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    Tim Krohn

February 13, 2010

Slackers keep their heads in an all-too-efficient world

By Tim Krohn The Free Press

MANKATO — If you work at a company of any size, you’ve almost certainly been exposed to the terms Kaizen, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management or Lean Production.

They’re a family of concepts aimed at bringing more efficiency and higher productivity to the workplace, with much of it based on the management model used by Toyota.

With Toyota facing one of the biggest public relations disasters since some nut case in Chicago put poison in Tylenol capsules, there has to be a lot of company executives wondering if all that money for Kaizen consultants was well spent.

The concept is to constantly look for improvement of efficiency in a company. The companies create a special infrastructure of people within the organization who are called “Champions” and “Master Black Belts.”

Having managers running around calling each other Master Black Belts may improve efficiency, but it also increases the stress headaches among the workers.

Have you noticed that anytime you see a Japanese businessman on a TV news program they look like their heads might just explode from the pressures of life? 

To a degree, the rush to efficiency in American companies has worked. It’s worked so well that employees — willing to take any abuse for fear of layoff — are now so productive that we will never be able to create new jobs. There might be more job openings, though, as those still working suffer head explosions from all the stress.

Efficiency and increased production seem intuitively good, but often aren’t. Here in farm country we can look at the amazing increase in corn production. Not long ago, we grew dozens of varieties of field corn that provided high nutrition for people. We now have, basically, one variety of super-hybridized corn that produces like crazy but is so loaded with starch it’s virtually unusable for human consumption. Save for one thing: making high-fructose corn syrup that is put in every food item and is exacerbating obesity and diabetes.

Trying to turn employees into highly efficient autotrons is creating a society of anxiety-ridden workers who are too distracted, unmotivated and afraid to point out to their Black Belt Masters that maybe that plastic shim they’re putting in the gas pedal mechanism looks like it might be sticking.

The fact is, we aren’t wired to be highly efficient. Just look at what happens when you have a wide-open summer weekend in which you pledge to clean the garage and get your yard in shape — mow, weed the garden, fix that leg on the swingset that makes it lean to one side. You may even plan in your mind how to efficiently tackle it all.

But after you finish mowing half the lawn Saturday morning, you take a little break, fire up the grill, grab a cold beer and lay in the hammock. Soon it’s Sunday night and you might still be in the hammock, managing only to push the mower over and use it to prop up the swingset and calling it good enough.

It may not make us as productive and efficient as the Japanese. But it’s good enough and keeps our heads from exploding.    



Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com.

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Tim Krohn