Week twenty: Great to good
3 Comments Published by Dr. Beyster September 14th, 2006 in Competitiveness.As I read my Business Week magazines and Wall Street Journals, I get a rather dismal outlook on the competitiveness of many U.S. businesses. I
recently read an article — Great to Good? — written by David Gergen. The article raises interesting questions in my mind about the future competitiveness of the U.S. I have always felt SAIC had a chance to improve that competitiveness — even in a small way — and to tell others our ideas about how it could be done. I remember in the early days of the company having a discussion with a high-level White House individual who felt employee ownership could not have any impact whatsoever on U.S. competitiveness. My feeling is SAIC always tried to maintain very competitive pricing while delivering top-notch services, just by managing our resources conservatively. So I think there’s still hope for our nation.
Click on the comments link to share your thoughts.
- Bob
Here are my responses to previous weeks’ comments:
Duane Hove (Week 19): We’ll do that.
Jeff Rajhel (Week 19): Not sure about the sailing trip, but dinner for two might be a possibility.
George Borun (Week 19): We’re trying to include a compilation of SAIC offshoots in the book. Is the name of your company La Jolla Scientific? Whatever happened to the ATP photometer business?
Harry Chernoff (Week 17): The book title has been decided — please tell me what you think. I too am curious about how many millionaires we created — we’re looking into it. It will be somewhere in the book you buy. The freedom employees had to pursue their efforts at SAIC if they were ethical and didn’t cost the company a lot of money was a reason for the company’s success. I don’t regret it. Making sure that those who initiated programs within the company were not totally excluded from participation was one of my main interests from an employee standpoint. I felt that ideas were so important that we should make a point of rewarding employees who had them. On your comments about administrative and marketing staff not being forthcoming with B&P expenses, most people were aware that the company had limited funds, and these funds were allocated in proportion to revenues and profitability. Corporate had a discretionary pool to try to help those who had gone to the trouble of asking for funding. We did what we could to help them initiate new programs. Bureaucracies have a way of growing, and it’s important that employees have a way to bypass the chain of command to get their messages heard by top management. If I had to do it again, I might own more than I ended up with.
William Weeks (Week 17): You’re not alone in having new, interesting, and ever-changing job assignments at SAIC!
You might want to include Pro2Serve in the family tree of SAIC spin off companies as it was founded in 1996 by Barry Goss an SAIC alumnus. Last I heard it was quite successful–WEB Site is a good read.
SAIC certainly is an excellent model for giving employees the sense of accountability and accomplishment that reinforces personal and professional growth. I think America’s economic and social standing would definitely be improved if more businesses and non-profit organizations were like SAIC. Unfortunately, I think there are some very large numbers that work against American being great in relative terms. My Indian friends regularly remind me that India’s middle class is the size of our entire country; everyone man, woman, and child in the United States. I think it is inevitable that America’s standing will change from being THE great country to being one of the great countries. I think we need to be careful to measure our greatness in terms of objective measurements that a great society should strive to achieve. I believe these metrics need to be heavily weighted towards shaping the behavior of parents, teachers and children.
Dr. Beyster,
A more optimistic outlook on US competitiveness from David Brooks of the NY Times:
The Nation of the Future
- Kenny Pegram