Increasing Efficiency is Your Best Route to Employment Security
February 17, 2010
The cheapening of any article in common use almost immediately results in a largely increased demand for that article. Take the case of shoes, for instance. The introduction of machinery for doing every element of the work which was formerly done by hand has resulted in making shoes at a fraction of their former labor cost. Now almost every man, woman, and child in the working classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year, and they wear shoes all the time. Formerly, each workman bought perhaps one pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for shoes has so increased that there are relatively more men working in the shoe industry now than ever before.
The workmen in almost every trade have before them an object lesson of this kind, and yet, because they are ignorant of the history of their own trade, they still firmly believe, as their fathers did before them, that it is against their best interests for each man to turn out each day as much work as possible.
Under this fallacious idea, a large proportion of workmen deliberately work slowly so as to curtail their output. Almost every labor union has made, or is contemplating making, rules which have for their object curtailing the output of their members. Those men who have the greatest influence with the working people, the labor leaders, as well as many people with philanthropic feelings who are helping them, are daily spreading this fallacy and at the same time telling them that they are overworked.
-Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
From the time I was 18 until I was about 27, I spent most of my summers working as an asphalt sealant and maintenance contractor around Detroit, Michigan. One of the main jobs I did involved putting an asphalt sealant on parking lots and driveways. At the beginning of my first summer doing this work, I used to purchase the sealant in five-gallon pails. Then I starting purchasing the sealant in 55-gallon drums and installing a pipe on the drums to drain the sealant out. After a few years, I did so much asphalt sealing work I had a trailer custom made to hold 550 gallons of the sealant.
From the beginning of my second summer through my third, I had two people working for me whose job was to assist me in putting down the sealant. Their names were Larry and Jake. Larry was Jake’s father. Jake was mentally disabled but not overly so. He understood what was going on and followed instructions. He never really said much, however.
Neither Larry nor Jake cared much for the work they were doing. While they had decent work ethics and put up with me literally walking into their homes and getting them up for work each day, they were not extremely concerned with the quality of the work they were doing. They frequently cut corners and I needed to watch them pretty carefully. Larry was a guy I remember and respect a great deal because I think deep down he was a really good person. On Sundays, I used to have to wait in front of his house until he got back from church with his wife and children. Larry was a smart man who had made some mistakes throughout his life but worked when he could. He was hungover every day, and I bought him Gatorade after Gatorade at convenience shops to keep him going.
We would fill up five-gallon pails from the barrels and then walk the sealant over to an area of the asphalt we wanted to seal. Then, we would spread it around on the asphalt with either squeegees or a large brush. Without going into a lot of detail, this was excruciatingly difficult work because the sealant gets on your skin and burns. You are also outside, and the sun burns you because you are on black asphalt all day, and the sealant is a very heavy tar liquid that you need to pull off your skin at the end of each day. It often takes layers of your skin off when you remove it and needs to be removed with gasoline and a steel wool-like material.
As this business grew, I started getting better and better equipment for it. I will never forget the moment I purchased and installed a pumping system and sprayer on the tank. With this new pumping system I was able to pull up to any parking lot or house and, after blowing all the debris off the driveway or parking lot, turn on this spray machine and complete sealing the asphalt without hardly getting dirty at all. Best of all, I did not need to fill up the five-gallon buckets. I simply needed to turn on my sprayer and walk up and down the driveway.
One day I pulled up to a driveway that Jake and Larry were working on around 5:30 in the afternoon and turned on the sprayer. They were in the middle of working on the driveway and, by the looks of it, would be working for at least another 35 to 40 minutes. I told them to stop. Then, wearing khaki pants and a fresh shirt from the dry cleaner, I completed the entire job in less than five minutes.
I could see they both looked somewhat astonished. They also looked frightened because I think they believed this new sprayer was going to put them out of a job.
“This thing does not give as good of a coat as doing it by hand,” Jake said. This was the first time I had ever heard Jake say anything about the quality of the work we were doing.
“Yeah, it does not look as good,” said Larry.
The strangest thing happened over the next few weeks. Weird things started going wrong with the pump and we never made it through a full day. Belts would suddenly fail. Start switches would break off and disappear. I began to suspect after a week or so of this Larry and Jake were sabotaging the pump because they knew it could put them out of a job. After a few weeks of this I insisted I be the only one allowed to operate the machine, and I made sure I was. While I still have no proof of it to this day, I think Larry and Jake were sabotaging the machine.
Change is something that creeps into every single business, and the objective of every business is to lower costs because lower costs mean more profits. This means they are always looking for ways to eliminate your job. That’s right. Your very job is a threat to your company and its profits.
When I started in the Internet business in the year 1999, the world was a far different place. One of the most interesting things I witnessed involved computer programmers. In the late 1990s through 2001, computer programmers were like gods to companies in the United States. They could demand six-figure salaries and jumped around between companies at an alarming rate. Everyone wanted to hire them because there were so many Internet companies and businesses believed the Internet was the next great frontier.
At our small company we practically needed to beg programmers to work for us. We would offer them pizza and other incentives when they were not on other projects. In some cases, we would pay them as much as $100 an hour to do the work, and then they would stop working after four or five hours because they thought the work was “boring.” Some of the programmers I interviewed even requested stock options just to show up for work. I was baffled by the programmers I worked with and my inability to get the programmers to do any work really held me back.
Due to the difficulty surrounding this issue, we started building an office in India. We had no problem getting people to do the work there. In fact, people were enthusiastic about getting the work and wanted more of it. While there were lower costs associated with the work, the real reason for getting the work done abroad was that people were enthusiastic about doing the work. All we wanted was to get the work done.
After the dot com crash and the events of September 11, 2001, all of a sudden those American programmers were out of work. Tens of thousands of American programmers were let go in a very short time, and Internet companies dropped like flies.
I remember putting an ad out in late 2001 for an in-house programmer and getting overwhelmed with applications. I received so many applications, literally, one every few seconds, that I had to make changes to the settings in my Microsoft Outlook. I ended up hiring one person to work in our Los Angeles office who had just received a PhD from Caltech. I practically could have hired anyone I wanted in the world. There was simply no work for programmers. It had all dried up.
The economy did eventually recover. However, I still did not grow our base of programmers in the United States. I had such a bad experience the first time and, in the interim, had built a large group of programmers in our company in India. This was all I needed. I cannot imagine how many jobs went to India due to this.
Our company is not alone. Many companies do all their programming in other countries now. It simply makes more sense for them from a financial standpoint. They are not interested in doing work in the United States anymore due to the cost, hassles, and the fact the people are not as enthusiastic about doing the work.
There are tons of jobs in the United States and around the world right now that are under fire and are likely to disappear in the near future. There are many reasons jobs disappear, but the main one is because they can be done cheaper elsewhere. Every company and organization is constantly striving for greater efficiency. If your employers can do your job cheaply elsewhere, then they will.
There is no reason for them not to. The more cheaply they can produce a product or service, the more they can potentially sell of that product or service. The more of the product or service that’s sold, the more the company will grow and expand.
What does this mean for you and your job? It means the best use of your time and skill is finding jobs and employers where your role is one of increasing the efficiency of the company’s work. You always need to embrace efficiency and increase the output of the company at the lowest cost possible. If you fight efficiency, you will be seen as an enemy of the company and its growth. If this happens, you will most likely be looking for a new job shortly.
In the past there have been a number of phenomena I’ve watched with great interest:
-The emergence of China as a major economic power
-The massive decline of the American automobile industry
-The rise and massive success of various American companies like Intel, eBay, and Oracle
-The huge rise of jobs in places like India
China emerged as a force to be reckoned with because they can produce goods more cheaply. People will work for less money in China, and this makes it cheaper to produce products there. Incredibly, it is still cheaper to produce products in China even after accounting for shipping the products on boats all the way to the United States. All over the United States, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have disappeared due to the emergence of China as an economic power. If you are someone working in a factory in the present economy, you need to realize your job could be replaced very, very easily.
The American automobile industry has experienced a long and steady decline. Cars can be produced more cheaply elsewhere. American unions have set wages and benefits higher for American workers than for competitors. This has given competitors a huge advantage and also given American automobile companies less money to invest in improving their products. The products have continually gotten worse and worse. The companies able to produce the product at the lowest cost are winning.
The companies that have done the best in the United States over the past several decades are the companies that are increasing efficiency. While I could go into considerable detail about this, companies like Oracle, for example, creates database software which allows companies to save money by operating more efficiently. The efficient operation of these companies creates huge value. A company like eBay creates efficiencies by allowing people to trade goods without having to travel or do extensive research. This, too, creates efficiency. Companies like Intel make microchips that have not only aided the rapid spread of personal computers, but have also enabled companies to use computers which allow them to operate more efficiently.
India has been absorbing many American jobs for decades. They have call centers, programmers, and even legal work is being done there. The country has a lot more people than the United States and a corresponding level of talent. There is another advantage: people are willing to work more cheaply there for most jobs. It only makes sense for American companies to hire people there.
These are all examples of efficiency in action. You need to understand the world and your job are constantly being pushed to be more efficient. When you take a job at any company, you are entering an environment where you are at war. You are at war with the fact your employers are doing everything within their power to make their businesses more efficient. That means they want to save money on you and your work to the maximum extent they can.
The smartest thing you can do in your career is find companies that are increasing efficiency in the market and go to work for them, or find a company where you can increase the efficiency of what is being done. You need to embrace efficiency. If you fight efficiency, you will ultimately lose your job. We are not secure in our jobs and cannot be secure if we don’t embrace efficiency. The war for and against efficiency is something that is going on in every company and every organization. The employees and people who win this war are the ones who fight to make things more efficient.
Plant Yourself in Good Soil
September 9, 2009
What You Will Learn
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There is nothing more important to your long-term success than finding and keeping yourself in a healthy environment. There are so many people out there with incredible talent I have known, who insist on remaining in the wrong environment and, consequently, they never end up reaching their full potential in their careers and lives.
If you work alongside, or spend your time with people who are negative or lazy, who lack motivation, dislike work and do not believe there are great possibilities for them out there–you will begin to absorb this negativity. You simply cannot spend time around negative people if you hope to have a positive life and career. If the people you spend your time with are angry, depressed and defeated, then the odds are you too will feel this way. You need to be honest with yourself; you are never going to pull these people up. But they can definitely pull you down, and will do so whenever they have the opportunity.
Several months ago I met a very powerful and wealthy real estate developer from Texas. He had lately seen one catastrophic setback after another in the real estate business, and had spent the previous months on the phone dealing with attorneys, tenants who had no money, discouraged real estate agents and the like. The situation was so dire that he started drinking every night just so he could stop worrying and forget about all the negativity in his life. Only this way could he actually get some much-needed sleep at night.
One day this man woke up and decided that he did not need all the negativity anymore. He stated that he now planned on going to at least one self-improvement seminar per month for the next year and spending a lot of his time listening to various self-improvement tapes. He refused to be dragged down by the negativity in his environment and, instead, wanted to make sure that he would therefrom surround himself with happy and inspired people. When I met this fellow he told me he believed that this decision had transformed his life.
Something most of us look forward to all year is taking vacations. Vacations are periods of time when we travel out of town and escape our normal everyday lives. Have you ever gone on a vacation and come back and looked at the people around you, and seen stress, anger and negativity? I have. It is amazing because once you get back into the thick of daily life and work, your entire outlook can change very rapidly. Oftentimes taking a vacation makes it feel as if you have escaped from a world of negativity and unhappiness, having given yourself a momentary reprieve. Many people come back from vacations and look at their surroundings, and decide to quit their jobs. This is a very common occurrence, and I have seen it happen more times than I can count.
Like the guy from Texas, I have learned to keep my spirits up as well through inspirational reading and self help seminars. Anytime I attend a self-help seminar that is a week or so in duration wherein the seminar participants break up into groups to discuss their lives, I commonly encounter people who suddenly declare that they are going to return home and end a marriage or quit a job.
The reason this happens is because being away from the daily grind of life, and being surrounded by positive messages helps people realize that they may be in destructive relationships, or other situations that serve to keep them down, frustrated and depressed. I have also met many people who returned from seminars after a week or so, and then started giant companies, or lost a hundred pounds or more–or made other absolutely incredible transformations. The reason these people were able to make these transformations was because they took themselves out of negative environments and put themselves into positive environments.
Several years ago I began dating someone who was incredibly negative. She had some very attractive attributes despite her negativity; however, she was probably the most negative person I have ever met. We did not travel in the same social circles and she attended a different school than I did, so I did not know a lot about her when we started dating. When I had met this woman, of course, she was not at all negative and seemed like a very nice person who was lovely and great to be around.
Within a few weeks of starting our relationship, the woman told me that she had spent a summer in a “stress camp/mental hospital” when she was younger, because she had been extremely depressed and angry. She had apparently been in the hospital for cutting herself with a razor, and had struggled with numerous psychological issues over the six or seven years preceding that dramatic event. The problems this woman had had in the past seemed to be much more serious than I ever could have guessed.
“I’m all better now,” she told me matter-of-factly. “I got a really smart psychiatrist and he helped me figure out all of my problems and issues.”
As our relationship progressed I would notice that occasionally she would lie to me, or not tell me about certain things. She would do the same to others. This to me seemed like something I should stay away from, but for whatever reason I wanted to make the relationship work. Over the next few months, I started to feel really depressed all of the time. If I would call her on the phone in the evening to chat, she would invariably spend 20 minutes or so telling me about how this person or that person was horrible, and that she would never speak with them again. When she would call me it was always to report something negative that had happened, or something negative someone had said, or something that I had done wrong. It could be as simple as my forgetting to throw a Diet Coke can in the recycling bin in her kitchen the previous evening. While this may not seem like a big deal, an offense such as this would be framed in the gravest of terms, and would leave me feeling deflated and regretful for hours–so much so that it was difficult to even concentrate after the heavy reprimand.
Sometimes when I would speak with this person about something unrelated to her, she would launch into an hysterical rage, as if I had been directly criticizing her. The more I was around this person, the more it wore on me. People who knew me told me that my posture and expression had changed. I began to gain weight. To top all of this off, I started hearing rumors that my girlfriend was seeing someone else behind my back, despite the fact that she had told me she loved me, and that we had an exclusive relationship. Unable to balance multiple secretive relationships, she eventually broke up with me, giving me a list of reasons for her doing so. I had never heard any of these criticisms of me before, and I have never heard them since. However, these criticisms and all of the negativity at the time sure did hurt.
Nevertheless, once I was out of this negative environment, and I was no longer listening to this person’s constant criticism and negativity, my life changed. Everything very quickly improved for me. I became the happy, optimistic person I had been before. Had I stayed with this woman, I am almost certain I would have experienced a very difficult life in all respects. This is how it is with negative people: They can rub off on you and influence the course of your life, for the worse.
This sort of negativity is not confined to individuals. It is also common to many organizations, companies, families and other groups. You simply cannot spend your time with negative people and inside of negative organizations–and have a good life.
The differences among people in the world are transparent and obvious if we just pay attention. Kids are the easiest example of how people separate themselves out into distinct groups. This weekend I went to a high school football game in a small town. This is the sort of town where the entire city shows up for the game. What is interesting is how the kids all group themselves together. There are the stoners who look at the players and make fun of the situation and make negative comments. Then there are the other athletes, who cheer and try to be positive. There are also the smart kids, who sit together as a group and watch. This is what kids do in high school and it is also what adults do in life. People group themselves together according to their outlook on life, and their values. Some people have a very positive outlook and are enthusiastic about the future, and others only see negativity.
Do you see gloom and doom–or do see a future that is ripe with possibility? Do the people around you lift you up or do they bring you down?
I love the idea of being a farmer because farming is all about creating good conditions so things can grow. The most important element for growing anything is the quality of the soil. If you put something in toxic soil it will not grow. The conditions for something to grow need to be controlled and if they are not a certain way, the plant will not be able to grow. Farmers pay a lot of attention to the quality of the soil. In fact, they will rarely grow the same crop on a piece of land two years in a row: If a farmer grows soy beans one year, the next year he may grow corn. The reason they rotate crops like this is because the soil will rarely be good for the same sort of crop for several years in a row. Farmers sometimes fertilize the soil before, during and after planting. They may create special sorts of irrigation to insure the crop receives the right amount of water.
Because humans depend on food for their very survival, a farmer usually comes from a long lineage of farmers, stretching back hundreds of years, who learned early on that nothing could grow without the right soil. And in fact, if we did not know about the importance of maintaining good soil in farming, civilization as we know it would probably not exist. The expansion and growth of the human race has largely been due to the ability of farmers to planting flourishing crops, and this is utterly dependent on the quality of soil.
If good soil is so important to a farmer, why then is this something that we often ignore in our own lives? Instead of planting ourselves in good soil, we allow ourselves to be around people and environments that pollute our bodies and our minds. You have enough sense to know that if you eat extremely unhealthy food, do not exercise and abuse various substances, you are abusing your body. I am sure you also understand that abusing your body is also something that will affect your mind. Your physical state directly impacts your emotional state.
Several years ago I lived in a small town where I was working for a federal judge. One of the most popular things for men in the town to do was to go out to the bars for Monday Night Football. In fact, there was a street with about 20 bars that would all get packed with football-watching patrons every Monday night. Virtually every man I knew did this; the men would all sit there ordering pitcher after pitcher of beer, eating extremely unhealthy food until the game was over. Then they would drink some more. Most of the men had potbellies, and many of them were ineffective the next day at work. Football is a fun sport to watch, but participating in this ritual week after week is not necessarily going to aid you in advancing towards your life goals.
While the example of Monday Night Football may seem extreme, we also do this with the people we know. We fall into destructive patterns of behavior. In our families we might tend to sit around and eat too much, and be unhealthy. If one person in a family has a bad weight problem, it is likely that others will too. They all participate in bad dieting together. It becomes a sort of bonding activity. If one person in the family smokes cigarettes, it is pretty likely that others do as well. The people we associate with and spend time rub off on us, and we generally become like them. Your diet and health is related to your body, and your body is related to your mind.
One of the most amazing things that I have noticed throughout the years is that people who stay together for a long time as a couple generally end up looking similar to one another. Their facial expressions, mannerisms and overall appearance all end up basically the same. This is no surprise, for it is yet another example of how we become like those we spend time with.
Yesterday there was a front page article in the New York Times titled “Out of Work and Too Down to Search On,” about people who have given up looking for employment. The article seemed to give solace and even glorify many people who have spent the past several months doing nothing, because they have given up looking for a job:
Mrs. Salinas was initially confident that she would land somewhere quickly. She seemed to be doing well, too, scoring interview after interview for senior-level corporate marketing positions. But each of those prospects dried up, usually because of a hiring freeze or some other obstacle.
So, for the last two months, she has not looked at all. Partly, she has been busy, selling their old house, moving into a new one they are renting at half the monthly expense, seeing her daughter off to kindergarten.
She is helped by the fact that her husband, a vice president at an advertising agency, still has his job. After the couple realized that her job search might take time, they decided to cut back on their spending.
She has in mind a specific set of companies, but they are all still not hiring. Unwilling to settle for just any job, she said, she would rather bide her time.
But the process of searching for work and coming up empty has also left her feeling spent.
“I was just discouraged, fed up and angry, feeling like my career had betrayed me,” she said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/us/07worker.html?pagewanted=all
To me an article like this does not help anybody: We should, instead, be writing about the people who end up finding jobs despite a bad economy.
If you are tempted to give up on your job search, or if you think you cannot do something, do not associate with people who will support this negative outlook, or you will surely go nowhere. Find people who will push you to do better and to improve–not people who will encourage your self-destructive behavior. Be very careful about spending time around any person who might put a negative spin on your dreams and aspirations. Surround yourself with big thinkers, people who are going to help you be all you can possibly be.
I am sure that you have friends, coworkers, relatives and others who cannot imagine you achieving what you really are capable of achieving. I am not saying that these people are bad people. But you cannot afford to waste your time with people who do not fully support your dreams. It does no one any good to spend valuable time with cynical, unhappy, jealous people. If you do not put yourself in an environment that will support your growth, then your dreams cannot come to fruition.
Plant yourself in good soil, and grow into the life you dream of living.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars. 
