Welcome back loyal readers of “The Editorial” – our one-of-a-kind look at business communication and the continuing lack of it.  Thank you for all the feedback you have been sending through and I am glad so many of you are enjoying the read – even if it is as a last resort when you are bored senseless while flying long haul!

So… secure your tray, return your seat to the upright position, ensure all window blinds are fully open, ignore the safety briefing and read this instead.  It’s either that or watch the in-flight movie.  It’s probably “Australia” – trust me, you’re better off reading this.

The Idiocy of Standardisation

The U.S. standard railroad gauge is four feet, eight and one-half inches.  That is an unusual sort of number to come up with and you might be wondering how it happened.  It happened because that was the width that railroad-building Englishmen brought with them to America.  Why did the English build them this wide?  Because the first British rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways and that’s the gauge they used.  Why did they use that gauge?

Because the same jigs, tools and people who built wagons built the tramways and used the standard wagon-wheel spacing.  Wagon-wheel spacing was standardized due to a very practical, hard-to-change and easy-to-match reality.  When Britain was ruled by Imperial Rome, Roman war chariots all used a standard spacing between their wheels.  Over time this spacing left deep ruts along the extensive road network that the Romans built.  If British wheel spacing didn’t match Roman ruts, the wheels would break.  Here comes the best bit.

The Roman standard was derived after various trial and error efforts of early wagon and chariot builders, who determined that the best width that would accommodate two horse arses was four feet, eight and one-half inches.  Thus the United States standard railroad gauge is a hand-me-down standard based upon the original specification for the rear end of two Roman horses!

This doesn’t end at railroads though.  The space shuttle has two big booster rockets that attach to the sides of the main fuel tank to help lift it into space.  Made by a company called Thiokol, those two boosters are shipped by train from their factory in Utah to the launch site.  The railroad line from the factory runs through a mountain tunnel only slightly wider than the railroad track.  Even if the Thiokol engineers wanted fatter or bigger booster rockets for the space shuttle the railway gauge limits their design.  Space shuttle design is based on the average width of the arse-end of two Roman nags.  No one questions it and no one points out how stupid it is because it is a ‘standard’ and all standards are good things.  This is the sort of thinking that leads business to embrace benchmarking and world’s best practice.  Just because everyone else does it does not make it desirable.  If you want to have a standard you had better make it one of your own because more often than not the standard you are copying is ill conceived or irrelevant!

What are your actions communicating?

Remember when the CEO’s of Ford, GM and Chrysler all went to Washington to front up to Congress and beg for Government funding because their businesses were in bad shape and desperately needed a public bailout?  They suited up, put on appropriate expressions of humility and contrition and… jumped on their private jets for the trip!  Congress was unimpressed.  The actions of the CEO’s not only flew in the face of their reality, it also flew in the face of their rhetoric and meant they had no credibility whatsoever.  That is the power of the symbolic channel in communication and companies are consistently undermined by it.

Most companies never consider the symbolic impact of their actions and how that may result in a completely different message being received to what was intended.  It never occurred to the CEO’s of the motor companies how badly their planned mode of transport would be interpreted by those whose help they desperately needed.  A month later they drove their greenest vehicles to Washington to plead again but the damage to the brands had already been done.  It is the kind of damage that companies do to their brands all the time.

For example, those companies that have cancelled conferences at the last minute to save money probably haven’t considered how they might have also damaged the brand by undermining confidence, disengaging employees and breaking promises.  Those companies that tell us they believe in customer service but install fully automated phone systems so you can’t actually talk to anyone probably haven’t considered the damage done to their brand every time the musak plays.  Those companies that fail to return calls, arrive on time, honour warranties, spell your name correctly… all damage the brand and lose credibility.

We judge you by your actions so beware the symbolic – we’re watching even if you are not.