By popular demand, the article formerly known as The Hollow American Economy has been given a new name – A Clarion Call For Leadership – one a little more positive and motivating.
It also has been put into one column, expanded to include more specific examples of lean companies, also includes more specific recommendations for action, is tightened up into fewer words, has lost some of the mud slinging aspects that were so near to my heart (it was with great pain that I hit the delete key and got rid of the part about the Republicans being bought and paid for by Wall Street), should be typo free, is more accurate with regard to Eastern Europe, and has incorporated dozens of other very valid improvement suggestions sent to me over the last few days.
I am still working on the Executive Summary version – it is actually much more difficult to write less than more. I hope to have it posted yet today.
Please read what I consider the final version – at least in this format. As I mentioned, I will also crank out a summary version. And I have received very good suggestions that I also create an expanded version that explains things in more depth, that can be spoon fed to people at few pages at a time as they wrap their minds around what will strike many as radical, difficult ideas.
Thanks again for everything the entire Evolving excellence community did to make it happen. The next challenge is to get it out to the people who should read it. I am going to work on that over the weekend, once the summary is complete.
In the mean time, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but if you agree with the principles in the article, please feel free to spread it far and wide. I have a few tricks up my sleeve to get it more widely read throughout the manufacturing community, and to blast it around the internet quite a bit, but everything anyone can do to broaden the base of people who can engage on the issues will be positive.
Thanks again – have a great weekend.
Gary says
You had me at “Hollow”
Very well done. I hope it has the impact it deserves and is desperately needed.
Mike (The Instigator) says
I have been away from the ‘net for most of the past two weeks and am just catching up on this. All I can say is “wow!” I never imagined anything at this level would be generated by my request to “put up or shut up.” (Which was not the way I put it, but maybe was the way I meant it…) I have never had anything but respect for you, Bill. I have read your book, read your blog postings, heard you speak and met you in person. Therefor, I knew you were able to take the logical next step and help others, like me, who were frustrated with the situation and our lack of ability to change it. As a professional leader, I am always called upon to offer solutions over rants and I felt you, as another professional leader, could do the same. Thank you for doing so. And thanks to everyone who contributed to the effort. Let’s make something happen. None of us has to have all the answers, but each of us has at least one possible answer to one problem.
martinb says
A 9.9MB scanned pdf is a bit big for my dial-up internet access. Will there be a version in a different format?
Note: Since Martin wrote I put a smaller Word version on the site – Bill
Dan Markovitz says
Bill,
This is inspired work. Congrats on the effort and the results of your labors.
odd says
Don’t know how you exported the pdf and got nearly 10megs, but there is something called pdfcreator that will probably take it down to a more edible size. :-)
Jan Jochmann says
Bill,
One more comment from me – I think the title of the article was better before (The hollow american economy).
I think this because it actually says what the letter is talking about. You could maybe use the old title at least as the subtitle of the letter. It can make one more interested in the content of it and is a little bit “shocking”.
Best regards
Jan