Opinion: Survival of the Fittest — and Hungriest
This Opinion piece appears in the Feb. 2 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
By Jason Miller, President
The TireConsultants
Picture yourself traveling across hundreds of miles of rural farmland dotted with tiny villages. Men are out in the fields, working the soil with oxen. Others are cutting down wheat by hand and stacking the stalks for market. It’s hard work by anyone’s standards.
In the distance stands a tire factory, strangely conspicuous in this rugged, flat landscape. It’s the dawn of an industrial age for these rural farmers, who sense that life as they know it is changing but don’t have time to sit and ponder the new developments.
I could be talking about America at the turn of the 20th century, but I’m not. A recent trip to China gave me the opportunity to go back in time to what is still a way of life in a country that has fully participated in the world economy only since the reforms of 1978.
What I found most striking was how hungry these people are — for success, knowledge and the opportunity to get into the game and win.
The group of Chinese businesspeople I spoke to looked like any similar group in the United States, aside from ethnic characteristics, but they proved to be very different. They hung onto every word, returned early from breaks and asked a barrage of questions. Nothing was casual. I made the mistake of using golf and gardening analogies but quickly realized references to idle recreation weren’t easily understood by my listeners.
Our own ancestors worked hard to build a better life for their children — and they succeeded. In spite of our sputtering economy, most of us enjoy the most comfortable lifestyles in the history of this planet.
Comfort, however, brings complacency, and with complacency comes peril. If you’ve ever driven a 1975 AMC Pacer, you know firsthand what happens when hardworking, successful people stop feeling hungry and become complacent.
Despite higher quality, more cost-effective products coming in from overseas, it was business as usual for Detroit’s Big Three in those days.
They thought everything was going just fine and had no intention of changing, despite the vultures circling overhead.
Do you remember the introduction of the radial tire? The “Big Five” American tire makers convinced themselves it was a fad and continued to produce bias tires. Today, four of those five companies are gone.
Arguably, the most dramatic example of this U.S. industrial “evolution” was Consolidated Freightways. Founded in 1929, CF was a pioneer in the transportation business, virtually creating less-than-truckload hauling coast to coast. The company survived the Great Depression, deregulation and numerous recessions, but its operating platform fell out of step with the marketplace and the post-9/11 recession was the final straw.
Some companies are unwilling to embrace change, but others have become so unwieldy they are incapable of changing. America’s “Rust Belt” is littered with the skeletons of companies that once dominated our society but gradually became irrelevant, carried along by the momentum of an overheated economy.
In good times, there’s enough business for everyone, but when things slow down, it’s Judgment Day. The pain you’re feeling as you fight to survive in a down cycle is simply the natural order of things. When it comes to competition, consider this:
• Japan (home of Bridgestone) has a population of slightly more than 1 million.
• South Korea (Kumho, Hankook) has approximately 50 million people.
• France (Michelin) has 60 million people.
• Germany (Continental) has about 80 million.
• The United States (Goodyear, Cooper) has a population of about 300 million.
• But China’s population is nearly 1.5 billion — three times the population of Japan, South Korea, France, Germany and the United States combined.
Industrialization in the Western world took more than 50 years to mature. It started at the turn of the previous century and didn’t hit full swing until just after World War II. Competitors today have a head start because earlier generations already have done the heavy lifting for them. Today, to compete successfully in this new era, you must:
• Stay hungry. Somewhere in the world, at least six very hungry people are trying to think of a way to take your success away from you, and they may be willing to work harder to get it than you are to keep it.
• Stop focusing on how it’s always been done, and look for ways to improve. It’s a given that someone will make methods of today obsolete, so it might as well be you.
• Stop looking for “security.” Your only real security is the ability to embrace rapid change.
• Stop trying to look busy. Survival is about productivity, not activity.
Accomplish objectives for today as quickly as possible and then immediately start working on those for tomorrow.
• Never stop learning.
The TireConsultants, Frisco, Texas, provides consulting and training for the tire and transportation industries. Miller also wrote the book “Selling by the Numbers.”
