Lew, your post makes some very good points, but there is another factor which I think is often ignored. The old timers who know it all.
Now, before anyone bites my head off, there are obviously exceptions. Boggs statement that knowledge not passed on is wasted, and his adherence to those principals is our best example. But we all know about that "other place" that has supposed professionals and yet seems to be more about childish egos than machining.
Nothing will put off an inexperienced person faster (in any field) than being told by a self-appointed "expert" that they are wrong/ignorant without then teaching a correct method. Also, that the method used may not be the only correct way. Being berated and browbeat doesn't help unless it's to reinforce a serious lesson (a major safety issue, for instance) that needs to be made perfectly clear. Being told that using a chinese machine which the buyer has just purchased is a complete waste of time, useless for the purpose or otherwise made to feel inferior will certainly put a damper on the enthusiasm.
This is the reason this site and HMEM have done so well; the complete lack of judgemental criticism. That the more experienced help and nurture rather than scold.
Oh, and we should just shoot all the lawyers.
I would argue that the real "issue" here is
competence. The problem is
not lawyers, bureaucrats, or whatever
cause-de-jure is being raised. The problem is
incompetent lawyers, bureaucrats, or whatever.
As I said, I graduated high school in 1971. I had math through integral calculus and introductory differential equations. I had three full years of physics, two years of chemistry, a year of "Earth Sciences" (actually a very good class that had originally been intended to be a fluff class), as well as the full load of civics, history, English, philosophy, and four years of German.
I did not start college until 1975. In that interim: high school math "stopped" at algebra/trig, few science classes went more than a single year, English became a joke, and many other classes such as civics and philosophy had disappeared! I challenged for placement and started, pretty much across the board, as a junior in college. Papers I had written in high school (and got a 'B' on) were retyped, updated slightly, and submitted for history and literature classes. They
all were graded 'A' and returned with pages of notes praising their detail and construction. It was really quite shocking.
One of the things that started appearing during this period was that employees in general and government employees in particular ceased to be judged by the way in which they did their jobs so much as the
philosophy of doing their job. If you did your job and fixed things, you were not graded well and given raises and promotions. However, if you made a "problem" move from place to place (ensuring that it could be "fixed" over and over), you got the raises and promotions. This was implemented under the title of
Crisis Management. It first appeared on
my RADAR in transportation projects. So-called
traffic management took over from the traditional
hydraulic analysis of streets and highways -- and the problems accumulated and demanded
crisis responses.
I first heard the terms
Crisis Management and
Traffic Management from a neighbor in 1972. He and several of his colleagues were being "downgraded" (the first step towards firing them) because their "operational style was not consistent with DoT practices." These were men with 20+ years of experience in setting traffic light timing (at that time in the city of Seattle you could travel on any arterial and, once having 'made' the first traffic light, you would make
every following light if you drove at the speed limit -- there were five intersections in all of Seattle where this was
not true -- over an area 35 miles long X 12 miles wide) and insuring that damage to paved surfaces were repaired!
Every succeeding 'generation' of traffic engineers in Seattle have succeeded in making such problems
worse, not better. This is because only "crisis" situations get funded.
This model of
Zero-Based Funding (aka
Crisis Management) was (and is)
taught at all the major "schools of business." It was first implemented at GM back when William (What's good for GM is good for America) Smith ran the company. It is one of those thing that gives a couple of years of
appearance of increasing efficiency and reducing costs that
fail over any longer period. We have been practicing this theory for four decades now without review or comment.
I think of this often when dealing with our
education industry. There are
many teachers fighting in the trenches to educate children. Unfortunately, there are also many teachers who have surrendered to a system that rewards the creation and maintenance of "crisis." The
measure of excellence applied to (American) school districts is
not that they educate their students, it
is the ratio of those who
do graduate who go on to college. It
does not matter of 40% of your students drop out of school so long as at least 40% of those students who
do graduate go on to college -- your school district is a "success" if that is the case.
