86

Does that number mean anything to you? How about 86ing it? It's an old slang expression of uncertain origin. The The American Heritage Dictionary defines it first as a refusal of service in a bar or restaurant, and secondly to throw out or eject something.

I use this odd little diversion in contrast to today's topic: "More Crap From The Internet."

I get an email from the Huffington Post every day and while there are some really interesting items that show up I have become aware that there is something they are obsessed with: Management!

Yes, the thing people use to run businesses and one of the most "trending" ways be doing things. Yes we know that management is the answer to everything, whether it's work, chores at home, schools, our emotions. All these things and more can be mastered with the judicious application of management tools and practices. But lest we forget, management is really good at one thing and probably not much else. That thing is efficiency.

It certainly makes sense that a business doesn't want to use valuable resources doing things that don't promote creation of value, which is the reason for the organization's existence. And if you're trying to build cars, for example, Mr. Ford's assembly line is a real model of efficiency and execution. So management is really the process of evaluating the steps in a process and maximizing the result while minimizing the input and time and energy. This requires taking lots of measurements over a significant number of replicates to create a base line, then working to improve or eliminate steps.

This brings us to the "trending" i referred to above. On the main page of the Huff Post page to day are a number of lists of things one might do to better manage their lives today. That number is, you guessed it 86. From 18 things highly creative people do differently to 10 full-body workout moves you can do at home. Not to mention the 8 college degrees that aren't worth the money ot the 7 foods you should never eat again, neither of which are included in the total.

Am I the only one who doesn't have the time, patience or interest in seeing ow long a list I can make for myself today. I mean really, one or two important things  in addition to the phone answering and groceries and errands is a full day. And, by the way one of the 18 is daydreaming.

But lest I lay the blame at the feet of the Huffsters, they're media. That means they're a reflection of us. If we didn't want that stuff they wouldn't waste their valuable space with it. Now you might ask ourself why am I going on about management like this. And that would certainly be a valid question.

Any of you who've been reading any of my stuff have gotten the word that the times, they are a-changin' as Mr. Dylan said back in the 60's. And as they certainly were back then they are now. After WWII we all fell in love with the country's ability to rise up in incredible response to the onslaught of Germany and Japan to build up our forces and our hardware to defeat the enemy. We loved our ability to build war machines of great capability and durability that lead us to believe, then prove what a manufacturing powerhouse we were. And we used that belief as energy and intention to create highly successful business and the profits that went along with them.

In the 70's the world which had been changing since the end of the war began to catch up to us. Metaphorically, the Japanese come ashore and said Americans don't have to choose from the big 3's offering of gas-guzzling chrome-and-finmobiles. We could drive more economical and reliable transportation which would certainly get from zero to sixty in an amount of time no one cared about one way or another. Apparently the market spoke and Detroit ignored it. They insisted they knew better and gave away over a third of it's market share, along with most of their profits.

Now you know the captains of industry have to find out whose fault this is and it was easy to blame the high price of labor and those unreasonable unions. They had to be stopped. I'm not going any further than that. You can have your own opinion of all that without it having any impact on the point I'm making.

All the data from all the economists whether liberal, progressive or conservative all agree that the American economy stopped creating value around the mid-70's. Real wages froze then have fallen and the economy has pretty much been the playground and pay day for the wealthy ever since. And they still cry about high taxes and inefficient government. And they have amassed a combined store of cash on the order of more than $10 Trillion.

THere isn't enough work, and there is a stagnant economy. But don't call the capitalists to account. It's unions and foreign competition and high taxes and interfering government. Meanwhile, the guys in the corner offices are getting paid millions to their personal accounts while allowing the well being of everyone else to wallow in indifference.

Have you noticed that the only people besides the wealthy that are doing well are the whiz kids? Yeah, the great tech innovators from Apple and Microsoft and Google, etc. What's going to happen when Elon Musk and his Tesla becomes the biggest car company in the US, then the world? And we're paying carloads to so-called high performance CEOs to help us maintain mediocrity.

No, folks. The answer is no longer management and its obsession with efficiency. We need brains, and heart and balls! We have them, so let;s put them to use.