A New Organizational Model Using Logic, Cost-Effectiveness and Customer Service, Part 2

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

In fact, it was the mistrust of the people that caused the founders not to elect the president by popular vote, but have an electoral college establish who would be President.

Political campaigns have always been savage. The election of 1800 resulted in an electoral tie between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson and was filled with intrigue. Each of the 16 states had one vote as the election, according to the Federal Constitution, was to be decided by the states voting in House of Representatives. This would determine the third President of the United States. It took 36 separate votes of the 16 states to decide in Jefferson’s favor.

Even though political campaigns could be brutal, one’s honor meant something. In those days, having one’s honor challenged would sometimes result in a dual—witness Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804 that resulted in Hamilton’s death.

It seems we don't have that push back today. Lying for many has become a way of life. Politicians lie with conviction. It’s become a prerequisite for the job—a job that the Founders never thought of as a lifetime occupation. For them, serving their country was a drudge, a sacrifice—although a necessary and honorable one. Getting back to private life was their objective.

Today, lying is only wrong if you get caught—and then, not really wrong because everybody does it and what do right and wrong mean anyway in a relativistic (not, Einstein’s relativity), deterministic world. My DNA made me do it!

Win at all costs is the message. Winning is the only option. The end justifies the means. What happened to using, It’s not winning or losing it’s how you play the game as the pole star that guides us on how best to compete?

As mentioned above, Henry Ford helped establish the current organizational hierarchical model through the practice of assembly line specialization. Our educational system reinforced the model by offering majors in engineering, economics, political science, anthropology, history, etc. based on the current state of thinking for each discipline. However, the laws of physics don’t change. Our understanding of them changes, from believing the earth is at the center of the universe to Newton’s laws of motion to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

As mentioned last month, academia has been able to adjust their educational offering to our changing understanding of the general laws. What they haven’t done very well is adjust to the constantly changing practical application of these laws in product production—what we call Industrial Engineering.

Professors try to interpret the real world’s needs and adjust, but those without practical experience continue to fail in the learning for earning part. They are always playing catch up.

Sometimes we may have noble strategic objectives, but fail to develop or carry out a tactical plan to meet those objectives—the words are easy. Academia always has good intentions for industry, but seldom achieve good results. An academic institution has an objective of giving their students a firm understanding of the classical subjects. Part of the tactical plan that schools use to achieve this objective in technical subjects is to confront students with closed-form problems. Students that can demonstrate success in solving these problems are thought to have grasped an understanding of the underlying subject matter.

In the real world, critical thinking is an invaluable tool to solve the open-form problems that, more often than not, we are confronted with. Even with the best intentions, the academic classroom is a difficult environment to teach this important judgment tool.

The real world has had to comply with academia, rather than demand that academia meet their needs for qualified graduates. Lofty thinking and the ability to solve non-linear differential equations, while important, are not critical to success on the production floor.

To read this entire article, which appeared in the January 2017 issue of SMT Magazine, click here.

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