Cables, even though as a product they are simple and inert objects, they are a subject of fascination. They fascinate when you make them, and they fascinate when you live and breathe them in production and in the warehouse, so much so that you become aware by the smell in the air of whether a particular cable is in the warehouse or not, or if a particular production run has begun.
Indeed, a cable is a product which, when you study it, can draw parallels with wine in the sense that it tells you its story. The cable is something which changes over time, just like wine, reacts against bad weather, against different installations, to various treatments, to the sun, to rain and to that which it carries within it, be they signals, data, energy or LIGHT.
The cable is the result of a whole worldwide economy where its raw material, copper, starts from open cast mines in Chile (the most famous ones) and passing through transformations ends up in our homes, our factories and our vehicles. Its extraction and transformation as a metal would fascinate anyone, indeed, copper is a sustainable metal of which, when you think of it, over 45% is drawn back from recycling.
Copper has also given its name to a period of pre-history, and it has been with us since those times. Indeed, copper marks the passage to the subsequent bronze age, and to that of iron when metallurgy started, leaving the Neolithic (that of working stones) well behind. The Chalcolithic, or age of copper, is also that which is distinguished from the others by the enormity of social and economic changes, not so much due to the value and use of the material itself, but because that was the period which saw the start of metallurgy.
Large copper power cable in section closeup
So, by being worked and with the creation of semi-precious objects, copper allowed for the accumulation of capital! Something which had not previously been conceived. Already from those days, therefore, having copper and objects made of copper amplified richness and the pride of knowing how to work it, and to be able to accumulate it in the face of those who did not know how to, generated that very feeling of pride. We are talking of at least 2500-3000 years BC, even if the definition of actual sins by religious interpretation and their listing occurred many years later.
Therefore, since primordial times, this metal (its processing, use, the advent of the same metallurgy in previous times and of the industrial revolution many centuries later) has always made those who were in contact with it feel a sense of PRIDEFUL ARROGANCE.
Turning back to our times, the cable, and through copper its main raw material, may make those persons involved with it PRIDEFULLY ARROGANT, thus indulging in this sin.
We should therefore keep that well in mind, and to have a decidedly opposite approach with steadfast temperance.
The pridefully arrogant cable manager or entrepreneur is therefore inclined, and tends, to conduct himself in a perverse and unprepared manner, wandering his own path to the detriment of others and those close to him, at times using arrogance itself as a weapon of defence to re-enforce his authority.
The supremo considers himself to be a leader, a despotic and authoritarian leader which, in management and modern company organizations, is certainly not the best management style for managing company systems.
I have known people, clients and entrepreneurs in this sector who have made of their companies the materialization of their arrogance. With over verticalized companies and absurdly despotic organizations, resulting in withdrawing responsibility from the lower echelons. I have had meetings and, indeed, discussions with people, entrepreneurial managers and many others who were, and are still, full of their own shameless arrogance.
Managing everything, that is the company organization, in a pridefully arrogant manner, results in loss of control and knowledge, or not even achieving them in the first place. Copper and cables themselves over time and in some companies (not all highlighted), have therefore become amplifiers, indeed amplifying their supremacy and creating organizations of even over 1000 people decidedly focused on 1 or just a few oligarchical bosses.
If in Italy during the economic boom of the 50s and 60s, managing newly born companies with prideful arrogance was a stimulus to proactivity (one example would be Mivar, Italian factory making televisions, with their entrepreneur being a decidedly self-centred entrepreneur), today, in a period of super knowledge and practically unlimited and free access to information, being arrogant within a company organization creates nothing but company shocks and immobility, leaving competitors at the door ready to pounce and be more timely.
Arrogance in a company organization above all promotes myopia with regard to the market, and even more so with regard to copper, and a slow and not efficient adaptation to the same. Arrogance, knowing it all, claiming to know everything about a particular thing or process in our sector, unfortunately is a symptom of inadequacy in handling continuous change in the world and even more so in the commodity business, as is ours from a certain point of view.
But looking at things really practically, how can we avoid our own companies straying towards an entrepreneurial management regime of prideful arrogance? Or, like that which is typically manifest in FUNCTIONAL organizations? (Note: Structuring for functions such as production, purchasing, marketing and sales, etc.).
Dear reader, before all, a strong, no, a very strong dose of motivation is required of the entrepreneur and by all collaborators (or/and by he who manages the company business; CEO or COO whoever it may be) and a full understanding of the current state of things (AS IS). Without that, it will be very, but very, difficult to change the company arrogance to temperance and humility. One needs therefore to have a desire TO BE, duly and strategically structured through use of small processes and little steps, avoiding implementing and launching forward-looking changes, then to return to old habits when it suddenly occurs to us that the project for change is harder than we previously thought.
change management concept
Having said that, at a company level of organization we should in the first place avoid FUNCTIONAL structures, also avoiding in the physical sense the famous upper levels (by this I mean the offices of bosses which are physically on the upper floors, while the workers are at the lower levels managing the business). We should therefore talk of structuring MATRIARCHAL organizations, company organizations managed by project, by processes where the responsibility of a single individual as process owner is divided and controlled together with other colleagues with functional responsibilities and with appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPI) (time to market, lead times, etc.) or systems which are surely more effective, and of which we will speak in the subsequent articles such as Lean Production etc.
I remember a previous client of mine, a medium to small cable production company, which had structured an INTERNAL AUDIT process in order to implement and study a number of KPIs so that each individual making up the company structure responded to the various requirements of colleagues within 24/48. The focus was to measure everything in a sort of internal KEIZEN; the management unfortunately was decidedly arrogant and therefore malfunctioning, notwithstanding that they tried to hide the fact, but the intention was intelligently structured so that the structure drew a concrete benefit.
In Short:
• Leadership with arrogance and authoritarianism generates company
immobility
• Act with temperance when making decisions
• Avoid functional organizations where possible
• Work by projects