Operations 102: John Henry really did beat the machine! And he still would today…

Most people my age can’t recall a time before the internet. We were force fed new tech gadgets while watching Saturday morning cartoons, we sent our first email before we sent our first written letter, and Google is a part of our everyday vocabulary while our parents’ encyclopedias continue to be overlooked at our yearly garage sales (notice this article is posed on a blog). Today, society judges a school’s ability to teach the new generation of “Trekkies”… I mean techies, by the number of computers they have in the classroom. It’s no wonder why most of us 20-somethings are able to mercilessly outmatch the computer literacy of our 40 and 50 year old counterparts in the work force, and we wonder why there is an ever-growing need for people with trade skills.

As a result, we college grads choose to flaunt our analytical skills and our past experience in SAP and other AS 400 systems through our various internships. We ache as we watch paper continuously spew from the printer as we preach our sermon to a deaf audience promising a “green” future where trees are our friends. We call the operating systems currently, “archaic”, and yearn for automated processes complete with LCD screens and bar codes. We must have been absent the day our kindergarten teacher read to the class the story of the legendary battle between John Henry and the machine… it is a battle which continues still today.



What were we supposed to take away from the tale of John Henry? That a man could outlast a machine? No, we all know that’s not true. Perhaps that a machine has no heart and as such can never be trusted? No, that’s not it either… I would never give my W4 to a tax specialist using an abacus (I would probably go to www.taxrelaxer.com instead). So what should we take away from this story?

Now, I can almost be certain that when reading the story of John Henry, our kindergarten teacher didn’t touch on the R&D team that worked day and night drawing up blueprints and running tests to verify the capacity of the evil prospector’s new machine. I bet there was no mention of the maintenance team employed to perform cursory inspection, and the purchasing team they work with to order spare parts, which is why it didn’t seem important to bring up the time wasted on hold for customer support in India either. I hope I am making my point…



Fellow generation whiners – I mean “y-ers” – we all understand the need to deliver financial results to our stakeholders… or do we? Somehow, in our day-to-day tasks do we forget why we are there in the first place – to make $$$? Are we so focused on how we can streamline our processes by installing the Megatron 3000 Inventory Control System that we don’t take into consideration ROI? Or is it that we want to leave our mark? Do we want to lead the charge of some radical break-through so that our boss will have no choice but to take a demotion under our new desk?

Newsflash… very few of us work for companies that have a net-worth than that of the Megatron 3000. If you want to make a change, don’t focus on how you can leverage your computer savvy systems development experience with automated systems; instead, focus on how you make a change with the tools you have right in front of you – your team.



How much overhead costs are associated with developing a manual system? Slim to none… How often do manual systems breakdown due to a virus? Not once since the bubonic plague… How much training do you have to provide for someone to use a pen and to write on a production chart? None, that lesson was before the story of John Henry…

If you want to make a difference – don’t do more with less, do more with what you have. Develop your people to be aware of business results. Walk through the process with them… Ask questions, they most likely have the answers… Include them in the decision making process. I tried googling why our on-time delivery was so bad yesterday… I didn’t find results.

Nate