The Quality Life

My friend Brian used to talk about a fellow he had worked with early in his career. This process engineer boasted of having 12 years of experience. Brian finally determined that the man had one year of experience repeated 12 times!

Lately, I’ve been closely studying a facility where the average longevity for the managerial team is 28 years (with the same company!). The majority of the senior engineers have been in the company for over 20 years, as well. And most of the process equipment in the facility is well over 15 tears old.

To say that these folks are pretty much in a rut is too obvious. They’ve been doing the same job the same way for many years, with only the name on the logo changing. Not surprisingly, they also are suspicious of change.

Most of these folks have never worked for another company. They’ve never, in some cases, worked for a different boss! Many of their organizational memes are locked in fairly solidly.

They really are trying to get better. They’ve launched a Six Sigma initiative, and have sent the operations folks to visit best-in-class facilities. This has brought back some fresh approaches to production planning, but the old relationships still drive day-to-day interactions. And as the organization goes through some tough times, it’s the younger engineers, the ones who see that rigidity is keeping the body of the company from being flexible, who are looking for opportunities in other companies.