IMG 140228 27
YOU SAY POTATO. AND ISAY LEAVE THE DOWNSIZED LIFE BEIUND AND HE AD FOR WHERE THE CARIBOU Apr. 22, 1996
Toraorrow moraing you go to work at Amalgamatcd Potato and find an envelopc on your desk with thc CEO's name in tlie upper-left corner, and you sit down and draw a dccp brcatli. After 22 years working yonr way up tkrougk tke Skin Division, you are about to bccomc road kilL one morę confuscd raccoon smeared across thc corporatc highway.
Amalgamatcd has bccn downsizing likc crazy for two years now. Everyone works 60 hours a week and goes homc with a bricfcasc as big as a garment bag. You have languished at your present salary, iu thc mid fivc digits, for quitc somc timc, and tlie ncw manageincnt team, guys in tkcir mid-30s, who carnc herc from pasta, and are trying to bring pasta-type glamour and growth to thc humble potato so tliat Amalgamatcd can turn a humongous profit and be sold and make top management dizzyingly rich, is cutting costs by decimating tlić drones, and now it's your turn to walk the plank.
But you open thc cnvclopc, and it isn't your finał notice. It is a niemo announcing that Amalgamatcd Potato is about to transform itsclf tlirough Total Quality Organization, a team-oriented leadership proccss in which power flows holisticaily, and you will spend thrcc days ncxt week at a seminar being empowered.
So you report to the seminar center, a big wbite concrete-origami structure with skylights and indoor trees and mapie floors and modular Fumiture in primary colors, and you sit in a circle of potato cmployccs with loose-leaf notebooks on their laps (Tools for Transformation), listening to a young facililator named Tcrri cxplain how TQO works. Shc is friendly in a robotic way, as if she had taken one of tliose pcrsonal-development courses where they train you to look thc other person in the eye when you speak to him and always say his name.
"Our business isn't potatoes; it's hclping pcoplc livc and work to their fuli potcntial," she says. "This is a team process; management docs not 'make decisions'; management empowers the team-lcadership proccss." Oh, you think. 1 sec.
The words holistic, leadership, proccss, quality and commitment crop up cvcrywherc--sentenccs like "The commitment to quality is a holistic value structure throughout tlie leadership proccss tliat is accessed dynamically through all functions of tlie organization from thc bottom up." Sentcnccs that, thc moment you hear them, tlicy’rc gonc, likc gas.
It dawns on you tliat nobody at Amalgamatcd will evcr utter a simple declarativc sentencc again.
This miglit be a good time to quit your job and head for Alaska and open a fishing camp, you think. You blamc liberals lor tliis at first: sometliing about thc term facililator makes you think of libcrals and their schoolmarm vicw of thc world ("No runtiing, please, no pushing, no bad talk") that leads tliem to climinatc sliarp edges and outlaw ilirtation betwccn strangers and rcarrange tlie playing field so tliat tlie sidełines are the goals. Liberals are in charge of tlie schools, and they rewritc thc tests to keep tlić scorcs from dropping. Libcrals run tlie churchcs, and nobody talks about sin lest it tend to make folks fccl marginalizcd.
But TQO isn'l the work of libcrals. Liberalism is dcad, so dead that Democrats have all bccomc moderate Republicans, and tlić hcavy hand of Big Govcrnmcnt is now limp and damp and trcmbly. TQO is thc hcavy hand of Big Business. You want to scc a big mitt, this is it.
When people talk about thc frcc market as the engine of progress, remember tliat long ago, movies were shown in gildcd palaccs with dcep-carpeted aisles, and you sat on a tlirone bencath a ceiling of smiling chcrubs and goddesses and looked up at a lutninous picture on a scrccn 50 ft. high, and today you go to a 32-screen multiplex in a shopping center and sit in a concrctc shoebox and watch a bad print on a screcn thc size of a tablecloth, and when you get up to leave, your fcet stick to thc floor. Capitalism has bestowed profound uglincss on this land. And it would make you ugly too.
You've got to make a swifl, smart decision whether to be a team player at Amalgamatcd, work a longcr wcck, donatc your lifc, acccpt that the company has switched your heałth plan over to an TIMO that rcquires 30-day advance notice of cmcrgcncy carc, acccpt thc TQO gibberish about power pcrcolating up from tlie bottom, or should you fly to Anchoragc and head up the Iditarod Trail and get to work guiding hunters across tlie tracklcss wild in scarcli ofthe wiły salmon?
You'rc a littlc old to bc making a bigjump, but therc's a lot to be said for reality. You don’t havc to sit in nicctiugs about tlie holistic proccss of quality leadership sharing. You could do real things all day, and at night tell storics about them. Thafs why thc green world is out thcrc: to give you an altemativc to thc monkcy island of corporatc lifc.
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