Articles by CBAssociates

Published, Newspapers and Technology, December 1999

Business As Usual... I Don't Think So.

As we approach the beginning of a new century many things go through our mind, not the least of which is how tired we are of the retrospective looks at 1999 and the last hundred years.

Every year I lament that I have to put up with the "year in perspective" conducted by every periodical, TV and radio station. This year not only are we bombarded with events of 1999, but we have an entire century to relive.

Don't get me wrong, I believe history is worth reviewing least we repeat the errors of the past. My problem with the constant repeating of the past is that most of it is surface information and focused on cocktail type chatter rather than useful information.

Most of the media will tell us that we have an attention span of a gnat and are more interested in news about people than concepts. Therefore, that is their focus.

Add to this mix the national elections and the, seemly petty focuses on the minute of detail and an endless stream of pictures of jogging want-to-be presidents. For many of us that means we have several months of 'news of substance' starvation and tendentious of the mute finger.

As we have heard so often: Don't get mad, get even. I am here today with some of my observations of the past, but least I repeat the errors of history put in perspective for the future.

Finding people, let alone good people, became difficult and expensive. This will get worse. It will become more difficult to find and retain people for all levels. A critical shortage of qualified people for technical and management positions will exist.

One of the reasons that the House and Senate can agree to raise the minimum wage is that no one with a valid work permit and is employable needs to work for minimum wage. Signing bonus at McDonald's? Has the world gone mad?

Daily we deal with more and more people at business that do not have happy faces and could care less if you ever came back. This is a clear trend and reflects the lack of choices when a company is hiring for the lower paying jobs. I had a young lady tell me that a 'Manager" at a fast food chain was code for slave. Managers filled in for any employee that did not show up, which, was a normal occurrence. It seems that more and more companies are merely using the warm body threshold for employment testing.

Companies in our industry have stopped drug testing for some jobs. It is going to be a tough holiday season for newspapers and any company that uses seasonal labor.

That is history and the current situation. What about the future? For some companies the lack of qualified employees will create substantial business issues. Serious problems such as this typically cause a critical downward spiral of service while costs increase.

Many small newspapers are not very deep in technical areas and when a person or two in key positions leave it can be very disruptive to the organization.

The lack of good leadership means that habits and work practices within departments develop that can become disruptive to service and cost. This situation all but precludes improving service and productivity.

Newspapers, least they repeat history, will reduce their dependency on a limited labor pool. They will automate repetitive jobs such as inserting feeding and purchase equipment that will required minimal operators such as presses that are fully automated. There will be more strategic alliances or contracting out functions where newspapers will not perform all their own production work.

Another approach to the problem will be to increase labor productivity by increasing the amount and quality of work so they can afford to employ a more qualified employee. Pay more, but get more. This can be done by bringing some of the previously contracted work back, start and print niche products as well as print other newspapers and periodicals.

Some newspapers will look back in history and realize the reasons they do not have a stable of people to promote to management positions is due to the fact they eliminated so-called unnecessary positions. This will lead to, as it has already in some organizations, hiring knowledge workers who instill depth in leadership.

Jobs will be structured, in the efficient companies, to make the people a part of the organization and decision making process rather than merely a cog in the wheel. Teams will be a reality, but implemented in a manner more aligned with industrial practices. That will require different training than used in the past.

The training to date has been focused on getting people to work together. The purpose of the business is not for people just to work together, but to make a bottom line contribution. Yes, there have been some good efforts in team problem solving, but unfortunately it is still done as an event. The team efforts on problem solving were to create short term benefits using some very elementary tools.

Benefits from team projects have been largely to get the low hanging fruit. The real benefits comes from institutionalizing the culture of constant improvement and providing basic metrics, improvement tools and techniques that have been used for years at major manufacturing organizations, such as GE. We will see more organizations make services, productivity, quality improvement, and flexibility part of the culture as USA TODAY is incorporating into its organization. Process improvement systems used at companies such as Ford and Allied Signal will be introduced in the next decade in a very serious way.

The previous decade was one of change within newspapers being an internal process and one that was done based on their schedule and with limited attention to the demands of the marketplace. How else can we explain that some newspapers are still letterpress and the lack of color capacity at most newspapers.

The decade of the future will be one that history will report that newspapers continued in the printed form but were forced to change due to external pressures and at a rate dictated by the marketplace.

Change or parish will be the options for the future. Of course, that is true of all successful businesses throughout history.

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