MADE IN AMERICA

Sam Walton

"I've made it my own personal mission to ensure that constant change is a vital part of the Wal-Mart culture itself.  I've forced change-sometimes for change's sake alone-at every turn in our company's development.  In fact, I think one of the greatest strengths of Wal-Mart's ingrained culture is its ability to drop everything and turn on a dime."

You start with a given: free enterprise is the engine of our society; communism is pretty much down the drain and proven so; and there doesn't appear to be anything else that can compare to a free society based on a market economy.  Nothing can touch that system.

We can do it better than the Japanese because we're more innovative, we're more creative.  We can compete with labor in Bangladesh or wherever because we have better technology, which can give us more efficient equipment.  We can get beyond a lot of our old adversarial relationships and establish win-win partnerships with our suppliers and our workers, which will leave us with more energy and talent to focus on the important thing, meeting the needs of our customers.  But all this requires overcoming one of the most powerful forces in human nature: the resistance to change.  To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.

Managing in a Time of Great Change

Peter Drucker

"The possessor of knowledge owns his own 'tools of production' and has the freedom to move to wherever opportunities for effectiveness, for accomplishment and for advancement seem greatest.

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competitive than any society we have yet known--for the simple reason that with knowledge being universally accessible, there are no excuses for nonperformance.There will be no 'poor' countries - there will only be ignorant countries. And the same will be true for individual companies, individual industries and individual organizations.  It will be true of individuals too."

Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom,
An Owner's Manual for Life
Gerry Spence

"The new and most powerful union of all will be a union of one: one man, one woman, one worker with special skills, an inquiring mind, an independent attitude. In the new-age workplace the worker will no longer be a slave. He will enter the place of work voluntarily to do a job for a price, his price. He will leave as he chooses. He will cherish his freedom, which is his security. He cannot be lured into the trap. The master cannot own him.

The new age worker, belonging to the union of one, has made himself an expert in whatever job he or she undertakes. But he does his work with an expertise that brings order and efficiency to the task. He works to satisfy himself, not the master. Workers will again become independent-and own their own tools. I see it already.

The cameraman for network television, an independent contractor, brings his own camera to the news scene, does his work, takes his camera home, and goes scuba diving the rest of the day.

In the new-age workplace, the engineer, the draftsman, the computer wizard, the designer, every professional and every skilled artisan, yes, a skilled ditch digger as well, can belong to the new union of one. The union dues are free. If the employer does not meet the demands of the union of one, the new-age worker can replace the employer... with a more intelligent, more responsive one; one that better suits the taste and the need of the new-age worker.

The most valuable worker for the corporation is the worker who no longer demands all of the spangles and sparkles of security that soon soon-dim: the pensions, the benefits that somehow end up enslaving rather than freeing.

The old way has become a dismal game in which both master and slave, chained to each other, hate one another, each fighting the other with their respective weapons. The worker, seeking security, like the slave of old, does not seek to do work but to avoid work.

The worker who seeks security cannot exhibit the free mind necessary to spring ahead on his own. He requires an overseer, a time clock, rules of work, rules of vacations, rules of sick leave, rules about having babies, rules about rules. He requires laws to protect him, and commissions to hear his complaints and representatives to represent him.

The new-age employer and the new-age worker, supported by the new-age 'union of one' will redefine the relationship of worker and employer. The new-age employer will become more of a partner, a supplier of opportunity, and educator, a sharer in dreams, a sharer in profit. The new-age worker will become his own master. He will decide his fate and make and follow his own dreams.’’