" In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, products, profit"- Lee Iacocca.

As an individual who has recruited in technology markets the last 25 years, I am wondering what has happened to the priorities Lee Iacocca described above.  We seem to have reversed the priorities to profits, products, and then people. 

Let's take a look at the evolution of a hypothetical individual within the electronics industry.  The individual graduates with his/her BSEE degree, spends a few years doing bench level design work, figures out that this is not going to satisfy his/her needs for his total career, and has a desire to expand  into other areas.  Typically, the migration path for this individual is into applications engineering, which gives him/her the ability to keep his fingers in the technology pot and at the same point in time, gains exposure into other technologies with companies he is calling on.  This individual appears to be quite happy supporting a sales person until he finds out how much the salesperson is making. Believing he/she is doing the same work as the salesperson, a decision is made that a career move into sales or marketing might be a better option for him.  There is no problem with people wanting to better themselves, positionally or financially, or taking on a career change, the problem exists in having this individual educated to take on the next role in their career. 

Since mentoring programs virtually no longer exist within corporations, there are no prerequisites for any type of sales training ,and individuals do not appear to have a desire or motivation to self educate, this individual does not acquire any skills, which serves him in his chosen career . If sales is the chosen career path, this individual has not taken any courses such as Miller Heimann, Karass Negotiating, Wilson learning, or any other course, which allows this person to acquire skills in the field of sales. Since we have had two decades of participatory sports because we did not want to hurt childrens feelings when they were growing up, the individual has not learned to compete.  When selling competitvely in the field, since the person does not know how to compete and since there are no tools in the toolbox, the only option this person possesses is price reduction.

To make matters worse, if this person is then promoted into management, he/she goes from being an individual contributor into a management role with no requisite skill sets.  If companies were to set a prerequisite for the individual to obtain management training prior to making this a permanent promotion and were willing to invest in individuals to take management training courses at San Jose State University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, D'Anza College, Santa Clara University or any number of other educational institutions in the Bay area, we would have leaders with some applicable management skills. Succession managment programs do not seem to be the trend at this time.  One day our hypothetical individual goes to bed. wakes up the next morning, and lo and behold, he or she has become President/CEO of a corporation due to Murphy's Law and the Peter Principle working overtime.  If we did the Ben Franklin sheet to determine the leadership capabilities needed to succeed , let's look at the career path of our hypothetical individual  described in the above paragraphs.

                   Pros                                                                    Cons

                   BSEE                                                                 lacks marketing knowledge
                                                                                               lacks sales skills
                                                                                               lacks financial knowledge
                                                                                               lacks manufacturing knowledge   
                                                                                               lacks business development knowledge  
                                                                                               lacks management skill sets
                                                                                               lacks leadership skills 
                                                                                               lacks other skills needed to run/manage company

Over the last couple of years there seems to be nothing fundamentally wrong with the economy, the problem we seem to have is with the participants.  Ego, greed and self-interest seem to be the dominant theme.  There have only been a couple of leaders in corporations that have demonstrated real leadership skills during the economic downturn, such as John Chambers of Cisco, who I believe said "if we are not generating enough revenue, perhaps we need to hire more sales ot call on more accounts and more marketing people to investigate allied markets to determine if there is a need for our product.  If there is not a need for our product in that market  maybe we need to adapt our business to fulfill that market need."  This demonstrates knowledge of a leader prepared  to lead into the next economy. Most companies need to be market-driven companies rather than engineering driven companies   The industry is always been a reactive rather than a pro active industry.  We have moved from a transaction-based economy into a knowledge-based economy.  Companies are only as good as the people that  work there.  We need to empower people . We need to become better listeners, so we can encourage innovation and creativity. As individuals, we need to self educate, in order to be better in the years to come.  As corporations, we need to recognize that the intellectual property  we possess lies with the people that work for the company; they develop the products which in turn lead to profits. We need to invest in that intellectual property.  Perhaps we can turn things around to being people, products and profits as Lee Iacocca said so many years ago,so that we can be the best we can be, if not, then we will continue to flourish in mediocrity.