Having experienced my second piece of crap company you sort of start to realise how bad things are in the world. 

There seems to be a optimization towards outsourcing and cutting costs by minimizing wages and investment. 

Return on investment.

I think Wall Street is to blame for all of this. The focus and optimization of share price and poor reaction to rising stocks or falling stocks. Its like an oscillating PID Control loop. 

CUT COSTS! 
where? 

Cut Wages
Cut Maintenance 
Get outside help
Outsource
Off shore
Freeze computer purchases
Lower Specifications of equipment
Run equipment faster
Cut Training Programs

MORE Productivity!
Buy Bigger Faster Machines

There's a problem
Have meetings
Implement a massive overview structure to make sure it doesn't happen again

All the above is the entirely wrong way to do it.

You do not cut wages, or maintenance

You do not go external
This is an apocalyptic waste of money and you are likely to do one of the deadly sins of outsourcing. Poor Exit Strategy, imprecise definitions of function, role, aim, duration, costs, can all lead to an infinite contract of unbelievable expense.

Impressing Wall Street with figures is POINTLESS these people are worthless. They add nothing to the production systems or economies. They leach money.

Lawyers, Accountants, Bankers, solicitors. Your jobs are overblown in their importance you don't realise you add nothing to products and economy, you just take away. More complicated laws, tax loops holes and idiotic systems means massive waste. 

Everytime that I am doing something that isn't adding value to a product means waste. 

Moving things around or walking all over the place is waste.

Repeating work is waste
doing mundane tasks = waste

This is all the Toyota Way 

 Waste due to unnecessary Complexity,
Untaped Labour / Creativity,
Overproduction,
Space,
Energy,
Defects,
Material,
Inventory,
Time and Transport

For example: 
Office life the excel document. 
Every day you edit the same database download and remove the same things day after day after day.
You're doing it wrong.  This is unnecessary Work, you're wasting energy time and creativity on doing a mundane task. 

Create a Macro to do all the things you usually do at the click of a button. 

This is what I do. People don't understand this as it usually means I end up sitting around doing nothing all day. looking at cat pictures.... THEY'RE SO CUTE!

The point is most organizations don't realise that a lot of their IT is terrible. If you have a database you should sort the output of it so that you get what you need. You need to do away with clumsy legacy systems as soon as possible. That does not mean rushing things or setting impossible deadlines but it does mean having a sense of urgency. 

One of the most conflicted companies I worked for which was one of the best and definetly one of the worst, had an incredible IT policy but it seemed a tad excessive in some instances, but that was probably more my opinion at the time now I think they were probably right. They had an internal group sorting programs and also gave you any IT equipment you needed quickly and directly. The main focus was making people comfortable. The problem I found very quickly was that it was populated my continental idiots, arrogant asses and had an unbelievably high turn over of staff.

I also had one Indian guy turn to me and said "I hate the British." The naive HR person said "its just a joke we're like that on the continent" yes its called banter all British do it and the British are pros at it. This however wasn't banter he was bigot.

I soon realized the worst part of the company was the poor management of staff and the inability to stop infighting. This was mostly due to their insistence that the Toyota Way training only be given to senior people or management types, which was a mistake and the adhoc policy gave rise to misunderstandings and conflict. 


Stress and Strain was predominant, and even with the guise of the Toyota Way it worked like a traditional rigid structure hierarchy. This was a poor implementation of the Toyota Way.

The best person there though was the IT Director, clear concise and to the point. He also understood modern IT better than most people and when I say most I actually mean nearly ALL.


One of the most idiotic management styles I came across was one where the sole idea was to create friction and conflict. The result was devastating, and truly awful. How anyone can behave like that I don't know. 


LOGIC AND REASON. 

Everyone's approach should be a logical and reasoned approach. Using Data Analysis is an intelligent approach but you should always be questioning your data. 

This gives rise to an iterative approach. 

The lesser manager will think however you are prone to mistakes and that you are not able to do the work. They are a perfectionist without the ability to define perfection. 


There are too many of these people. They don't realise when someone says they're 99% confident they can do it as apposed to the person who says he's 100% confident that the 99% person has more ability and is more likely to do it than the 100% one. 

Incidentally if you're 100% you're an idiot, as you can't be 100% it is impossible to be 100%. The perfectionist will be confused by this statement and try to find someone who will say that they are 100% which is amusing but annoying. 


Business needs to be more scientific in their processes. Financial Districts need a leash, a ban on hedge funds, and a ban on derivatives which don't work.