Sunday, March 07, 2010

Seth Godin on Andrew Carnegie with wisdom for Red Lobster

Seth Godin wrote the following insight on his blog. It is as if it was directly address to the corporate "leaders" in Darden/Red Lobster. HEY!!! He's speaking to you - listen up!

Carnegie apparently said, "Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors......Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory."

Is there a typical large corporation working today that still believes this?

Most organizations now have it backwards. The factory, the infrastructure, the systems, the patents, the process, the manual... that's king. In fact, shareholders demand it.

It turns out that success is coming from the atypical organizations, the ones that can get back to embracing irreplaceable people, the linchpins, the ones that make a difference. Anything else can be replicated cheaper by someone else.

1 comment:

Pseudo Waiter said...

First off, I love Seth Godin. He is one of the most insightful marketing gurus out there today. I am constantly amazed at the corporate machine and its abandonment of its most prized resource, its people.

My ex girlfriend worked for large chain restaurant in Toronto owned by a massive corporation. Her location was expecting a huge renovation and asked all full time staff to take a vacation over the 2 week closure. All agreed, and 1 week prior to the reno, they fired all 24 front line workers who had been with the company for more than 1 year. They said they wanted a fresh start. Almost the entire remaining staff, quit in protest and disgust. It wound up costing the company a 2 week delay in re-opening, and surely a ton of cash. But I bet they didn't learn a thing.