It is bad enough that we will most likely leaving a huge deficit to future generations in the US.  The baby boom generation is marked by its excesses, short-term thinking and command and control managment.  Ever making us less competitive on a world stage.  We still have an opportunity to change this before my generation leaves the corporate offices, but it will require a change of thinking from one of command and control to systems thinking.  

The payback is the baby boom generation will have to deal with these horrible service systems where technology has been over-prescribed.  My mother-in-law sent me an email where she couldn’t get an answer on her GM health plan after multiple calls, wrong or confusing answers, and IVR phone systems that require a PHD to navigate.  Only fitting that our generation suffer the consequences of the poor service juggernauts we have created.

I suspect that future generations (like those before) will laugh at our generational ignorance around command and control thinking and over use of technology.  Similar to the way they laugh at the way Charles Barkley and Larry Bird wore such “short shorts.”  Time has not completely passed us though we still have an opportunity to leave good service systems for our retirement years and future generations.

This will require a transfer of thinking to systems thinking.  Beginning to build leadership development programs that help manage organizations as systems.  Not separating the decision making from the work.  Learning how to create value instead of managing income statements.  Showing innovation leadership by understanding customer demands.  Discarding scientific management theory where sub-optimization prevails to a system that understands that service is delivered end-to-end from a customer perspective.

In my last phone conversation with Dr. W. Edwards Deming he said “you better hurry.”  I am doing the best I can.