Category Archives: Basic Business Concepts

The corporate meltdown comments have begun to take on a life of their own. The last two comments are a good starting point for an expanded discussion of the possible humanization of industry as they illustrate two sides of a … Continue reading →

We live in a world where electronic devices give us mastery over time and space.  We should be using this new-found power to enhance our lives. However,this vast multiplication of efficiency is an open invitation for some to construct giant … Continue reading →

I’d like to suggest one probable cause for the increasing instability of employment in large businesses.  The speed of business particle flow is approaching the threshold of human endurance.

Back in the Fifties, when your grandfather was still working, men, and some women, worked long hours under often depressinging conditions, but they handled fewer cycles of action in a day than we do now in a single hour.

They were busy, oh my yes, and everyone scurried around, as I recall, but firing off a memo took two people and an hour to complete. The secretary, remember her, would be called into the managers office and would sit and take notes while the manager dictated the memo. She would type a draft and the manager would review and revise it and she would type a final and he would sign it, and so forth and so on. Then she would put it in a envelope and put it in the outgoing mail for the mail boy. Remember him?

At the end of a long day, a busy manager might look back with satisfaction on a handful of decisions made and a pile of memos sent off. Weekly staff meetings were the norm, but lowly engineers and clerical staff spent most of the time at their desks or the water coolers.

Today, the cell phone rings while you are still eating breakfast. You have at least one life-shaking decision to make before you leave for work, and you have at least two phone calls to make during your commute to your office which is fifteen miles and 90 minutes away on the freeway.

If you have  a Blackberry PDA, your email has been piling up while you drive and you are tempted to look at the latest ones when traffic slows to a crawl.

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After reading my posts and my book, you may think I am anti-corporation in my viewpoints. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Corporate life is a necessary and vital part of your career life cycle.

If you haven’t worked in a big corporation or a big agency, you will not have the breadth of experience to appreciate the forces that operate within such a group. That experience, although it can be painful and psychically damaging, is a challenging but essential part of developing an understanding of your full capabilities and limits.

I dare say that most of us, even the best and brightest, need to work for a big organization to understand the ins and outs of career success. There are a few, like Bill Gates, who can drop out of school and bypass the whole industrial experience, because they are bright enough to create their own industry.

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