit? Then you are corrupt. Then you have been taught the purpose of the mafia. You would be part of the problem; thinking as an MBA.

The first businesses in this country were the blacksmith, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, etc. The purpose was to support this man and his family, ie profit. In order to be successful they had to provide a product or service that was needed as there was no disposible income then.
As time went by businesses turned into corporations and Walmart. At what point did profit stop being the purpose of the business?
Oh, and the fleas are not killing the rats but getting fat along with them at the expence of the farmer.

[tw]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
The first businesses in this country were the blacksmith, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, etc. The purpose was to support this man and his family, ie profit. In order to be successful they had to provide a product or service that was needed as there was no disposible income then.

If purpose was only to support the family, then all those surveys of what people want from work were wrong. Money is about number three on the list of why people work. Number one is consistently a variation of doing a job, or doing what they want to do, or accomplishing something, etc. IOW the primary reason people work is because they want to do a job. People will even take pay cuts for reason number one.

Each blacksmith, butcher, baker, etc expects to be rewarded for his work - so that he too can also support his family. But if you were correct, each would have been doing jobs they hated only because they first needed to support a family. They did jobs they enjoy best because they accomplish something. They first and foremost contributed to society as all productive businesses do and want to do.

Primary purpose in Walmart was to provide products. Primary purpose at Sears was the profit. No wonder Walmart ate Sears for lunch.

The primary purpose of a corporation has always been the product. Without a product, either the corporation is corrupt or it is not even earning a profit. There is no supporting a family unless and until the primary purpose of a corporation is met - to provide society with a product.

When the primary purpose of a compony is only the reward - a profit - then there is no difference between a company and the mafia. Both only want to steal from society - the product and customer be damned.

FirstEnergy meets the criteria of mafia category. Difference between mafia and FirstEnergy? FirstEnergy bribes their politicians using legal channels. Neither cares about the product, customer, or nation. And both will blame anyone or everyone else for all problems.

Watch who gets latest blame from FirstEnergy. Allegeny Power watched FirstEnergy unsetting the grid for hours. When FirstEnergy started to collapse, APS disconnected from FirstEnergy thereby saving most all their 15(?)million customers from blackout. PJM did same. FirstEnergy is now blaming APS for creating the blackout when, in reality, APS did just what a responsible company and a responsible member of the grid is suppose to do. PJM did same to eventually save the rest of the east USA from a blackout.

Of course FirstEnergy will blame everyone else. How many out there think anyone but Firestone deserves blame for the deaths created by bad Firestone Wilderness tires? If you lie long enough, some people will believe sound byte lies rather than learn the truth. That is what FirstEnergy is hoping you will do.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I spend a long time hunting&pecking a looong reply last night, only to have the Celler 404 when I submitted it. So abreviated:

You don't have a clue about the blacksmith et al. They didn't chose what would be fullfilling. They took what they could get or starved. If somebody else was already doing it they were S.O.L.
They were lucky to get any apprenticeship and were more likely indentured. Job satisfaction? No, survival.

Primary purpose in Walmart was to provide products.

Take a 20 minute break while Sam Walton and I compose ourselves. Take 20 more.
CLUE The prime, principle, foremost, overriding, underlying, top, main, singular reason to start a business is profit. The thing from which all blessings flow. Even non-profit corporations, want it
Business = profit or loss. That's loss as in lose, gone, bye-bye.

[tw]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
Take a 20 minute break while Sam Walton and I compose ourselves. Take 20 more.

Sam Walton always said the primary function was to provide customers with good products and good sevice at the lowest prices. Why do you insult Mr Walton by imposing your personal biases on him? Why do you insist on corrupting the minds of good honest Ameicans with business school propaganda. Sam Walton was very critical of such MBA types who only destroyed corporations with their anti-innovative mentalities.

In the meantime, other successful businessmen got that way because profit was not the purpose. Dave of Wendy's literally returned from retirement because Wendy's management was becoming too concerned with profits - the product be damned. Dave returned Wendy's back to strong growth because Dave knew the product - not the profits - were so important. Dave had to remove corrupt bean counter types who foolishly thought the profits were the purpose. Those bean counter did not have the willpower to see through their silly education. Dave had to return and fix their mindset - to save Wendy's.

When John Young was driving HP into the ground, eventually Dave Packard returned from retirement to save his company. He just heard too many bad things at the company beer bashes - all directly traceable to a John Young and his 'profits' agenda. It is well known that Dave Packeard did not want to come back. His wife had died. He was not that healthy. But the MBA John Young was destroying Bill and Dave's life work by maximizing profits.

It was obvious that Ford Motor company had inferior products. Paul Weaver describes a corrupt organization in his book "Suicidal Corporation":

When I went to Dearborn, it worreid me that I knew nothing about cars - that I didn't even own one. Wouldn't that is be handicap to a rising young executive, I wondered? The answer was no. People at world headquarters almost never talked about cars. ... No one expressed any enthusiam for cars that I ever detected. ... What did interest my colleagues at Ford ... was the company's position in the auto industry... It often seemed that my colleagues would rather bear any burden or incur any risk than see a competitior gain the tiniest advantage. Issues like the character and quality of our products or how customers used and felt about them, struck few sparks by comparison.

So how did Ford start becoming profitable? They stopped worrying about market share, profits, and cost controls. First with the Taurus, Ford Motor worried about the product, the customer and things important. To do so they have to remove corrupt bean counter mentalities. The returned the business to its primary purpose using the expression "Quality is Job 1". Those who advocat profits as the purpose of a company end up destroying the company.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You're give examples of methodology. The MBA's ruined many good companies because they didn't know the business, only how to measure it's success. You have to run the business properly to be sucessful, but that doesn't change the fact that profit is the goal. Without it there is no business and even a badly run business will survive, if it's market niche allows a profit.

Sam Walton always said the primary function was to provide customers with good products and good sevice at the lowest prices. Why do you insult Mr Walton by imposing your personal biases on him? Why do you insist on corrupting the minds of good honest Ameicans with business school propaganda. Sam Walton was very critical of such MBA types who only destroyed corporations with their anti-innovative mentalities.

GE said "Progress is are most important product"and Westinghouse said "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse". They all lie.

[tw]

If your entire knowledge of a slogan is just the slogan, then you have no idea what the slogan represents.

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
GE said "Progress is are most important product"and Westinghouse said "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse".

But when Ford decided to make better products and stop worrying about profits, then they got a slogan that first had to be approved by a major reason for their change. The expression "Quality is Job 1" is based upon a real program that replaced "bean counters" with "car guys" (descriptions directly from inside the industry).

Who is a great critic of industries run by such corruption? Who says the purpose of business is the product? The man that Ford Motor went to for approval of that slogan - "Quality is Job 1": W Edwards Deming.

Those silly slogans from GE and Westinghouse only mock you. Slogans invented in a Madison Ave advertising agency have no basis in how a company operates. But when bean counters were replaced by product people; when product replaced profit as the purpose of the business; when the slogan actually meant something fundamental in the company - then the company went from near backruptcy to record profits.

The profits are the purpose in a corrupt business. The product is everything - including the only source of honest profits. That alone means the product is more important than profits.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You keep talking about the MBA's straying from the business plan, fucking things up then someone returning to the business plan and saving the company. I have no problem with that, but it is the business plan and not the primary purpose or objective which is for any business, profit.
Even the non-profits have the same goal. They just do more noble things with it.
TW, hmmmm...teaching at west chester.

[Undertoad]

A business has to be about its soul, because the middle managers will screw it up if they think it's all about money.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It doesn't matter what it's about. Middle managers will screw it up if left to their own devices. That's why they must be made to stick to the business plan. If not, then there's no profit and if there's no profit then there's no business.

[tw]

Originally posted by Undertoad
A business has to be about its soul, because the middle managers will screw it up if they think it's all about money.

And that soul is called the strategic objective - as made so obviously clear in the movie Apollo 13.

Name the hero in that movie? Tom Hanks? Any of the other astronauts? Name one thing they do that is heroic. None of the stars represent a hero in a real event called Apollo 13. And that should have been obvious if one thinks "product oriented". MBAs will have trouble understanding that every hero had no memorable name. That is how America works when America is productive. The movie Apollo 13 demonstrates quite explicitly how a good organizaton works. Demonstrated was a concept called "stragetic objective" - the soul.

Gene Krantz draws a picture of earth and moon. He puts an X where Apollo 13 exploded. He says we can get them this far; drawing a line around the moon and only half way to earth. "That is not acceptable", he says. He then draws on X on the far side of earth and says that is the objective.

Gene Krantz did everything that a good manager understands. He defined the strategic objection. Then every hero does his part to make the strategic objective work. Gene Krantz empowered the little people. Little people made all big decisions. Therefore astronauts did not die.

Middle managers bring in everything that exists inside Apollo 13. Little people must make a square CO2 absorber fit into a round hole. They do so because management worked for the employees. Those three astronauts would be dead if employees worked for the bosses. That is the *soul*. That is how middle managers do not screw up the system - because top management does not do as taught in business schools. Since the product is THE most important function, then a management system must be product oriented - bosses working for employees.

Ironically, the reverse is called communism - people work for the bosses. That is what is taught in the business schools.

We have but two very specific examples of business school concepts. The first is the blackout - and those lying bosses saying the problem requires more money. Lying about a grid being to undersized or too old. There is not a big money problem nor an insufficient power grid. Where the grid is in trouble, management is the enemy of America - does more to damage America than terrorists. FirstEnergy is a classic example; company run just as business schools teach. Employees were not even empowered to fix defective earth grounds in Ocean County NJ! People were getting electric shocks in their jacuzzis and swimming pools - because MBAs and lawyers are top management in FirstEnergy.

The *soul* in FirstEnergy is to make a profit - the product be damned. Such management is why this blackout happened - a control problem directly traceable to bean counter mentailities who now cast blame on everyone else - becasue they are MBAs and lawyers.

Second: the Columiba report in http://caib.us says the exact same thing. They define reasons seven dead astronauts in Challenger and in Columiba as directly traceable to same top management. Look what changed between Apollo 13 and Columbia. In all cases, the little people knew exactly what was wrong and had ability to fix same. In Apollo 13, the system was a classic example of American Patriotism. It could accomplish something - repeatedly - because little people were empowered. So many times were problems solved that if it was not a real story, most people would not believe it possible.

The system that saved Apollo 13 could advance mankind. But under a business school management of Columiba and Challenger, engineers knew the problem up first and immediately - and were not empowered to fix it. Both times the problem was correctly identified immediately. Top management was so technically ignorant (what business schools call acceptable) that managment could not even provide a strategic objective - except do only what the top bosses wanted - cut costs.

The *soul* of an organization. The "strategic objective". When business school philosphy is an all powerful management and the 'purpose is to make money', then we have corruption and murder. When the purpose is a stragetic objective defined by top management so that top management then works for employees - then we call it the American Miracle.

That American Miracle is the *soul* of America. The prouduct is everything. Many years ago (about 1991) I asked here "What happened to the spirite of the American Pioneer?" Why instead do we graduate far more MBAs that engineers? People now want fast profits - the product be damned (ie Bethlehem Steel and USX).

Product oriented Americans know that seven Columbia astronauts were murdered by top NASA management who used business school management concepts (also called communism) rather than the product oriented management that always made America great.

There is no long term profit if the purpose is "the profit". When profit is the *soul* - the stragetic objective - the purpose of a business; then corruption is inevitable. Arthur Andersen, Enron, Tyco, MCI Worldcom, Waste Management, Qwest, Global Crossing ... and exactly what the great MBA, Pres George Jr, believes in. Go for the profits - the campiagn contributions - rather than work for patriotic Americans. No wonder the US trashed a potenial surplus into the largest debt in American history - with an MBA as president.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You make some good points. It's a shame most of them are so shrouded in rhetoric and political agenda that most people will be turned off, half way through.
There are a million things wrong with the business climate today. I don't see that changing when "globalization" has provided slave labor and end run environmentalism to partially cover ineptitude and greed. And the long arm of Wall Street Brokers and Mutual Fund managers control the stock prices that determine how top management is paid.
BUT, the fuel is profit and without it no business can survive.

[Undertoad]

There must be a better organization to use to make your point about money's impact on business than one that's government-funded with no market competitors and with a sudden influx of money from nowhere.

[headsplice]

For those of you convinced that the product is still the main goal of the most successful companies, I suggest you read No Logo, by Naomi Klein. Interesting insights. Website available here.

[xoxoxoBruce]

There are countless examples of companies that succeeded or failed because because they focused on or ignored the importance of providing a quality product and value. Those that pursue profit at the expense quality are doomed. But profit is the ultimate goal because without it a company cannot survive, no matter how good their intentions.