Executive Suite - Climactic scene
I wonder if she saw this movie, and if so, what she thought of it.
SOURCE URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEOsGvT0qA
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"...That's what you want Walt, isn't it - what you've always wanted? Merchandise that will sell because it has beauty and function and value - not because the buyers like your scotch or think that you're a good egg. The kind of stuff that you, Jesse, will feel in your guts when you know it's coming off your production line. A kind of product that you will be able to budget to the nearest hundredth of a cent, Shaw, because it will be scientifically and efficiently designed. And something you will be proud to have your name on..."
People want the latest flashiest junk RIGHT NOW and want to get it for NOTHING and are willing to settle for something far below factory seconds because then they can say "Look at my cool new _________ (fill in the blank)". While their trash cans are filling with the junk they're replacing it with they purchased less than a year before... and they look at something like the KF line junk in the movie, and think that's high quality, because their expectations are *so* low.
Most of the equipment in my shop, I got used... not because it was necessarily cheaper, but because it was built (in America) to be durable, accurate, and not be disposable. Actually, just got a Rockwell Scroll Saw that dates from *maybe* the early 50's (if not before)... and you can *feel* the quality, see the precision that went into it, and other than having to oil it, is literally maintenance free. (Yes... Oil it. Who would have thought of that??!!) I could have paid 3x as much for a Chicom knockoff, NIB, at Home Despot or Blowes... and when you look at them (mostly all former brands that screamed "quality") and they're not worth a tinkers you-know-what out of the box...
(did reality just change?)
Sadly you are 100% correct. I seem spend half my time writing letters and talking to supervisors asking them to flag the tape of our conversations and send it "upstairs" to the executives. unfortunately most employees are simply afraid to rock the boat. I'm lucky if I get a response to 1 out of 10 of these complaints.
I recently entered a supermarket primarily catering to the Mexican buyers here in Reno. The company, "Marketon" had just instituted a "no bags may be carried into the store" policy. I was asked to remove a small sports bag and leave it at the customer service desk. I found this to be insulting to me as a customer. I spoke to the manager later and told her that I sympathize with the shoplifting problem, but that was their problem and did not give them the right to insult their customers. while she was polite and apologetic about the situation, she also told me that it was orders from the home office. I told her that i understood but would not patronize their store again unless I received a positive response from the executives to whom I would direct a letter.
That day I faxed a letter to the company president and 2 days later I received a call apologizing for the incident and the assurance that the sign would be removed and the employees would be informed of the change in that particular policy. True to their word, when I entered the store later that day, everything had changed and the manager when noticing me approached with a smile and thanked me for following through. She too was embarrased by that temporary policy.
I must commend Marketo for their quick and positive response to this matter.
that's how a company should be run.
Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
You are correct, until the American consumer wakes up and stops buying these shoddy goods, we will continue to deterioate as a nation.
A nation needs to have pride in all things including manufacturing just as William Holden stated in his speech.
I once received a list of items that were still manufactured in the U.S. that most people believed to be obsolete. Americans need to start buying American made products again whenever possible. Ironically these items were at a competitive price made buy well run companies. we need to make a little effort and we can change the attitude of the many shoddy companies. Write to them and let them know why you will no longer buy their products unless they start paying attention to their customers. an example of well run company producing quality products is Stanley tools who take people off the street to test their new products and most of all they listen to their customers.
Here is a link to an article on how Stanley Tools tests their products and a partial article is also below.
http://www.stanleytools.com/default.asp?...
"The product development cycle for a tool at Stanley often begins with the end user and the Stanley® FatMax® line is no exception. The Stanley Discovery Team interacts with end users in an environment that is both comfortable and familiar for them, the job site, to acquire information about how a professional would make the best tool in the industry. Stanley takes that knowledge and shares it with designers and engineers who develop early prototypes and test models. These models are then tested on job sites with professionals, modified according to their suggestions and then tested again. Once the tool meets the needs of the pro, Stanley finalizes the design and develops the product."
don't you wish that the very intelligent but without commonsense web application designer would do the same?
Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
Take Home Vacuums. We just replaced our old (Electrolux B.V. made) Eureka (which BTW is now my shop portable...), looked at everything from the New Eurekas to Hoover to, well, you name it. Every one was substandard at best. So we bought a Miele. Sure, they're not cheap, and it doesn't have a lot of useless bling (that doesn't work anyway) - but by god, it's built like a tank. Has what you need to get the job done. And it works. Those are what we *used* to get from Hoover et.al... but no more.
The antagonists in the movie are shown as “two-dimensional,” unreal characters. Black and white good or black and white bad. Interested in squeezing the most profit today and damn tomorrow or idealistic, inspiring, future oriented giants. That is just not real life. Subtly, the capitalists seek to destroy the profit motive by stripping it of all good, while promoting ideals without regard to reality. Of course, much of what’s said in the speech is proper and true, but it is being used to degrade the capitalist, who is portrayed as an inhuman machine. Or, look at it from the other direction – did communal ideals ever provide the society with productive industries and a high standard of living? America, at the time that movie was made, enjoyed by far the highest standard of living in the world and productivity greater then the rest of the world combined. Now, look at what the idealistic collectivism has achieved.
While I agree with your intellectual and logical analysis, I must disagree with your conclusion.
I think what you may have missed is the emotional commitment of the Holden character to produce quality products and that will never happen without the commitment of the individual leader of the company. Holdens focus is on quality, he understood that profits follow quality.
Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
Despite your articulate arguments, I must strongly disagree with you even more. todays businessmen in fact have taken on more and more the attitude as precented in the movie. Short term gains seems to be all the executives think about these days. The next quarterly report is the longest horizon any of them understand and that is because many companies are run by beancounters instead of men with vision. It has been the primary reason of the destruction of our industries that were once the envy of the world.
I don't see where any of that has any relationship to socialism or communism. Those two designations belong squarely to the present administration who only seem to want to tax every business and every citizen more and more in order to buy votes. That vote buying scheme has now been achieved as just about half of America no longer pays taxes but receives money transferred from the doers to the leeches.
Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
As to the governments way of doing business, I couldn't agree more that it has taken on all the trappings of socialism. However, I still see a small difference between socialism in the government and similar characteristics in business today. At least for the moment business is still in it for a profit, a disguided one to be sure, but the government wants total control over everything.
Fred
And so government makes the decisions, and takes from those who produce and gives it to those who do not--"From those...etc."
Walling talking about the slopshod crummy KF line of crap they had denigrated into making - I love that. I forgot how much I loved that movie and its ending - thank you!!!
There are many themes that seem modern:
- Balancing appeasing short-term concerns of analysts/shareholders with investment in long-term growth.
- Motivating people. The modern book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us covers many similar points.
- Damaging your brand by associating it with low-cost goods, the way Cadillac did in the early 80s. Someone in that meeting should have suggested creating a value brand for the low-cost merchandise.
I like the theme of the clip, but it turned me off how verbally aggressive the protagonist was. If his ideas are stronger, he shouldn't have to be bombastic.
Wonderful message. At 'our peak,' that's what we were about. Then things went to shit.
But the problems started a bit before Carly, if you were there to see it in the late '70s...
You know your company is in trouble when you have to start posting your own motto. It is an indication that upper management itself isn't living or hiring those who adhere to it.
"He's a Numbers Man... beware! On one of the last corporate profit-sharing announcements, Young referred to a forecast of "Next Quarter's Growth..." TO TWO DECIMAL PLACES. Any CEO who forecasts future growth to two decimal places will inevitably create an environment where management does EXACTLY what 'upper management' expects of them...
"Make the numbers at any cost."
And I personally believe the downward spiral started there. Lew was a fine gentlemen, rest his soul... but he DID miss the implications of the www on HP's future, although he was a strong advocate for women's and minority rights and advancement, which may have been another way of shifting HP's focus away from innovation and industrial contribution, which tend to affect a company's success even more directly, sometimes.
Still breaks my heart to see what happened before and after I left in '02. 24 years before the mast and scores of war stories to tell...
Oh, and another historical footnote... I was hired by HP to be Product Marketing Engineer for Power MOSFETs. We couldn't make them. Their characteristics, as the 'factory' tried over and over to manufacture them... weren't stable enough to be viable in the marketplace. Eventually, I got the reputation as a pariah because 'I'd not written the specs right.' My boss's boss offered me two months to find another position inside or outside HP before he would fire me. I switched to Terminals (DTD) until they moved out of Silicon Valley. That allowed me to be a Priority Hire, since forcing an employee to move wasn't the kind of slavery HP practiced, at least back then... so I found my way into DSD and another twenty or so years' career in minicomputers, where I had some moderate success and contribution.
Two ironies: First, one of my mentors at RCA invented a Bi-CMOS chip design which essentially obsoleted anything HP could have made as a MOSFET, and second, which really makes me laugh... The manager who would have fired me was in a customer presentation where I was scheduled to also speak.
The first presenter blew his presentation and literally alienated and pissed off the customer's people in attendance.
I suggested that I might be able to pull their cherries out of the fire if I were allowed to be the next speaker. Sales management agreed, and I literally turned the meeting (and customer) around.
The irony? Who was the Sales manager in the room? Yep, the guy who was going to fire me. You can imagine the smile on my face and the thoughts behind it when he came over to shake my hand and thank me. "You're welcome," I replied and caught the next plane home.
Yep, LOTS of HP memories...
My wife took the early-out in '00 and I became eligible in '02, and I've been living in my own little Galt's Gulch ever since. Best wishes to your dad.