Thats the way we have always done it!!!

[stony]

Ever have someone say that to you????

 

you may have read this before but i find it very fitting in most military squadrons around the air force. "sir thats just teh way we do it here.

 

 

based on a real experiment with 8 monkeys.

 

Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable.

 

Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.

 

One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder. All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why. However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

 

A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he’s not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he’s attacking the new monkey.

 

One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.

 

DONT settle for "thats the way we do it here" make a change.

[RB26powered74zcar]

Laughed my ass of on that one Stony... how true it is.

[jeffer949]

Growing up my mom always cut the back of the turkey off when she made a turkey. One day i asked her why she did that. She replied. IDK thats how my mom always did it. I left it alone and then years later my mom was making a turkey and her mom was ther also. And my mom cut the end of the turkey off, Her mom stopped her and asked her what she was doing. and she repiled isnt that how you always did it growing up? Her mom said " oh darling, our oven was just to small to fit the whole bird in"

 

Not really my mom but i heard it somewhere.

[Derek]

The "there's got to be a better way" workers have been beat up for so long by the "don't upset the cart" workers in this country that I'm not sure if we'll ever recover.

 

Self employed, (synonymous with broke) and thinking of better ways every day!

 

Derek

[woldson]

The "there's got to be a better way" workers have been beat up for so long by the "don't upset the cart" workers in this country that I'm not sure if we'll ever recover.

 

Self employed, (synonymous with broke) and thinking of better ways every day!

 

Derek

 

So true.

 

Some things learned by humans through history are great, this was learned by trial and error and then shared.

 

 

Some things can be improved upon.

 

I think a lot was lost when companies started hiring collage kids directly into management, instead of letting people from the ground floor work there way up.

 

I can see why this happened, the "kids" brought "new" ideas and were much easily controlled, "yes men".

 

I think that this worked at first to some degree, until macadamia started dreaming of ways, "outside the box", of doing things, without any idea that their crappy ideas would work. Told the kids and so on.

 

No repercussions to the teachers so it became worse.

 

Now more then ever management seems to hate workers, and workers hate management.

 

It seems a circle that can to be broken. Too bad.

 

I know there is a lot of heavy education here, most that gather to this site are thinkers, allowed to think, no TOLD to think for themselves.

This is a good thing, if spoon feeding happened, collage, then the ingenuity of this site would die, and it would be full of a lot of sheepeople.

 

Freedom grants those who want it, great success with great failure.

You take away the failure, you take away success, hence no freedom, just a lot of spoon feeding.

 

I could go on forever, so I hope the readers of my post are considerate of all that is said.

 

Collage was a starting point, not an end all! Today, you can take a man with 20yrs of hard work, dedication and wisdom and replace him with a "noob" and believe you've got a better worker.

 

I think trade schools should replace collages. The teachers should have at least 10-15 years in service of that trade.

[woldson]

I'm not sure, but I think tony D may weigh in here. I certainly would like his insight on this specifically.

[woldson]

It was brought to my attention that my "grouping" may need clarification.

 

The system is broken, this dose not mean that all that are a part of it are also broken. Teachers specifically.

My apologies to those that are tiring to do there best in spite of it, Peace.

[Tony D]

I am dealing with an Apprenticeship system at this very moment. The principal of the distributorship is a Diesel Fitter by trade. The technician I am working with was an aircraft fitter. Both are Swiss, both were in the compulsory military service in their country, both went through traditional trades apprenticeship during military service, and part of that was university education. Both completed their apprenticeship, and continued to a complete Engineering Degree. One went on to get an executive MBA (which I said I would not hold against him), but made note that he was close to 35 when he started that program, and that he can't understand how anybody can get an MBA without ever leaving university and getting world experience.

 

We have discussed 'engineers' and their role in the world. One of the most startling things they noticed about American Engineers, (and this goes for University graduates in the USA in general) is their lack of experience in real world application of their trade upon graduation. Hand in hand with that is a feeling that when they are on a site they don't wear uniforms, and think they are managers.

 

In most of the world, a Bachelor's in Engineering is your entry level to a hands-on mechanical trades position, which augments your apprenticehip training. Further university training in financial matters is usually what occurs to get you into 'management'... There are only so many design and R&D positions out there, but somehow the graduates think they deserve a LARGE starting salary when they can't do anything! What most people in the USA get coming to service their mechanical items are high school graduates who have hands on experience and not much else. Not a lot of training, but some mechanical aptitude. Many of the mechanical trades mills now turn out people with little mechanical aptitude, and call them 'mechanics' or 'technicians' but who have little underlying knowledge of what they are doing other than simple component replacement. Maybe they don't need that to fix your appliance, or even your car, but...

 

Anyway, in response to their inability to wear a uniform (the comment came up because I actually showed up at their location 'flying the flag' in company logoware) was that by and large macademia tries to force into many students heads that 'higher education' means you never touch anything again, and that you are 'above that dirty work'---that it should be left for lower forms of people.

 

The response was first a look of shock, and then 'that's stupid, that's not the way it is!'

 

The problem comes from macademia lumping trades and labor into a general pool saying that we all can get rich never getting dirty. Sure, that's great, but someone has to do the hands on, and regardless of how you implement engineering controls and make the best SOP's, unskilled workers will only accomplish so much. I experience this where I have to supervise TCN (Third Country Nationals) in the middle eastern countries. Many times they are 'electricians'...they have a screwdriver and a multimeter. But give them a simple electricl schematic diagram and say 'go make this modification' and they stare blankly at the paper. You end up showing them what wires are needed to be moved, what parts that need to be procured, and then where all wires need to be landed.

 

I got into a lot of arguments when I first got out of the military because I was told 'it's not like that here'... I got so frustrated eventually I blew up at a manager and said "you hired morons then! I like to think I was hired for this position because I was qualified for the position, not because my mom was boffing the safety advisor and she wanted me out of the house!" (Which was the case of my immediate 'superior' technican... They jsut had bad people in positions with absolutely no theoretical background, nor education pertinent to the trade, and ended up with bad results. They figured if they couldn't get it to work, then it didn't. I can't count how many things I improved through simple common sense and applying basic engineering principles to things that were in place for 10+ years simply because people didn't want to rock the boat. We went from a 75% online capacity, to over 99.98% while simultaneously going from a $2.2 million annual O&M budget to $475,000! I did that, fighting every step of the way against the 'experts'...

 

Removing the generators from our prime movers was (I was told) an all day affair. I witnessed the process. Held my tongue at the stupidity I saw. Next time we needed to do it, I grabbed the newest operator we had, and got it out of the generator building in 15 minutes using two 4X4 skids and some grease...along with a holeshot from the Hyster Forklift.

 

Management and the work crew came in on Monday expecting to take a day to get the generator out of the building, to see it sitting under a tarp, in the middle of the parking lot with a LARGE sign on it: "2 Men, 1 Forklift, 15 minutes work. NO EXPERIENCED PERSONNEL USED." I refused to tell ANYBODY how it was accomplished. It most of all irked the idiot who had convinced everyone it took a day to do this.

 

It was where I forumlated the phrase "Just because you screwed your sister for 17 years doesn't make it right!" This was indicative of the attitude there, they did it without thinking.

 

This is a DISEASE.

 

Demming mentions it in his 14 points and 7 deadly diseases in 'Out of the Crisis'. The largest tenent of his theory is that the people doing the work know how to do it, JUST ASK THEM! And if they can't answer why they are doing something a specific way FIVE TIMES, then likely they aren't trained enough.

 

That one stuck in my mind: Ask "Why" five times. The Japanese call it '5 Y'...and it's the basis for some maintenance and operational theories. People who get P.O. over 'five why' usually don't know what they are doing, and need to be avoided.

 

Sadly, lethargy and sloth are rampant, and people just do what has always been done, without expending a siiiiiiinctilla of thought towards WHY they do what they do.

 

At another company I wrote to the national service manager decrying a manager who continually had "I ustas"---always saying how HE did a specific job. Usually these involved feats of strength well beyond normal people. (Read B.S.) My stance was if he wanted to tell the field people how to do their job, then maybe he needed to be in the field, and a REAL manager be put into his place...one that would concentrate on getting field people the tools and training they NEEDED to most expeditiously complete their jobs. That company I obfuscated my resume completely to land the job. Dumbed it down and omitted whole sections of education simply so they would not think I was 'overqualified'... I probably was, I was simply being lazy. I didn't want the responsibility and the volatility of management responsibility in a production atmosphere where I was saddled with responsibility but given no authourity to RECTIFY the problems I saw (mainly firing people who were infested with the 'old ways shouldn't be changed' mentality.)

 

When you can come into a place, make the plant record for production two weeks running, two years in a row (when the senior operator and manager were on vacation simultaneously and you were in total charge of all plant operations decisions) then get laid off due to politics... You just look for that job where you cruise the roads (or skies...or world) and are your own master as best you can be.

 

I digress... There are many facets to the problems here, I could go on and on with opinion, anecdotes, and other prattle...

[woldson]

Better put then myself. Thanks D.

[cygnusx1]

"Manageable" has been pushed so much further up the list than "talented", that the latter is often overlooked. I don't think I can ever work for a typical big corporation again, at either end of the spectrum. I have become just too bitter.

 

I'll never forget when my new "boss" hired a consulting company to come up with some innovative product ideas to drive some products into the pipeline. After the initial studies and concepts were ready to be revealed, he organized a big limelight meeting to shine onto himself while presenting all the concepts. Surprisingly, I was invited. As he passed the concepts around the room, I noticed that at least half of the 40 or so that were being shown were almost straight out of my dated lab notebook, with credit to him and the consultants. He was well aware of my notebook. At the end of the meeting, when we had to comment on each of the concepts, I couldn't just sit back and hold it in. I stated my case and opened up my notebook showing the similarities in a non accusatory way. I basically said that I had already shown a lot of these concepts a couple of years ago but that revisiting them now would be a good idea. His comment was, laughingly, "I need to burn that notebook." This is in front of his senior management! A few months later, I am laid off and he is still there kissing arse. Nice.

 

from my 12 years with that company, I can give you many, many situations that exemplify this. To the original point, he gets away with it, because his managers let him, because their managers let them,...and so on. In the end, they keep their fat checks rolling in, and see no evil, hear no evil.

[jasper]

There may be a term for this, but I can't remember it. The Peter principle?

If a person does a job well, they get promoted . This cycle continues until they rise to the level of their INCOMPETENCY !!!

They can no longer do a good job...and that's where they stay. Performing a job they are not qualified for.

 

Another saying/justification for a given action/inaction that burns my ASS, is the INFAMOUS......"it is what it is". It is my firm belief that someone made it this way, and all we have to do is use our intelligence to make it different/better !!!

I consistently watch superiors hide behind this statement.

[RTz]

There may be a term for this, but I can't remember it. The Peter principle?

If a person does a job well, they get promoted . This cycle continues until they rise to the level of their INCOMPETENCY !!!

They can no longer do a good job...and that's where they stay. Performing a job they are not qualified for.

.

 

The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".

[DeleriousZ]

I have a somewhat similar story to this. It's more along the lines of 'the way it used to be done' or 'that's how we've done it forever'.

 

I used to work with a company that produced off-highway industrial diesel engine powerplants, ranging from 14L inline 6 engines to v20 behemoths. In this particular situation, a transmission was being used that had only been used twice in the companies history, due to customer request. In order to run this transmission, a rubber coupling needed to be ordered that allowed for slight misalignments between the engine and transmission center-lines.

 

In the past the company had always needed to create a large (read 20" diameter, 2" thick) steel spacer that had to be custom machined from steel. This was extremely expensive, especially if there was an engineering miscalculation on its thickness or any of the bolt hole/stud locations. The coupler required was a 3 piece design consisting of a housing that bolted to the flywheel of the engine, a rubber center section with a metal insert on the inner diameter of the section, and a solid flange that was pressed onto the transmission shaft.

 

The job was put on hold for some reason or another, and I decided to take a jaunt downstairs to the floor (I'm a 3D CADD designer) and see if there was anything I could do to help the situation. After 5 minutes of measuring and thinking, I decided to try to flip the coupler around so the housing sat inward of the flywheel housing, thus eliminating the requirement for a spacer.

 

5 minutes of thinking from a junior (read green) designer saved thousands of dollars for the company. Instead they were prepared to pay out the nose for this, not even thinking to look at the parts they received. This was of course not helped by the "if it looks wrong, send it back, it's not our fault we can't work on it, you screwed up, so we're going to sit and cry about it until someone comes and fixes it rather than us taking 2 seconds to fix it" mentality. It may sound bias or harsh, but the shop foreman and lead hand were two of the biggest drama queens I've ever seen.

 

I encountered resistance from "the floor" every single day I worked for that company, and was finally laid off after a year due to lack or work. I was outright told the first few weeks of the job to basically not even bother to try new things because they would be ignored.

[Nizm0Zed]

"2 Men, 1 Forklift, 15 minutes work. NO EXPERIENCED PERSONNEL USED."

 

Absoulute GOLD!!!

 

have to say, i am guilty of some of that 'thinking' in my earlier days, i try not to keep that mentality now though.

I remember getting yelled at by the foreman because i couldnt diagnose a difficult suspension problem fresh out of school.

maybe due to in-experience???

 

as for the peter principle, it goes one step further for our public service here in oz, basically, once an employee has a permanent position there is only 3 ways out, either make it so hard that they quit themselves (rare, with all the benefits) make thier position redundant, meaning you have to pay out all their entitlements and give them a package when leaving,

Or, the most common one, promote them into another department, which then removes the problem into someone elses hands.

Out of sight, out of mind.

 

Basically, the leading postions in our public service are filled with morons...