“I might have stood there always if you had not come along,” he said; “so you have certainly saved my life. How
did you happen to be here?”
“We are on our way to the Emerald City, to see the great Oz,” she answered, “and we stopped at your cottage to pass
the night.”
“Why do you wish to see Oz?” he asked.
“I want him to send me back to Kansas; and the Scarecrow wants him to put a few brains into his head,” she replied.
The Tin Woodman appeared to think deeply for a moment.
Then he said:
“Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?”
“Why, I guess so,” Dorothy answered.
The Wizard of Oz BY L. FRANK BAUM Too many Americans have lost the heart to own their circumstances, and that loss of heart has begun eroding the very foundation of American competitiveness. A recent Time magazine article, “The Temping of America: As Stable Jobs Disappear, Americans Are Being Forced to Adjust to a Fragile and Frightening New Order,” details one particularly alarming aspect of that erosion: “This is the new meta- physics of work. Companies are portable, workers are throwaway.
The rise of the knowledge economy means a change, in less than 20 years, from an overbuilt system of large, slow-moving economic units to an array of small, widely dispersed economic centers, some as small as the individual boss. In the new economy, geography dissolves, the highways are electronic. Even Wall Street no longer has a reason to be on Wall Street. Companies become concepts and, in their demater- ialization, become strangely conscienceless. And jobs are almost as susceptible as electrons to vanishing into thin air. The American economy has turned into a bewilderment of good news, horrible news, depending on your point of view. After two years of record profits, the Bank of America recently announced that thousands of employees will become part-timers, with few benefits. Beneath some of the sta- tistics of economic recovery lies stress and pain.”
A companion article in the same Time issue, entitled “Disposable Workers,” identifies America’s growing reliance on temporary staffers as a trend that’s shattering the tradition of employee loyalty and commitment: “The corporation that is now the largest private employer in America does not have any smokestacks or conveyor belts or trucks.
There is no clanging of metal on metal, no rivets or plastic or steel.
In one sense, it does not make anything. But then again, it is in the business of making almost everything. Manpower, Inc., with 560,000 workers, is the world’s largest temporary employment agency. Every morning, its people scatter into the offices and factories of America, seeking a day’s work for a day’s pay.”
As behemoth companies like General Motors and IBM strive to
“rightsize” themselves by shrinking their payrolls, Manpower, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, fills the vacuum supplying the bodies and brains those companies still need to accomplish their goals. The United States has entered a new era, the free-lance economy, where the ranks of part-timers, temps, and independent contractors are expanding while the traditional full-time work force is shrinking. According to the Time article, “Already, one in every three U.S. workers has joined these shadow brigades carrying out America’s business. Their ranks are growing so quickly that they are expected to outnumber permanent full-time workers by the end of this decade.” While this trend may benefit the bottom line, it can take its toll not only in terms of alien- ated relationships among co-workers but also in terms of pride in product quality and customer satisfaction. Will “temps” care as much as full-time workers about the long-term consequences of their jobs?
Will they be as willing to go beyond their job description in order to get the result? Or, will they use their job description as justification for why they failed to get results? Will they feel victimized by an or- ganization that wants to “rent” their services, but requires them to
“own” their jobs?
The Time article continues with Robert Schaen, former controller of Ameritech and now publisher of children’s books, observing that
“The days of the mammoth corporations are coming to an end. People are going to have to create their own lives, their own careers and their own successes. Some people may go kicking and screaming into the new world, but there is only one message there: You’re now in business for yourself.” In the free-lance economy “owning” your cir- cumstances, whether for a week temping in an unfamiliar organization or for a few years in a career-enhancing position or for a lifetime in your own business, will become more and more critical for every American.
In this year’s “Most Admired Corporations” issue of Fortune magazine, reporters highlighted employee involvement, which includes ownership and accountability, as a common thread among the most admired corporations: “Most admired companies treat their employees exceptionally well, which is a factor in, and a result of, their success.
Robert Haas, CEO of Levi Strauss Associates, thinks employee engage- ment and satisfaction are fundamental to running a strong business.
Says he: ‘You have to create an environment where everyone feels like a representative of the company. Unless you have people who know what you stand for and want to make every transaction the best, you’re going to stub your toe.’” As an example of the sense of ownership felt by Levi Strauss employees, Fortune describes what happened at a plant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where factory workers identified a serious problem and began working with a local businessperson to recycle some of the millions of pounds of denim scraps Levi took to the landfill every year. The workers approached Levi headquarters with the idea and won approval for the plan. Today, all Levi Strauss interoffice stationery is blue and is made of recycled denim. And as a result, the plant has cut paper costs 18 percent and a little pressure has been taken off the local landfill. Now that’s ownership!
In too many cases, however, an “ownership gap” seems to be widening between executive pay and company performance, a problem
that a growing number of shareholder activists have pounced on.
According to The Wall Street Journal, “To hear some people tell it, corporate chieftains are on the run. Boardroom revolts at giant com- panies such as GM and IBM (where chief executive officers and top executives received huge salaries and bonuses even while their com- panies were floundering) give the impression that rising shareholder activism has top executives scared and weakened as they try desper- ately to hang on to their jobs. The reality, however, is quite different at most U.S. companies. First Mississippi Corp., for example, has made a decade’s worth of strategic mistakes. Its earnings have been flat.
And its stock price is roughly where it was in 1982, even though the bull market has more than tripled the value of the average company’s stock. Yet throughout all that, J. Kelley Williams has remained chief executive officer and even got the added job of chairman. He doesn’t seem worried about his job or under any urgent pressure from direct- ors, and he says that’s how things should be. Slavish obedience to activist shareholders ‘locks you into a short-term time frame,’ he says.
‘That’s bad for technology development, and it’s bad for the country and the economy.’” While there may be some truth in what Williams says, there’s also some falsehood: no chief executive officer, board member, or senior executive should ever argue for long-term, patient capital to cover up strategic mistakes and avoid accountability. In the end, such lack of ownership for results will only erode America’s competitiveness.
No matter what your current circumstances, once you come to See It, you must take the next step to Own It. Only by accepting full ownership of all past and present behavior that has contributed to current circumstances can you hope to improve your future situation.