Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms The troubleshooter visits MMC

I stand corrected good sir.

Sospan, as a confirmed Luddite, I can not let a comment like yours pass without a degree of friendly rebuke

"I was annoyed at regular comments like “ but we’ve always done it like that”. A reluctance to change and develope."

I much prefer folk to be employed as opposed to robots taking over the tasks, and to go one stage further, one of the things that attracted me to Morgan was the hand crafted aspect of so much of it. More than happy to have hand beaten wings as opposed to later versions...but then that is just my personal preference. I guess I`m just showing my age..

When I first saw this program back in the early 1990's IIRC, I was just starting my love affair with Morgans and I was completely on the traditional Morgan 'We've always done it like this' side.

At the same time I was also starting to become more involved in the business engineering/business consultancy side of things, and as the the years passed I learned more and more about how businesses survive in the modern world, and "If you always do what you've always done, You'll always get what you've always got" became my mantra in helping businesses to understand how to change their IT systems.

Now I realise both the wisdom of Sir John, and also the pragmatic acceptance and implementation of change in MMC. I now firmly believe that if they had stuck with the 'fully hand-built' approach, their cars would have become even more astronomically expensive than they are now, and the company would have gone the way of Bristol and their ilk.

Tim, I think I may understand aspects of evolution in business practices, but I am left to wonder at the effect on society as a whole with the passage of time... Would YOU rather have been in a job or unemployed over your lifetime..?

Me?..I greatly valued a sense of place and a sense of purpose that employment provided. It seems such a pity that so many young folk are denied that opportunity today. I would much prefer that they had the benefit of that which was afforded to me when I was young and looking to make my way in life.

MMC must have done something right during those times, otherwise they would not have survived.
Supply and demand may have been one of the issues, the right marketing and image polishing may have been supporting too..
It is not always production efficacy or technological leadership which is rocking the boat.

Rolex, Harley Davidson and others are interesting business cases too how they handled outdated technology and remained successful on the markets.

They make excellent table saws.

I was unemployed for 3 months in 1982, recognised that my skill set didn't match those demanded of employers, so I looked at my life plan, retrained in skills that were in high demand and never looked back.

I spend a fair amount of time interacting with young people in the 20-35 age group. None of them see the notion of a single 'job for life' with the same employer even remotely desirable. Many of them have 2 or 3 jobs, doing whatever's required to get by. They recognise the vulnerability of single-skill occupations, and work very hard to keep a range of abilities on the go. For example, one chap I know works as a gardener, a music teacher, and a web designer.

Similar happened to me as Hamwich.
I was a metallurgist in a private steel company. In the late 70’s the steel industry was “rationalised” under Thatcher/Macgregor. We were deemed unwanted but our order book was spread between the chosen few.
So, what to do? The call for metallurgists was minimal. I and 4 others chose to go to Swansea Uni for a Management Science course and our Prof loved the idea of having experienced mature students amongst his raw, straight from school regulars. The aim was to develop skills that could be used anywhere.
The course was ideal and when going back to work it did, however, mean dealing with many entrenched attitudes and practises. Many were simply organisational, planning, quality related basics.
In some cases the old ways were great and it would have been stupid to change.

Tim, sospan, I am trying to keep things a tad simple, as it is a bit easier for me to understand base principals.

I reiterate that which I already typed and not am not seeking to personalise and compare possibilities or achievements of the three of us as such.

At a time when it seems ever more of the young are still living with their parents at an age whereby it seems probable we three and many more in our approximate generation had a rough plan and perhaps even a mortgaged home of "our own" with whatever opportunities that might provide for us in time.

I salute your flexibility and ability to retrain, strange as it might seem I had to do that too.. though I wonder if in time you might have the capability to retrain to become a machine, if ever more accurate output at minimum cost is the ideal, and to profit whom..? Society..?

"Entrenched attitudes and practices" along with "job for life" comment perhaps hints at another adopted..err..set of attitudes, whereby the outcome might be a natural evolutionary process to end up at survival of the fittest being adopted as an ideal..?

Given the current situation if the above is true then it seems Corona may be the biological answer if left to run freely, in order to leap frog the rather slower more human based rate of rationalising, downsizing, de-layering and much else to reduce costs..hmm...?

Kinda causes me to think back to a true story, when my dear departed uncle as a child on seeing a kid in the street with no shoes, turned to his father and asked, Why do they not gather all the money in, count the number of people and give the money back out..? My grandfather a world travelled ships engineer, replied..Well it is like this, the strong will take from the weak and the sly will take it from the strong and it will be back where it is today..... No fancy algorithm creation required to understand that thinking of many many years ago...?

The base principle that I always bear in mind is that if one expects to be given money in exchange for doing something, then one needs to have a ready answer for the question "What's your value proposition?"

It's amazing how many people I have asked that question over the years who have no real idea of exactly why they should be employed rather than someone else. Some don't even think they should be expected to do what they are told or deliver what's asked of them. There are businesses out there who have failed because they couldn't answer the corollary question "Why should your customers come to you and not your competitors?".

We live in an age where there are loads of crap jobs about, paying low wages. To raise one's head above the competition requires a range of skills which I don't think anyone over the age of about 40 really understands, we were all born into an age where you went to school, got qualifications, and got a job which used those qualifications.

Nowadays, it's not enough to be skilled or qualified, one has to really understand how to use those skills to bring real benefits to an employer. I'm actually quite impressed how well the youngsters with whom I come into contact understand that.