All Paint Peels
Many years ago I painted trucks for a living. I was appointed to the position of Area Manager of the Paint Shop at Pontiac East Assembly Plant and was charged with applying a perfect paint job on 1,224 GM Full Size Pick Up Trucks a day. I am not sure you can use the word perfect, but we did win the J.D. Powers Best in Class Paint award, beating our arch rival in every category. Those trucks were beautiful if I do say so myself!
People like things painted and we apply various coats of paint to nearly every object around us. This is primarily for two reasons. The first is aesthetics. Aristotle said that one of the traits of mankind is the constant quest for beauty. We like to express and experience our world in all of the vivid colors, hues and pastels that our creative minds can conceive and arrange. We accent with contrasting and complementary colors in unique ways to express our own tastes and creativity. We could live in homes with bare drywall, but we chose to finish them and paint them in pleasing ways.
The second reason we paint things is more pragmatic. We paint things to protect and preserve them. Wood will rot and decay if not properly protected from the elements and metals will rust and corrode to the point of becoming useless. And so we paint.
It is good for leaders to note that like any other protective system we can devise, all paint eventually peels. The second law of thermodynamics does not grant a reprieve to paint or to any other protections we devise such as error proofing a manufacturing operation or a security system in a bank. If you want the defenses you have created to continue to effectively protect your valuable assets, leaders understand that you need to continually work on them. There are escape points in the most robust error proofing stations and there are holes in the most iron clad software protection systems. Left alone, they will suffer from the Red Queen effect and gradually become more problematic and ultimately lead to difficult problems. Leaders insist that we continue to audit our systems to see if the dreaded entropy has begun to set in and to probe and test all our systems to ensure they are being used with discipline and that they are still providing the protection we are expecting.
I was reminded of this truth when visiting a relatively new office complex recently. The building is very nice. The offices, cubicles, and lounge areas are professionally laid out and the décor was befitting the local ambiance and personality of the business. Walking through the building toward a very nicely decorated and professionally appointed board room, including a breathtaking view of a beautiful lake one gets the impression of a well-run organization. The problem comes when entering the building via a “Gerbil Tunnel” entranceway from the upper parking area. This tunnel gets very warm in the summer due to the solar exposure to the plastic tunnel top, and it gets frigidly cold in the winter. Unfortunately this thermal cycling is stressing the paint applied to the block structure of the knee wall that holds the upper transparent parts of the tunnel. A year ago I happened to notice that the paint was starting to crack. With each passing visit I have watched small cracks grow into larger ones until my most recent visit where large areas of paint are flaking off and falling to the floor. This has the effect of both detracting from the aesthetic and professional appearance of the building, souring a first impression, and it is also compromising the structural integrity of the block wall, especially if left untreated for many more thermal cycles.
I have been using this paint scene as a test. It is a test to see if this problem will cure itself. I am quite sure how that is going to turn out. It is also a test to see if the local leadership sees this defect and if they will initiate the counter measures to correct it. I know many people see it, probably every day, but like the zeroth law of energy, leadership flows from high to low. The masses will not correct the problem. They will walk past it and either not see it, or see it and not care, or see it and wonder why nobody ever does anything about it. It will take leadership to stay on top of this and every other opportunity for decay to set in and bring a great organization down. It is also a personal test to see how long I can go without making a fuss about it myself. We will see who wins this one!
Stay Strong,
Terry
