Seriously.
Does any of this make any sense?
There are a whole bunch of systems that have evolved that we just take for granted.
Sure, we have built up standards around a lot of this and it is how we are expected to act.
We have funny little job functions (sales, marketing, procurement, accounting production, customer service, quality, legal and much more) and somehow each of these functions operate independently, yet dependently.
In some ways, it is a system of checks and balances, but in other ways it is kind of absurd.
Producing things and selling things are pretty basic. Everything else is just filling in the details.
And the details matter…The details make the difference between making a profit or not. It just seems that there are a lot of layers in there between making stuff and selling stuff.
Could we do a better job using different ways and layers to manage the details. In the information age, I suspect that we can, but it is not by putting more technology into each of the functions in the way that we think of them now.
To paraphrase the great Barry Libert who was probably paraphrasing someone else, it is easier to change the function than to change the function.
