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CARLINI'S COMMENTS

You get What You Pay For . . .

You Get What You Pay For: Aspiring Beyond the Vortex of Declining Corporate Mediocrity

Published on 3/8/2007

Carlini’s Comments,

MidwestBusiness.com’s oldest column, runs every Wednesday.

Its mission is to offer the common man’s view on business and technology issues while questioning the leadership and visions of “pseudo” experts.


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CHICAGO – You don’t get Superman by paying Jimmy Olson wages.

You can’t commoditize talent when the key skills for today’s success are flexibility, adaptability, creativity and technology. You have to pay for talent in order to compete in the global marketplace. This transcends all industries and organizations.

There is a misperception that there is a shortage of highly skilled technical people in this country. The reality is that there are many qualified highly skilled technical people here but many companies don’t want to pay their salaries.

While this management misperception has been going on for several years even before Sept. 11, 2001, only now are you starting to see some of the long-term effects of overzealous rightsizing, downsizing, force reductions and outsourcing.

Some companies have gotten rid of a lot of their systems people over the last several years in the name of rightsizing, offshoring or whatever you want to call it.

They have decimated some of their core systems support and replaced them with cheap and mediocre substitutes. Customer service has dropped, some customers have left and some organizations have brought back their call centers back into the U.S. to turn around the losses.
While short-term budgets were cut too “lean and mean,” some of these decisions were the wrong ones as demands grew and systems aged.

Some organizations are left in a jam with hollow systems and ones that are constantly being patched. The skills walked out and were sometimes escorted to the door. Though there are some organizations that have kept up and have spent money, those are the exception and not the rule.
With corporate compliance issues like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, these weaknesses are being constantly uncovered. In some cases, this is costing companies much more in fines and penalties along with the cost to “get it right” again.

All companies fear compliance audits by the SEC and the U.S. Department of Labor because they know their systems may not be as good as they thought. They pray that their systems are fixed before the auditors show up.

All of a sudden, that $500,000 cost reduction in systems support sounds pretty dumb compared to an $18 million hit in penalties by the SEC. Who made that bonehead decision?

Companies are also getting into a jam as more people opt not to give two-week notices when they are fed up with an overly worked and under-recognized job.

I was just interviewed by someone writing an article for a human resources journal that was surprised at my stance on not giving two-week notices. She wanted to know how organizations could combat that. I said they could have mutual 30-notice clauses or termination clauses. I am sure HR experts would recommend for it to stay one-sided.

Immediate resignations are definitely on the rise. I am just reflecting on what has been happening due to poor corporate policies that were instituted by HR experts and consultants. Say you just lost your top person and he or she is leaving immediately.

Maybe you should have given the person a little more recognition. It’s too late now.
There has been a definite change in values in the work force. Immediate force-reduction dismissals used as an accepted practice have in turn spawned immediate resignations and voluntary departures as an accepted practice by individuals.

Most people at various levels are thinking about it now because companies didn’t know a bridge is a two-way street and “burning your bridges” can apply to them as well.

As for problems due to a lack of good people on staff, there is a major multi-national company that has a system cutover in France so messed up they have sent people out there for weeks to try to fix it. There is also a major financial firm looking at implementing a critical systems conversion and has a crazy systems conversion plan.

There is no contingency or fall-back plan to the original system once the new system is in place. It sounds like the people who planned the process have never been through a real systems conversion.

General management is very worried because someone with real systems experience has pointed it out even though that person is not in the systems group. The systems people are trying to get the general management people to sign off on it now and they are telling them no.
Where did all the people go who knew the systems development process? Evidently they were swept away and those who remained don’t have a clue.

People Are Our Assets
“People are the assets who determine our success or failure.” This was part of a statement by a retired Air Force general. While this is a great credo to have, is it really just a bunch of empty words?

There is a great quote I have used before from former ITT Chairman Harold Geneen: “Words are words, explanations are explanations and promises are promises, but only performance is reality.”

It seems like so many companies are driven by slogans, rah-rah statements and corporate golf shirts with their logo on them that they don’t see the realities of their poor performance in dealing with people ad in the marketplace.

I have always advised clients and taught in courses that you get what you pay for and there’s no such thing as a new $5,000 Rolls-Royce. If you want the quality, the performance and the reliability, you have to pay for it. When are people going to learn?

Carlinism: When you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

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James Carlini will present how he pioneered measuring building intelligence
at the second-annual Building Automation Conference in Baltimore on March 21.
Also, check out his blog at CarlinisComments.com.

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James Carlini is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University. He is also president of Carlini & Associates. Carlini can be reached at james.carlini@sbcglobal.net or 773-370-1888.
Click here for Carlini’s full biography.
Copyright 2007 Jim Carlini

Email: mgurbanicongroup@yahoo.com