Compartmentalisation
Many years ago I worked for Ford Motor Company as a design engineer in their Research and Development labs at Dunton in the UK. Often designs were implemented to bring about cost saving. One penny shaved off the cost of manufacture amounted to thousands of pounds over a year. However, when the cars got to the showroom the dealers would make deals that could amount to hundreds of pounds being shaved off the price. Toyota realised the absurdity of this when they designed the Lexus. They don't cut costs in the manufacture and keep control over all stages of the manufacturing and selling.
It took a long time for car manufactures to realise this (in fact, many still don't) but many other industries are still way behind. I was reminded of this when I read an account of life as a call centre operator. The operators are strictly regulated as to how long they can spend on each call, how many breaks they can take, and for how long. Of course the result of this is that there is an incentive for an operator to fob off someone rather than spend time to deal with a problem. The phone calls are monitored to help prevent that, but the fact remains that keeping the customer happy is not the prime factor. So how many customers will go elsewhere if they don't get satisfactory service? I doubt if many companies would be able to tell you. The call centre is given a budget and their motivation is to stay within this budget. It reminded me of the manufacturing costs situation. Whilst the sales team has a quota to sign up a certain number of new customers, the call centre is throwing them away because of poor service. Because these companies are compartmentalised and management lacks a vision of the whole process, the left hand spoils what the right hand does.
Unfortunately, many of us act in the same way with our lives. If you buy a new
car for, say $30,000 the dealer will attempt to talk you into buying extras,
maybe totaling a few hundred dollars and on top of the $30,000 it doesn't seem
much. However, once you've bought the car you baulk at laying out a few dollars
for some extra like a child safety seat. It's a similar situation with people
who attempt to diet. Forgoing fattening foods in public, many dieters tuck into
fattening yoghurt or anything with 'low fat' written on the box.
People compartmentalise their lives. I've mentioned previously about 'flipping' into a different state and people adopt a number of different states throughout the day. In order to expand your consciousness you have to become aware of these different states in the same way as a company has to become aware of the different aspects of its organisation.
