Last week I wrote a reply comment to a POTUS question. That led me to make a thread titled “Electability”. It was a brief summary of some thoughts that have been running through my head for quite some time. Those of you who read this little site have bantered the names of potential presidential candidates back and forth. Most of the high-profile names just do not fit our view of what is needed. A few, very few, could potentially fill that void, namely: Sarah Palin, Allen West, and Herman Cain.
Why?
What is it about those names that provides us a measure of optimism, yet other more established names do not?
If you’re still reading down here then I’ll share my perspective; and in sharing perhaps my meager pondering will provide some fuel to your discussions with your spouses, your friends, your neighbors. But I must indulge a brief personal story to set the stage.
You see, shit just ain’t right.
About 20 years ago a couple of friends were sharing with me a real life story about their encounter with a crew of really smart Japanese guys who were studying their work. My pals worked for a power company making really cool stuff, from scratch, for power plants and stuff. Essentially they were, and are, fabricators of big equipment that is used in the process of turbine generating equipment. And they are good, really good, at it. Anyway, the primary account for their work was being studied by a team of these Japanese intellectuals because they had just won a prestigious award. “The Deming Prize” named for a 20th century production specialist Edwards Deming who helped rebuild the Japanese infrastructure, and modern industry, in post WWII Japan.
The Japanese research team was highly quizzical about how an American company could win such prestigious acclaim formerly reserved for only Japanese manufacturing operations. They were bound and determined to discover the secret, so they arrived in the United States with their research team armed and prepared for a couple of weeks of industrial intellectual data mining. Slide rules, analytical graphs, actuarial analysis, and a host of quantitative studying formulas to uncover this secret. They were granted full unfettered access to all the day-to-day events within the operation. However, they quickly discovered that much of what they sought to understand was not taking place behind desks or in board rooms, but rather on the tailgates of well-worn pickup trucks.
They ended up quickly discovering they needed to follow the crews, of which my friends were a significant part, into the fields of every day operations to grasp an understanding of how production efficiencies were being formulated so successfully. So amid the myriad of convenient store coffee cups, big gulp containers, empty cigarette packs, and slurpee straws they set up their discovery efforts. Big rolls of complex industrial diagrams were rolled out daily on the tailgates of pick up trucks and held down for discussion by random metal bits of iron stuff and tools as the days challenges were discussed and solutions set into motion. It was described as quite a funny scene to see the Japanese guys in their suits, ties and pocket protectors, albeit clad with customary hard hats, amid a category of rather ‘rough around the edge’ Hanes T-Shirt wearing, tobaccy chewing roughnecks.
The Japanese intellectuals followed the roughnecks every move for two weeks straight determined to understand how they could be so good at producing highly productive solutions at such a rapid pace in the face of seemingly staggering industrial problems. At the end of the two weeks the Japanese had agreed to share their findings via a presentation to their guests and the owners of the company. So it came to pass that after two weeks everyone involved was called into the conference room to hear the results. Again, quite a scene with the five Japanese men equipped with portfolios, ledgers, binders, an overhead projector, and various other presentation materials.
The room was cordial, filled with boisterous laughter, and lighthearted jokes mostly about the distinct differences between the polished proper Japanese and the rather odd southern drawl roughnecks. However, over the past two weeks both sides had grown quite fond of each others idiosyncracies and customary nuances. So it was with good cheer the American contingent settled in for a lesson in quantitative industrial research. However, there was an unusual tentativeness on the part of the Japanese guys as the recap session formally began. You see, it appeared, they had no real way to identify for their peers back in Japan how the American team was able to accomplish so much, so well. As they explained almost everything they witnessed was, well, unquantifiable statistically. The poor Japanese guys were almost embarrassed because they were unable to produce a presentation of data to adequately reflect what they had personally witnessed.
So after a bit of awkwardness, where some sideways glances were distinctly evident between the starch white shirts, one brave Japanese fellow summed it up thusly:
After much considerable reflection, and various methods of Kaizen methodology being used to attempt quantifiable answers, we have determined that your expertise can most appropriately be summarized as follows. You are not that good, you’re just rucky.
A momentary silence was broken only by the gut busting laughter from the roughnecks. Not just because the guy said “rucky”, but because he was 100% right. There really is no way to quantify what they do on a day-to-day basis. They solve problems on the fly, using no specific formula other than the expertise that each has from years of skill and experience in industrial engineering on the back of a tailgate. They laughed out loud, for quite a while, and the more they looked at the worried faces of the Japanese guys the more they could not help themselves from laughing. “We’re not that good, we’re just RUCKY” they each kept saying it as they held their stomachs and laughed with approval.
After they retained their composure they all parted ways with great fellowship and significant respect for each other. Indeed individually, and collectively, they had learned a lesson about how completely disparate approaches to problem solving could both arrive at successful results. The Japanese way was methodical, analytical, quantifiable and could be reproduced and exported. The American way was also methodical but it was solution driven from the bottom up and virtually impossible to teach. But both accomplished significant success.
The following week when the guys showed up for work, one of the project engineers had rounded up all the hard hats and printed on the back “We’re Not Good – We’re Rucky“.
They all wore them proudly and it boosted morale for months as all kinds of people would ask what the heck it meant.
What does this have to do with politics and a Presidential candidate? Well, you’ll have to read Part 2 to find the connection….. 🙂 😀