In the MBAs world, you are judged by the here and now. No foresight into
the future. Little investment in the future. Most all MBA's are NOW
based. And sometimes you have to realize that the investment in quality
will take time to accrue. And people will take notice. Is everything
going to be at the Walmart, and HD level? Because that is where we are
heading if you say it's what the market will bear or what the market
wants. That's where the most people are. But is that necessary to be
profitable?

What if some companies say ... hey lets produce a quality product, not a
cheap POC. And what if the CEO was willing to accept that market
share. Would that be right? Because with today's thinking everyone
thinks you need to get bigger or you'll be out of business. What if you
just wanted to be profitable and put out a good product? Years ago you
didn't need to grow at a phenomenal rate. Years ago each town looked
different. And when I traveled the country by motorcycle each one not
only looked different, but they really were. Now they are all the same.
The same malls, the same stores. The same big box stores. In many towns
the original town is a ghost town. The big stores moved to the outskirts
of towns. It's ugly the blight they caused in many towns. Some town are
coming back as restaurant havens. But the reality is that this was not
good for America. Most of these jobs are low paying jobs, and most of
the goods come from outside the country.

Lets take a small example. Something we can all talk about.

Stanley tools.

So do you think Stanley went in the right direction?
Do you think the steering of Stanley made it a better company?
Aside from BOSTICH, I think of the Stanley brand as a lost brand. It is
useless. It got away from what it did well.

Example, the lever lock that many of you miss. Where is it? It's been
replaced by crap. The planes that they used to produce. Replaced by
crap. The levels that they used to produce. Crap...

Oh yea it was the market that did that... Hell no. It wasn't the
consumer either. It was the people in the corp world looking to reduce
cost. This reduction of cost caused a reduction in quality. Since the
masses really had no other choice, and brand loyalty being what it is
people kept buy the crap, but complained about the lack of quality. But
what choice did they have. For a long time none.

Lie Nielsen, Lee Valley to the rescue.

Lets talk about Irwin buying Marples. take a look at the Marples
chisels. They are poorly made by comparison to yesteryears. Quality goes
as the MBA thinks we can do a little less and still retain mkt share.


Ok off my rant, I have to carry some wood in.



On 4/10/2012 2:01 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Swingman wrote:
On 4/10/2012 11:27 AM, Mike Marlow wrote:

Finally - a voice of reason on this whole MBA think topic! The ones
who are most upset with "MBA Think" are the ones who are not MBA's. One
has to wonder...

Welcome to the sound of a once powerful, now almost non-existent,
manufacturing sector as it takes its dying gasps, kept alive by tax
payer bailouts and government intervention ... the product of fools,
and damned fools.

Then maybe we should call it Profit-think, or CEO-think. The MBA thing had
a valid definition back when GM was making stupid decisions based on a penny
savings per car, but it does not reflect the most of the business world
today. Profit is profit and that has always been the primary motive of any
business - long before the GM MBA stuff. To put all profit oriented
thoughts into some bucket called MBA think is very short sighted. The
alternative is to assume that business should be happy to run at a loss?