Corporate Laziness

With the announcement of Pfizer closing in Michigan last week (3 plants), reporters were spelling more doom and gloom for the already beaten Michigan economy. So, I opted to take a step back and take a broader look at what's killing our state. Its generally safe to blame things on the government. Tends to wash our hands of any error making we may be responsible for, and always helps when that government wasn't the one you voted for anyways. Yet, Michigan has had a fairly good mix of both parties. So, time to look deeper.

In the age of Corporate CEO's getting paid 400% more than the average worker ant, there's no question that we are stuck in the age of Corporate Laziness and Greed. All that CEO's care about is to make their money quick, then get the heck out of the company. Take Pfizer for example. Here's a company that hasn't had a new product in almost ten years, the very up lifting Viagra drug. People were shocked that Pfizer suddenly laid off about 2500 employees in Ann Arbor, 10,000 world wide. Seriously though, where is the surprise? If I don't do anything new for ten years, I'd say my job would be in jeopardy too. Well, that and one of their products: torcetrapib, were killing people. Sounds like a company I want to invest in.

Then you have the wonderful car industry in Michigan. For the last 30 years, I've known I lived in the "rust belt", yet GM and Ford have done nothing to change business. A tail-light design here, a safety feature there, sure, but seriously, those are your breakthroughs in 100 years? Where the fuck are those cars of the future they kept telling us about? Sounds like more Corporate Laziness. For the last 50 years, the Detroit car company CEOs have been getting rich, and running, leaving the worker ant in the dust.

Another case is Kellogg, another big Michigan industry and worlds largest cereal company. I wouldn't exactly call adding marshmallows to cereal a breakthrough, but it did help sales for a while. Lately they've been all about the whole grains any more fortifying elements in their products. This will keep the companies alive, but for how long? Kellogg is a company that doesn't seem to suffer too much from Corporate laziness. But, when it does, the worker ants need to watch the signs.

If you want to track companies that are not lazy, look toward Google and Apple. Apple wasn't content on just Computers, while Google wasn't just going to stop at being a search engine. Simply amazing what these brands have pulled off in very little time, considering what groups like Pfizer and GM have done.

In conclusion, it seems that the general rule should be 8 years. That's if your company hasn't done anything new or revolutionary in about 8 years, you should really consider jumping ship. In a global economy we're in today, we need to rely more on just producing the same crap, every day, and open our eyes to the warning signs. While at the same time educating ourselves on what companies bleed their worker employees, while the top brass are swimming in money...instead of ideas.