Noah, Floods, Creative Destruction and Your Career
February 19, 2009
What You Will Learn
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One of the most important stories in the Bible, from the book of Genesis, is the story of the flood. According to this story, God looked down upon the Earth and became angry at what he perceived to be mankind’s sins. He regretted creating people and decided that they all needed to be destroyed. In reviewing the Earth, however, God noticed that Noah was someone who was blameless and and he told Noah that in seven days he would make it rain for forty days and forty nights. God told Noah that this rain would cause a giant flood. God instructed Noah to build an ark that was large enough to hold himself, his wife, his three sons and their wives, and a male and female species of every type of animal that existed. With these animals, Noah would be able to replenish the Earth after the flood.
This story is part of Western Religious tradition and my purpose here is not necessarily to debate the truth of this story in one way or another–indeed, a myriad of interpretations have been given to this story in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Instead, what is most interesting about this story, is the importance of the “flood” and how the concept of a “flood” and “renewal” has shaped the thinking of so many people and cultures throughout the world. According to a 1996 book by Norman Cohn, Noah’s Flood: The Genesis Story in Western Thought, around 300 cultures throughout the world have flood stories and they are almost all similar to the story in Genesis. Flood stories that are very similar to the Noah story are also prevalent in many other cultures. For example, one of the earliest flood stories is from Sumeria in around 1600 BC and is almost identical to the story of Noah.
The idea of a “flood” is a very powerful metaphor in our own lives and careers for starting over, washing away the past and starting from zero. We sometimes need a fresh start and to clean away the past. We all do and there is a certain happiness and “rebirth” that comes about when we can do this. There is nothing more important for many of us than a fresh start. I think it is for this reason that stories of “floods” are so prevalent in so many cultures: the idea of a fresh start gives us hope.
One of the most miraculous changes I ever witnessed in a human being was my own mother. For years she lived in Detroit in a small house, in a pretty insular neighborhood. She had been in an on-and-off relationship with the same man for the past 20 years that was very tumultuous. The home was run down and she was quite unhappy for the most part. Over the years, she had many terrible experiences in the home and the home was full of a lot of bad memories for her. One day her house was taken over by the bank and with mine and my sister’s help, she moved to be closer to my sister in Rochester, New York. I moved her into a small retirement community and she set up a completely new life. Within weeks she quit smoking, which was something she had done for the past 40 years. She started exercising every day. She made numerous friends. Her appearance began to change and she started to look much younger and happier. She became a nicer person and began to take more interest in her children and the world around her. She is a completely different person and very happy now. All of this has come about from simply picking up and starting in a different location. This happened to her in her 60s and the change I witnessed in her was nothing short of miraculous.
“If she hadn’t moved she would be dead by now,” my sister told me one day. The more I thought about this the more true I realized it was. What saved my mother’s life was a complete and massive change in venue from where she has been living.
I remember another person I know who had been in a terrible relationship for several decades. One day their mate died and after the funeral, someone I knew remarked that the person was now completely different. “I looked outside and I saw the sun for the first time in years,” they said. While this seems like a pretty harsh sort of statement to make about someone, the idea is that when a profound change comes into some of our lives we end up being better for it. Sometimes a profound change is the most beneficial thing there is for us.
Losing a job is a profound change. It is like a flood coming over our lives. We have no idea what the world will be like after the flood.
There is a real case to be made to simply start over and stop doing something when we are not having any success, not enjoying ourselves or not doing well at what we are doing. In fact, many of us toil for years and years doing something that we are not good at and do not enjoy. Arguably the greatest and most beneficial thing that can happen to many of us is to lose our jobs, or be forced into doing something completely new. If you are in a position where you have lost a job, or you believe that you may be about to lose a job, this may actually be one of the best things that could possibly happen to you. The ability to start over and start something from scratch gives you an opportunity to rebuild your career and life.
In the 1940s the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter came up with the term “creative destruction” to describe something that is a backbone of all of capitalism. In capitalist societies, old forms of value creation are continually being destroyed by new ones that are more efficient and preferred. This is how “life” in capitalism progresses. For example:
- Someone may start out manufacturing shoes by hand and have a business doing this
- Another person may come along and figure out how to manufacture better shoes cheaper and faster, and put the first person out of business
- Then another person may come along and with a machine to manufacture shoes and put the second person out of business
- A fourth person may come along with an even better machine and put the third person out of business
Creative destruction occurs in numerous ways:
- New sources of labor
- New markets
- New ways of organizing or managing
- New equipment
- New methods of marketing and advertising
- New methods of transportation
- New ways of producing products
- New products that are more effective than previous products
This creative destruction process is continually occurring in all businesses and in all economic environments. When a growing industry or business is successful, it starts to attract the attention of many others. After some time a company may begin to rest on its laurels, and when this occurs the company stops innovating or slows down its innovation. The company stops attracting customers at the same rate because it has stopped creating value and it’s focus is now on the status quo. Companies in this position may try and attract people to them through legislation or marketing tactics, or by offering less for more to increase profit. Slowly (or sometimes quickly) the company begins to go into a downward spiral as the best talent leaves and customers go to other companies.
Companies that once dominated and were the chief innovators in various industries, such as Kodak, have seen their dominance fall and profits go away as rivals have manufactured digital camera products. However, just as Kodak has been undone by various innovators, the companies who have replaced Kodak face the exact same sort of threat. Other modern examples include the ability of people to get their news online. Online news is leading to the destruction of traditional newspapers. Innovation and destruction is a cycle that occurs in all companies and across all industries. Creative destruction is something that is also very painful for the people who are affected by it. Workers who are replaced by machines are likely to lose their jobs. In the current economic environment, for example, newspapers seemingly cannot lay people off and let them go fast enough. People do not like losing their jobs. While a continually innovating economy can create opportunities for people to participate in newer and more productive enterprises, it can also cause a tremendous amount of pain in the short term.
The cycle of creative destruction is something that is also relevant to your career and where you are going. Just as companies are forced to innovate and are destroyed by innovation and outside forces in the economy, your career and job are continually under threat from outside forces and innovation within your own employer. Your life is the same way: Your life can stagnate and start withering away. When they are growing, companies tend to hire people very quickly and without a lot of regard to costs. As the growth of companies slows down they begin looking for ways to cut costs and save money. Machines may be introduced into the work place to save money. Moreover, jobs will be eliminated directly and certain functions may even be eliminated in order for the company to experience more profit. When this start occurring, your job and your career may actually be at risk.
You goal in your life is to be in the position “after the flood” when the destruction has occurred and new growth is occurring. You want to be on the side of new growth. Cycles are always occurring in the world and the most important cycle is the one when new growth and opportunities are occurring. Every new cycle starts when someone is doing things a new way and starts creating value. When new things are emerging ,there is a lot of excitement and companies start growing. Word eventually catches on that there is a new way of doing things that is profitable and people are drawn to opportunity. The best people start flocking to this new way and resources are given to support it. The growth stage is where the most opportunities lie.
This process is being repeated all over the world, not just in companies but in our careers and lives. Your goal needs to be to find where the opportunities are being created, where growth has taken hold and things are moving upward. You also need to do the exact same thing with your life–you need to do everything within your power to ensure the structures and ways of doing things are not outdated and ineffective for you. Your goal in life needs to be to be happy and be growing–in just about everything that you do.
Do Not Allow the Past to Limit Your Opportunities Today
February 1, 2009
What You Will Learn
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My one-year old daughter calls a coffee cup “hot” and avoids coffee cups lest she gets burned. Until she learns that the coffee cup can also contain coffee, milk, and other foods that will not harm her, she is likely to avoid coffee cups for some time. She must have been burned a little by touching a coffee cup at one point and learned to stay away from coffee cups. Until she is able to see the coffee cup for what it is (a cup), and not her past experience (getting burned), she will not be able to experience everything positive that can be associated with a coffee cup. What does she know about the coffee cup except her association with it being hot in the past? She has no idea what a coffee cup is except what she experienced in her past learning. Does she, then, really see the coffee cup?
My daughter’s reaction to a coffee cup is no different than how many of us react to life due to negative experiences we have had in the past. We make giant generalizations about various people, places and things, and end up living our lives and careers controlled by generalizations about our past. This limits the number of opportunities we have access to and prohibits us from living the lives and having the careers we could potentially have. For most of us, our limited understanding of the past actually ends up limiting our opportunities in the future.
How we deal with our past largely influences how we are perceiving the present. We may have had negative experiences in the past, and these negative experiences control us because we want to avoid having them in the future. I spent several years of my life working in law firms and, to this day, I do not like going into law firms due to the fact that they make me feel uncomfortable and remind me of when I was practicing law. Notwithstanding, I make my living from law firms as a legal recruiter and fight against this uncomfortable feeling I get every time I go inside a law firm. You, too, may have reactions to environments, people, places and things that remind you of negative and emotionally draining experiences you may have had in the past.
It is important when you are having these reactions that you make sure that your reaction is the proper one for what is really going on. You do not want to be negatively reacting to the wrong thing in your past, or performing generalizations about something that is unrelated to any past pain you may have experienced. For example, my daughter was reacting with a huge generalization that all cups are ”hot” and to be avoided. Were she to carry this logic to its conclusion, she would spend her life never drinking anything out of a coffee cup again. She would be depriving herself of all the enjoyment that can come from enjoying the contents of a coffee cup based on a massive generalization that if she goes near any coffee cup she is likely to get burned.
Because most of us have had limited experiences in the world, we too form incredible generalizations regarding our beliefs as to the directions our careers should take based upon incredibly limited experiences:
- Some men only want to work for other men
- Some women only will work for men.
- Some women will only work for women.
- Some people only will work in large companies.
- Some people will only work in small companies.
- Some people refuse to ever assume a management role.
- Some people refuse to be anything but a manager.
- Some people avoid working for new companies.
- Some people avoid working for older, more established companies.
- Some people will only work alone.
- Some people will only work in large cities.
- Some people will only work in small cities.
- Some people will only work in jobs where they are represented by a union.
- Some people refuse to work in jobs where they are represented by a union.
- Some people will only work in the service sector.
- Some people will only work in the manufacturing sector.
- Some people will only work with groups of large people.
- Some people will avoid work where they have to talk on the phone.
- Some people will only work places where they have to talk on the phone.
I could continue with this list of preferences almost indefinitely, and these preferences are something that really control what happens to us and in our lives. Many of these preferences could be seen as more than just “preferences” and could instead be called “musts” because many people refuse to work in certain types of environments and do certain things that are largely controlled by their past.
When I was growing up, down the street was a family that was extremely poor. The family never had clothes, and they never had enough to eat. One the the real low points must have been the time that my mother went out and bought a Boy Scouts uniform for one of the boys because their mother could not afford one. The mother had asked my mom to do this, and she had. My mother then asked me to take the uniform over to their house and give it to the boy. I remember that, despite the fact that he and several of his brothers were at home, he did not answer the door. I left it in between the front door of the home and the screen door.
This family was incredibly poor and never had enough of anything because, back in the 1970s in Detroit, plumbers were unionized. If you did not belong to a union, it was apparently extremely difficult to get a job, and this particular man was chronically unemployed. He did not drink or smoke and was fit and willing to work. Due to some early experience he had with unions, however, he simply refused to have anything to do with any job that involved the unions. Due to this one belief about how “evil” he believed unions were, he was effectively cutting himself off from participating in virtually every job out there. His family literally starved due to this, and his wife ended up divorcing him because he could never find work.
This is an example of someone whose beliefs about something in the past are controlling their future. I am sure that there are examples in your own life about beliefs from things in the past and how they are controlling your future. You need to insure that you do not shortchange yourself and your future life due to erroneous beliefs you may have about the past.
Because most of my career has involved legal recruiting, one of the conversations I have had many times throughout my career is a call from attorneys in New York City who inform me they no longer have any interest in working in New York City. They may say something along the lines of the following:
“I never want to work in New York City again. The people there are too competitive and mean. I need to get out of here and work in a smaller market.”
The experiences that these people are having in New York City are typically just related to the practice of law in general. The practice of law in any law firm is “competitive” and “mean” in many respects. However, most people that do not like practicing law who are working in New York City will generalize the fact that they do not like New York City, and not that they do not like the practice of law. This is another sort of generalization that is extremely dangerous. Here, someone is making a generalization about a massive geographic market and the people within it instead of looking at what really may be the cause of their frustrations.
The attorney who forsakes the entire City of New York is often making a very reckless mistake. First of all, there are thousands of law firms in the city. To surmise that not a single one of them may be a place the attorney would like working is dangerous. Secondly, the attorney who is contemplating moving out of New York may already have a life set up there. They may have children in school, and they may already have a substantial network of professional contacts. Third, the attorney like has already taken the bar exam in the state. To simply walk away from this is extremely reckless.
In speaking with these people, I am always pretty amazed because they will have all sorts of generalizations about why they do not like New York that involve things like public transportation, the size of their apartments, and other trivial things. Most of these conversation never revolved around how the situation may be fixable in New York itself and not require a cross-country move of some sort to another part of the United States. For example, the person may be better off practicing law inside a corporation or working in a different practice area of the law in New York City. However, few of these people will regularly undertake this sort of rigorous self-examination and will instead make various conclusions about why New York is the wrong market for them to be working in.
This person may subsequently pick up their family and moved to a small southern town to practice law. They may end up earning one third the salary and working just about as hard as they did in New York. The attorney may have a wife wife and children they bring with them in the move. Almost invariably, once the attorney starts working with the new law firm in the small city they will start experiencing the same pressures and issues again. They will have left all of their friends and maybe even some relatives back in New York and now will be isolated in a small town. The attorney may spend years trying to convince themselves that the problem they had was New York City and not the practice of law, their practice area, or another issue with the work. They will spend the rest of their career avoiding New York for jobs under the belief that this is something that created problems for them.
You need to be aware of beliefs that you may have from things that have happened to you in the past that may be limiting you today. What are these beliefs and how are they hurting you? The past never equals the future and associations of what things represent from the past can be extremely dangerous.
Several years ago, I had a customer in my asphalt business, Ken, who owned a giant mansion in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. I would see this man every year when I would come by to work on his asphalt, and I made personal friends with him to some extent over the years. He was a person I liked very much, and I feel bad for not staying in more contact with him throughout the years. On his property, he had a guest house, and he had a tenant in the guest house who was a man around 45 years old. The man had never been married, and Ken noticed that there was a constant procession of new women continually going to the guest house over the years. Eventually, Ken told me he sat down with the man and asked him why he could never have a steady relationship. He said that the man told him that he wanted to, but that he kept cheating on his girlfriends. When Ken asked him why he continued to do this, the man stated that he had learned somewhere along the line that if he did not cheat on the women, they would eventually cheat on him, so he never saw any reason to be faithful. Ken tried to reason with the man, but the man simply could not bring himself to believe anything different than this.
Think about the gravity of this statement and how truly significant it is. This one belief this man had picked up in the past was preventing him from ever settling down and having a family. He was essentially dooming himself to a life of short-term relationships and connections with other people due to a belief deep down that no one could be trusted. We all have beliefs like this, and these beliefs can be guiding our careers for the positive or the negative.
A couple of years ago, I purchased a house that did not have any air conditioning or heat in it. I still live in this house today. The previous owner of the home had been forcibly evicted from it and, for whatever reason, had taken the entire air conditioning and heating system with him. I am unclear what someone would do with used heaters and air conditioners, but this guy was able to accomplish this. The situation was even a bit more alarming because the owner of the house left in the middle of the night. He was being watched and pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and other authorities for stealing $40,000,000 from school teachers and others. He was eventually arrested in Aspen, Colorado, for various crimes after checking into a hotel under the name “Bryce Pilaf” (“Rice Pilaf”)–not his real name–and passing numerous bad checks.
For several weeks, I lived in this house with no air conditioning or heat. We had moved in during the Fall and despite the fact that I live in Los Angeles, the nights do get pretty cold. Showers in the morning were the worst. While I was enjoying the significant financial savings, my wife was starting to get really upset by this. Eventually, I got estimates for having the work done. It was not an inexpensive job. In fact, I believe it cost about $15,000 to have everything done. I selected a contractor based on price alone and not anything in particular other than that.
For several days, the air conditioning contractor worked on the job with another worker. The contractor in charge of the job was extremely dramatic about the entire thing.
“This is hard work, oh boy!!” he would say every time I saw him running around the house.
After he had completed the job, he came to me and presented me a bill for the work he had done. I owed him around $5,000 because I had given him two progress payments of $5,000 each for the job. The bill he presented to me was for $10,000.
“Clearly, this is not the correct amount,” I told him. “The balance due is $5,000.”
The contractor then puffed his chest out and started telling me how the work was “much harder” than he had originally believed and, due to this, he “deserved” an “extra $5,000″. Obviously, I did not pay him the extra $5,000. However, I was absolutely fascinated that this guy thought he could get away with this and proceeded to talk with the contractor about his experience doing this sort of thing. I got him to “loosen up,” and he told me that he always did this on jobs, and everyone always agreed to pay him more money. He told me that, in his experience, this “always works”. He related a belief about his customers that they were basically “evil,” and his job was to take as much money from each person as he possibly could.
The man was a complete “scum bag,” but I realized right then and there that somewhere in the past this man had learned that the best way to get ahead was to rip people off like this. I found the experience extremely informative on several levels. Here was someone who had learned and came to believe that his customers were there to be stolen from, intimidated, and not served. He had to take as much money from each person as possible, and he needed to do it unethically and in whatever way he could. This was this man’s belief about business and how he did his job.
I looked this guy up with the State of California a couple of days later and saw that he did not even have a contractor’s license because it had been taken away by the state for this sort of behavior. What I found so difficult to believe was that this guy’s entire career had been defined by being incredibly dishonest. The more I had questioned him, the more I realized that this was the only way he knew and understood how to get ahead in his work. He only knew being dishonest.
One of the most destructive things that we all do is that we look at the world in front of us in a way which is defined almost entirely by the past. We use the past as a guide to what objects, people and circumstances represent in the present. You do this. I do this, and everyone around us does this. The past has an incredibly defining impact on the things that happen to us in the present. In fact, all of the decisions we are making about our lives and what is going to happen to us in the present are affected by what has happened to us in the past.
In the case of this contractor, somewhere deep down he believed that the only way he could get ahead was to be dishonest. He literally did not know how to be honest in business. His entire perception of the world was controlled by a belief that it is best to be dishonest. People seek to control their future by making giant generalizations about the past. They generalize the way things are going to be by things that happened to them in the past.
You need to look very closely at your life and see how your beliefs about the past may be limiting you in the future. Do not allow the past to limit the opportunities you have today.
You Need to Be Relevant to Your Employer
January 2, 2009
What You Will Learn
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In the mortgage industry many jobs have simply disappeared. This has put tens of thousands of people out of work. While there are many who manage to hang on in all downturns, for the most part, many people in the mortgage industry have lost their jobs.
People who lose their jobs in the mortgage industry generally have a couple of options. One of the most incredible options they have is to try and find another job in the same industry, because this is what they know, which is what many are doing. They do their best to network, and email their resume out to every opening they can find in the mortgage industry.
“The job market is really tight,” they will tell you.
They may get an occasional interview, but they do not get the job because the companies they are interviewing with eventually realize they do not have the business to hire the person. They may also realize there is someone out there who is more qualified. The criteria for these jobs has become much more stringent. Eventually, after weeks or months of looking for a job, the person may say something like:
“I need to wait for the market to pick up. I simply cannot find a job.”
To illustrate further the current state of the mortgage industry, the headquarters of Countrywide Mortgage is located in Hidden Hills, near Los Angeles. As you might imagine, there are acres of buildings for Countrywide and other mortgage companies around this area sitting practically empty. Not too long ago, these buildings were filled with thousands of people selling mortgages to mortgage brokers and others. Now, most of these people are out of jobs. All around this area, businesses are closing and people are pretty desperate. In the early evenings, if you drive by these Countrywide buildings, you can see inside. There should be hundreds of people, however, in most cases you see no one.
Recently, I was playing golf with a friend who lives in Hidden Hills. When he arrived to play, he was very upset.
The night before, my friend had been invited to a small party at his friend’s multimillion dollar house. The friend was an unemployed mortgage broker who’d purchased the house when he was employed and doing very well. He’d been told the party was a social occasion. Happy to go, he’d shown up wearing jeans. When he arrived he immediately realized something was wrong – his friend was wearing a suit, and everything seemed a little ”too professional.” A few minutes later, he was given a brochure about some Donald Trump condominium going up in Florida. His friend started showing a movie about the development and began telling everyone at the party if they “wanted in,” he could immediately assist them with financing a condominium.
Everyone was astonished. A group of people who’d been invited to a party were suddenly being encouraged to buy and finance condominiums thousands of miles away they’d never seen in their entire lives. My friend got up and left the party upset he’d been suckered into a sales presentation.
While I have nothing against aggressive sales practices, what this story represents to me is someone who is holding on to a paradigm that no longer exists. While people may have been speculating on condominiums sight unseen years ago, this is no longer the case. Here, the mortgage broker was doing everything he could to hold onto a profession and a life that no longer existed for him. This example is extremely important to understand because it has a lot to do with you, your career, and what will end up happening in your life.
From what I understand, the mortgage broker, in this example, was on his way to losing his house through foreclosure. His world was literally crumbling around him. Like the man in the store, he was making a fundamental error so many people make: He did not understand how to adapt to a new paradigm. Understanding your paradigm and what you do for a living is the most important thing you can possibly do with your career because paradigms are always changing. The sun does not shine on every specific type of job forever. We get comfortable with one specific type of job and believe we should always do this.
A couple of weeks ago, while shopping, I met a man who was working in the computer industry. He told me he had made over $250,000 a year just two years ago writing software for mortgage companies. Now, he was working in a store selling sweaters and shirts to men for probably no more than $12 an hour.
“There are no jobs for programmers in the mortgage industry,” he told me.
The man who was trying to sell mortgages and Trump Condominiums in Florida was in the business of sales. If he realized this, he would likely not be having the problems he is having now. He could apply to every sales job available and probably easily get one.
The man I met selling sweaters in the store was also in a business: The business of programming. Instead of applying to every programming job available, he was stuck in believing he was a specialist in programming computers for mortgages and, for this reason, he could not find a job.
In everything you do, you need to understand what your basic business is. Far too many companies and individuals fail to understand this. They end up “going out of business”. Some of the largest and most profitable companies in the United States used to be railroad companies. These were the “Internet moguls” and tycoons during their age. However, when trucks came along, none of these railroad companies entered the trucking industry. Instead, they clung to the belief they were in the railroad business. If they had realized they were actually in the transportation business, they could have started offering trucking and other transportation services to their clients. Because of their belief they were in the railroad and not the transportation business, many great railroad companies ended up going out of business.
In your career, it is essential you realize what business you are in. You should not be blinded by the specifics of what you do and, instead, should understand the generality of what your specific profession in fact is. This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.
W. Edward Deming gives an excellent example of a time when there were carburetors in all cars. The people who made carburetors continued to improve their product. Soon, however, fuel injection was developed, and everyone stopped using carburetors. With very few exceptions, many very large companies that formerly made carburetors went out of business. They should have realized they were in the business of finding better ways of putting the correct mixture of fuel and air in the combustion chamber of engines. This is what the mortgage broker was doing wrong as well: He failed to realize he was in the business of sales.
Something similar happened to the makers of Swiss watches in Switzerland. The Swiss invented the quartz movement; however, they failed to realize the gigantic impact this would ultimately have on their business. The Swiss continued to make mechanical watches and market these even after inventing the quartz movement. Eventually, the number of people making watches in Switzerland went from 65,000 to around 10,000 in a decade. The Swiss failed to realize they were in the business of making watches and they did not take into account the needs of their market.
What you need to do in your career is the same thing companies need to do: they need to understand their market. When you understand your market, you have the ability to provide your customers with products and services that meet their needs. You and your career are a product. You need to sell yourself to the correct audience and know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to know what your audience wants and requires.
In 2001, General Motors released the Pontiac Aztek. The car was voted the ugliest car in the world by the British newspaper, The Telegraph. The vehicle was criticized many times in Steve McConnell’s book about software design, Code Complete 2: The Pontiac Aztek and the Perils of Design by Committee. According to another commentator, Dan Norman:
In the mid-1990s, then-General Motors Corp. Chairman John G. Smale decided to bring the world’s biggest automaker a dose of the ‘give-the-people-what-they-want’ethic that’d animated Smale’s old company, Procter & Gamble Co. And what the people wanted was sexy, edgy and a bit off-key – in short, a head-turner. General Motors’ culture took over from there. Design would be by committee, the focus groups extensive. And production would have to stick to a tight budget, with all that sex appeal packed onto an existing minivan platform. The result rolled off the assembly line in 2000: the Pontiac Aztek, considered by many to be one of the ugliest cars produced in decades and a flop from Day One.
The Aztek represented all that is wrong with GM’s design process, that official said. The concept car actually did something few GM designs do: arrive before a trend — this time, the crossover SUV that combined the attributes of a truck and a passenger car. And GM had high hopes to sell 50,000 to 70,000 Azteks a year, putting Pontiac on the cutting edge.
Then came production, the executive said. The penny-pinchers demanded costs be kept low by putting the concept car on an existing minivan platform. That destroyed the original proportions and produced the vehicle’s bizarre, pushed-up back end. But the designers kept telling themselves it was good enough. “By the time it was done, it came out as this horrible, least-common-denominator vehicle where everyone said, ‘How could you put that on the road?’” the official said.
Sales never reached the 30,000 level needed to make money on the Aztek, so it abruptly went out of production. The tongue-in-cheek hosts of National Public Radio’s “Car Talk” named it the ugliest car of 2005. “It looks the way Montezuma’s revenge feels,” one listener quipped. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000321.html
In an oval office interview in January of 2006, President George Bush said he believed General Motors and Ford needed to produce “a product that’s relevant.” The idea of producing a relevant product is one of the most important things any manufacturer can do. Being a relevant product is also something essential for your success, as well. In a bad economic climate, one of the strangest things people do is try and continue being a ‘product’ that is no longer needed. This is nonsensical.
You need to be relevant and understand what the skill is you are offering. The worst thing you can do is not be relevant to the market you are serving. It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you are doing and what purpose you serve. Being relevant is about much more than just getting a job, however. Being relevant also relates to serving your employer with the skills they need. You need to understand your market and what your customers want.
One of the biggest failures in my career was due to not understanding my market. When I got out of law school, I worked for a federal judge who had recently been appointed to the bench. My interest in this job was being brilliant and showing how smart I was, what a good writer I was, and how much detail I could put into opinions and more. I did a very good job with the harder intellectual aspects of the work. The judge I worked for admired my intellectual abilities, but his biggest concern was for me to produce work that was completely error free. Because I was so interested in the intellectual aspects of the work, I did not always give him what he wanted in terms of error free work. This was upsetting to him. Because of my concern with the “meat” of what I was doing, and not the details, I ended up leaving this position after one year, when I’d been hired for two. Had I not left, I am pretty confident I would have lost my job. I was not giving my employer what he wanted and, instead, was making up my own rules.
The next legal job I held, I was sought out for my intellectual insight into legal issues. You need to know your audience.
When you think about your career, how often have you made up your own rules? You need to understand your audience. You need to know you are in the business of selling a product to people, and you need to give them what they want. You are a product, and your job is to give your audience exactly what it wants. This is the way to get, and keep a job.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.