Rebelling against Mediocrity

In corollary with being excellent, we Producers must react to the mediocrity in the world. We must reject it outright.

My years on this planet are about half over, if I’m lucky. As time goes on, I find myself losing patience with certain things, such as computer software.

I have been writing computer software myself since the 1970’s, long before the “computer revolution.” Way back when, I was taught by even older dinosaurs how to dissect the problem at hand, how to write a program to solve that problem, how to test the program, how to examine the program’s output (to be sure it was not lying), and how to document my solution. These methods have not changed with time, though the computing tools have changed a lot.

Today, computer programmers skip the problem analysis, and jump right to the user interface design, ensuring that the screen looks “cool” or “rad”. The guts of the program and how it solves the problem are not important, as long as it works in, say, half the cases.

I bought a drafting program once, and found that there was no way to draw two lines so that the ends touched, due to internal number rounding errors. That is, it was impossible to draw a square that would hold water! The user interface was “cool”, but the program was useless, so I demanded a refund.

That’s what we have to do, reject mediocrity. If you buy a PC and it does not work, you need to politely (yet ardently) get in the face of the retailer and let them know that you are totally dissatisfied, and demand a refund.

Poor auto repair? Keep taking it back. Know your rights under the lemon law, which covers congenitally defective vehicles. (For that, see the Better Business Bureau’s web site at www.lemonlaw.bbb.org.) Auto dealers cringe when you trigger the lemon law because it drives up their costs. Negotiate with shops over botched repairs. I foolishly took a car to a small shop for a transmission rework. After I could not get the repaired car into second gear, the shop owner said, “I dunno, the other transmission that Glen fixed worked okay.” I settled with him for the parts and had another shop fix the problem.

Cold food at a restaurant? Don’t take a chance on your health. Send it back. Be polite, but do send it back.

Coworker did a B- job on your mutual project? Be firm, and get him to do it over. Part of demanding excellence out of yourself is demanding it of others. Note that it’s much easier to set that high standard before your coworker starts on his half of the project!

Receive something mail-order that’s damaged or not as advertised? Send it back. Make the company pay for their shoddy work.

I went to a doctor for a check up and after a lengthy wait was shown to the examination room. “Remove your clothes except for your under shorts,” said the nurse. I did just that. The exam room was a bit chilly, but I reassured myself that the doctor would be along shortly. The nurse even stopped by after about 20 minutes and said the same thing. Thirty minutes. Forty minutes. After nearly an hour, I put my clothes back on and left. No doctor, no service: No customer. I was tucking my shirt in as I walked by the receptionist, who looked at me a bit startled. “Make certain I don’t get billed for this ‘examination’,” I said. She nodded silently.

When I have stripped down for examinations since, I have worn my wristwatch. Sends a subtle hint, that pasty white guy sitting on the exam table in only his shorts and watch.

The worst mediocrity is sometimes foisted on us by Producers themselves, worst because they know better. Guidant, a manufacturer of heart pacemakers, in 2005 had to recall tens of thousands of installed units because a seal could fail, letting bodily fluids into the device which can damage the circuitry. That’s a bit serious because the verb ‘recall’ implies cutting someone’s chest open to retrieve the potentially life threatening lifesaving device. Medical oxymorons are always the most tragic. (Lawyers worldwide could be heard giggling uncontrollably after Guidant’s announcement.)

This could be a simple design error or purchasing mistake, related to the rubber seals on the pacemaker. Having seen product recall situations like this first hand, I can say what probably happened is that the testing was cut short by Paraducers in Guidant’s operations and sales departments, with screams of, “People are dying because you engineers want to run ‘just a few more tests!’” So, they rushed the product to market, seals not fully verified within test subjects or animals, under fluid pressure, and the Law of Sowing and Reaping did the rest.

The Producers at Guidant should have exercised some leadership and forced the proper testing to be performed on the pacemakers. That would have saved lives, and saved a load of jobs that will likely be lost as the company contracts. The Golden Rule applies so well in this circumstance, and each Producer should have asked: “Would I want this thing implanted in my chest?”

Let’s have some more fun at the expense of the mediocre: The Airlines.

The airlines, God bless them, have a huge burden to bear. They labor under tremendous government regulation to make sure that you and your luggage get from point A to point B. They throw money down the union drain at an unprecedented pace. I remember when USAir was losing much money in the late 1980’s, about $30 million per month. I could not fathom how that much money could be vaporized, about a million dollars a day. There had to be a bathroom in Charlotte with three shifts of janitors stuffing cash into a toilette day and night.

They have such a burden that we should go a little easy on them, but they don’t seem to learn from their mistakes. Year after year, the flying experience only gets worse.

Remember this slogan of one of the major airlines: We love flying, and it shows.

In many, many years of flying, I have encountered many, many delays. These delays were caused by numerous problems, from fog to mechanical failures, from late connections to computer malfunctions. However, in absolutely every case, the advertised delay (as stated by the stewardess or captain) has been "just a few minutes." Have you noticed this?

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Dimplechin Goodbody from the flight deck. You may have noticed that the starboard engine has fallen off the wing and is laying in a jumbled heap on the asphalt. We have a maintenance crew dispatched to repair this, and we should be underway in just a few minutes."

Catch this one:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the pilot has asked me to inform you that our destination airport has just been destroyed by a nuclear detonation of undetermined size. Repairs have been put out for bid and construction should begin shortly, as soon as the plutonium radiation danger dissipates. We should be underway in just a few minutes."

What is the problem with giving an accurate representation of the expected delays? When all I hear is "another few minutes" for several hours on end, these pilots, crew and gate agents lose all their credibility. But the Paraducers in the front office are afraid that telling the truth to customers will lower ridership.

Next time you are on a flight, listen closely and you will hear what I mean.

Consider temperature regulation. There is a handy device in my home that keeps the temperature relatively constant. There is one in my car, and I expect most businesses these days have one as well. Airports, gate areas, and airplanes do not, however, benefit from this device. What is it?

When I fly, I dress as for a hike in the mountains: In layers. First there are two T-shirts, then a sweatshirt, then my overcoat. I take a light pair of gloves, too. Why layers? Well, flying from Chicago to Houston, one could experience outdoor temperatures from the 30's to the 80's, easily. It only makes sense. But when you factor the airplane into the equation, temperatures can vary another ten degrees or more.

Why can't gate areas, especially for the puddle jumper airlines, be built with some buffering against hot or cold air outside the building? A thirty foot hallway would do the trick. But no, we have sliding doors to the outside right at the seating area.

On a hundred million dollar airplane, why is there not air circulating at a regulated temperature all the time? Why does the pilot shut off the air flow to start the engines? Can't someone design a blower that runs all by itself off a simple car battery? Why does the air circulate, until the plane pulls back from the gate and the passengers cannot get out?

So many times I have run through airports to catch my flight, only to find that it was delayed anyway for whatever reason. I rush up to the gate, jog down the jet way, find my seat and plop down. Whew! Then, the announcement:

"Ladies and gentlemen, aliens from outer space have destroyed all the Brazilian rain forests causing global temperatures to rise 30 degrees in the last ten minutes. South American authorities should have the forests regrown shortly. We anticipate that we will have to sit here on the black asphalt in 120 degree heat with the door closed and zero air flow for just a few minutes."

I'm sitting there, moist from my airport sprint, no air, sopping wet, steaming mad, and paying over a thousand bucks for the privilege.

I wear ear plugs when I fly. I learned to do this several years ago. Getting off each flight, I felt like I had been slapped about the head and shoulders for a few hours. The plugs really help.

Even with the plugs, the noise level in airports is highly annoying. First we have the Muzac. I did not like the Beatles too much in the '60's, and now I have to listen to Hard Day's Night played with saxophones and cheesy synthesizers. ZZ Top. AC/DC. Clapton. All homogenized, all boring, and all on Muzac.

Then we have the automated warnings: "CAUTION! The moving walk is coming to an end. Please secure belongings and children to prevent the loss of limbs. CAUTION! The moving walk is coming to an end. Please secure belongings and children to prevent the loss of limbs." And on and on and on, forever. Sitting at a gate near one of these things (which is at about every other gate) is maddening.

Then we have gate agents that sound like they are doing a really bad Andy Kaufman impression. Remember Andy from Saturday Night Live? Not the Elvis, but the nasally voiced character. Only at ear splitting levels, and totally incomprehensible, with an accent that someone from Iowa could not understand with a Universal Translator.

A little whiff of fresh air can do wonders for one's attitude. That's the power of Spring Fever, don't you agree? In airports, that is a hope never to be fulfilled. The recycled, stale, pizza + tobacco smoke stench in most airports is the very thing needed to put each air traveler in a foul mood.

I suppose that they cannot pump in too much outside air without asphyxiating us all with diesel fumes from the airplanes. There are, however, industrial air purifiers that are made to service large spaces. One of those would go a long way to reducing traveler stress and increasing ridership.

Why are the airlines bankrupt? We, the customers, hate flying, and it shows.

There are so many examples of mediocrity in business, but on the good side, there is a company in my industry I do business with on a weekly basis. They are a pleasure to work with, and if they do make a mistake, they make it right instantly. They are based in Minnesota and their customer service representatives are always well spoken, articulate and polite. Always. As a result of their excellence, I do business with them by habit, even if their price on a product is a few percent higher than the low bid. It’s worth it to reward their superior service.

Producer, in business reward the excellent, and penalize the mediocre.

Microsoft

Before we leave the topic of mediocrity vs. excellence, let’s spend a moment looking at the company that everyone loves to hate: Microsoft.

Being a computer hardware and software engineer, I am intimately familiar with the guts of computers and how they work. This knowledge and experience goes down to the chip level, and I have worked in chip processing and design facilities. Much of my life has been spent designing, programming and debugging computer software and hardware. That’s my area as a Producer.

Take an expert in any field of work and he or she will give you opinions instantly when asked about something from that field. For example, say you want to buy a used car. You drive the car to your mechanic’s shop, throw him the keys and ask him to take it for a spin.

First he looks at the key to get an idea of how many times the engine has been started. Worn out? Might be time for a new starter pretty soon. When he starts the car, he listens for problems he’s heard in other cars like it. He drives it for a few minutes, tosses you the keys and rattles off a detailed account of the car’s condition.

How can he do this in ten minutes? He works on cars ten hours a day, that’s how.

My point is that, as a computer expert using Microsoft products, I get this cheap, designed-by-committee feeling. When I try to print a few pages from a long document in Microsoft Word, it starts printing the whole thing. Excel has so many features that it’s useless and confusing except for the basics. Some features are only available on menus found by right clicking screen features only two pixels wide. Microsoft’s operating systems are loaded with bugs documented by programmers like me to be at least ten years old, yet they persist in each release.

These are not just peeves of mine, but serious problems that cause me to expend hours at a time looking for a solution. Searching the Internet newsgroups, I sometimes find solutions, but if there are a thousand people with exactly the same problem from the last century, literally, why doesn’t Microsoft fix it?

With Microsoft we have institutionalized mediocrity. An innovative and tenacious bunch of Producers has been absorbed into an endless sea of MBA Paraducers. Product performance is not important any more. Stock price performance reigns supreme.

Committees of young college graduates at Microsoft work on operating systems and other programs, enhancing products created by other committees of programmers who have been fired or promoted, with no notion of the original design intent or its limitations. The Paraducers screech: “Our customers are demanding these features! It does not matter how slowly the program runs!”

Why hasn’t market competition cleaned up this mess? It cannot because 1) Microsoft buys potential competitors before they get so large as to trigger antitrust inquiries (also buying their silence), and 2) a competitor’s product must be 100% compatible with the Microsoft product to be marketable, but Microsoft can change their product and release an update in only months, making the competing program incompatible. With their Internet update facility, they could conceivably update a program overnight.

The situation is totally different from the trust problems in the oil industry in the early twentieth century. A few companies, Standard Oil in particular, stomped the competition through acquisitions and unfair trade practices.

Microsoft, as if it were an oil company, can reformulate its gasoline on a weekly basis with practically zero investment in infrastructure or capital equipment. Their practices will ensure that no other company will have any significant fraction of the market for years to come.

If they put out an excellent product, I would not have any problem with all this. But their products are mediocre, and as a Producer I reject junk, and I reject Microsoft. Make your own choice in the matter, but take note of the Producer reasoning and apply it to your interactions in the marketplace. There is certainly a Microsoft in your industry.