Life: The bottom of the chain

Why do we always seem to look up, or forward, or to the future, however you want to put it we never seem to look down, look back or to the past. Sometimes we should just take a minute and stop where we are and take a look around us, including down, or back ,or to the past. There are lessons back there that could be very valuable when dealing with what's ahead.

I was watching TV the other day, one of those, discovery national geographic science know it all type programs, the topic was the food chain, and as I watched this I realized that they were concentrating on the top of the food chain. Well I wondered what about all the other links in that chain, where do they fit in the grand scheme of things?

This is when it dawned on me, the most important part of the chain is not at the top, its at the bottom. If we are to consider ourselves, humans, at the top of the chain, then we essentially eat everything below us in one form or another. What happens if the bottom of the chain dies out? That would mean that the animal that eats whatever is at the bottom of the chain may perish as well and in turn the one that feeds up on it and on and on. This makes the chain extremely weak and as links start to break the chain falls apart, and sooner or later we will the top of the chain. So even though this program concentrated on the top of the chain, which may be more interesting to the viewer, its the bottom of the chain that should be of great interest to us all.

Now I thought this is TV show focused on exactly what big business does. Companies focuses on the top, which in most cases is the performance of the CEO and the corporate shares. What about the bottom of the corporate scale, your technicians, sales people, the janitor etc. These people normally get lost in the corporate machine, they are the least paid, least respected and most of the time are considered the most expendable positions in the company. These are also the positions that have direct, face to face or over the phone contact with the customer, they are the face of the company.

So that a company will consider the face of the organization the most expendable just doesn't bode well for a company, maybe that's why there is such a large number of companies that go under, or are forced to merge with a larger company (limiting the consumers choice in the marketplace).

So using the food chain as the model, what if we made the bottom of the chain the most important positions and treated the people in those positions accordingly. Well lets look at the obvious, if they are given the tools and authority to do their job to support and service the customer, as well as give them the pay that this level of authority warrants, the company may have employees that feel empowered, and compensated to do the job. They might just start taking pride in the job that they do, that pride then translates into better service for the customer and in turn better reputation for the company, more sales, better bottom line, happier management, and shareholders.

Hmmm, keeping the bottom of the food chain healthy keeps the rest of the chain healthy as well. Make sense to me.

Now don't stop looking up, forward or to the future, that's how we make progress, but every now and then stop and take a look at down. Make sure that the bottom link in your life is healthy otherwise you could be in trouble.