Welcome to another episode of capitalism discovery.
Last week, I had to do a self assessment at my work. At the end of it all, there was a new section that wasn’t there the last time I did it. I had to list out the instances in which I represented my company’s values.
Of course if the question was framed in a different manner, something like “tell us about the part of your work you’ve done that you’re really proud of and show us how you included our values in it?” I won’t be bothered by it. This would be different from the earlier sentence because it doesn’t question my worth, it asks me to be proud of my work and basically show it off. It doesn’t question me or my actions. But its not framed that way.
It included vague words such as Integrity, Responsibility. And I had to prove and show instances when I showed those traits. I didn’t know why I felt icky about it but then I read this.
Jack Welch was sort of a legend in the business world. We read about outrageous acquisitions and out of the box 4-D chess moves by Elon these days but Jack started it all. According to sixsigmadaily.com “He ran General Electric from 1981 until 2000. During that time, the company’s revenue increased fivefold to reach $130 billion. Welch became one of the most famous CEOs in the world. His biography – “Jack: Straight From The Gut” – sold 10 million copies worldwide.” But that’s the catch. sixsigmadaily.com wants to sell me a course. The truth is that Welch created a bunch of jargon to cut jobs and outsource GE’s work. During his term GE exited almost all of its consumer facing electronics divisions (from which the “E” in “GE” came from) and became a financial services company. I joke with my friends occasionally that every company eventually becomes a bank/lender. Apple did it. Starbucks did it. Tesla did it. This is because lending is one of the very few ways you can guarantee a return to the investors. And Wall Street loves this. And another way is cutting jobs. And Jack? He’s the master of cutting jobs.
He calls it the “vitality curve”. Every year he asked GE’s managers to group their subordinates into three categories. 20% of the subordinates went into A, exceeds expectations. 70% went into B, meets expectations. And 10% went into C, it didn’t matter what they were categorized as because they were fired. This system is called Stacked Ranking and Wall Street loves this too. People become less, short term expenses become less, line goes up, suits are happy.
Soon GE was just a holding company that offered financial services. Cory Doctorow says that the company was “getting out of the “doing things” business and converting itself into a doomed, cockamamie finance scam.”
I’m not saying that striving for efficiency is unethical. In fact, in the days of climate change incremental changes towards the collective good are essential. Reducing waste and converting energy efficiently are two of the most difficult problems we need to tackle in 21st century. They sound simple enough, but ask any engineer and they’ll tell you how difficult it is to run things as efficient as possible. In fact my first post on here was about lean management.
I cannot tell if my company is now suddenly inspired by Jack Welch or not. But I don’t feel good whenever I have to fill out documents, show proofs for all my actions and constantly prove my worth and then fill out documents again. This doesn’t feel like work, but feels like I’m back in school. Maybe this is part of the process of continuous self improvement and incremental updates.