Collection of Stories

* SURGICAL INDICATION

Surgical indication is an intervention aimed at benefitting a patient when no other kind of treatment can help. It is established based on validated criteria. In business it is profit. Last year I was brought in to turn around SSMicro when the company had been in the red for three years. The quality of their products was going down and so did the profit. The main problem was that they saw the result but could not see what caused it. So they needed surgery. I soon realised that SSMicro had been sticking to the only supplier who was no longer able to meet new market requirements. The management thought it was enough to just tinker with the design and product range, as well as the channel support without getting bogged down into the minutiae of the whole company structure, as they said. The shareholders, though, supported my plan to shake things up completely.

I suggested to both change suppliers and make some drastic changes to the company’s processes simultaneously. The obsolete procedures had to be turned into new effective ones. I started to change things around slowly. At first staff were not happy with those changes and it took a lot of time and effort to explain to them that it would pay off. We had to restructure a few departments and change employees over but no one was laid off. The idea was to “fine-tune’ the whole structure so that it could work smoothly and efficiently, plus, prevent it from going back to the previous inefficient procedures. It was hard for all of us. Only now, some staff are beginning to perk up. Of course, I was putting a lot of pressure on them but it was the only way to ensure an effective turnaround. Now that we’ve achieved the targets I planned, I can ease up a bit. I knew staff wouldn’t be keen on me messing around with their routines, but the company had to catch up with its competitors. Without breaking obsolete schemes, they were unable to achieve a new way of working and prevent profit from declining. This led to improved efficiency and enabled us to keep up with the latest changes to meet customers’ requirements.”

10. DESTROYING ANYTHING

* PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

I crochet dolls for toddlers and adults and I’ve been making them for about six years. Now my technique has improved and they’re getting better all the time. You have to make a lot of very bad dolls before you make a good one. You learn from your mistakes though and it’s useful. I’m sure it’s important never to give up and always just keep on trying until you get it right. Practice makes perfect, that’s very true in my case.

* “BEWARE OF GADGETS PROMISING GIFTS”

It didn’t start yesterday but what you can see today really looked completely different just half a century ago. Now I’m falling apart like an old dilapidated book and a light gust of wind can easily knock me off my feet. I’m not crying watching the big crowd attempting to pull down that ramshackle house. It used to be called “a school’. This word stands for nothing today, but it was the whole Universe for us then. Your mother and I met in there.

She was standing by the window and tears were rolling down her cheeks. I saw her tearing a piece of paper apart and screwing it up. It was her maths test. She was beautiful in her fury with her cheeks blushing and lips pursed tight. I couldn’t take my eyes off her and knockedover a bucket and spilt water over the floor. She looked at me and said “sorry’. Those barbarians in the Government don’t need schools anymore and tear them down all over the world. They think they are mindreaders. How naïve they are! It won’t work, believe me. They kindle the fire they won’t be able to put out. I taught you to speak and you started thinking after you were able to speak and read fluently. There is no other way to make a human think. They can root out education and schools and they’ll end up dying out because they can’t stamp out the way humans have become humans – through speech.

* “WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER”

The local authorities are planning to knock down our village to make way for a new road. We disagree and are determined to fight back. They understand they can’t get rid of us easily and are bending over backwards to persuade each house owner to move out at their own expense. We won’t, even though it seems there is no help to see us through our difficult time. Yesterday I turned on two neighbours who tried to get me to change my mind. They said we would eventually end up suffering a setback because the authorities would think out a way to pull down our houses. I don’t know who else could see to it