Mackey, Tindell, yoga, Abe Lincoln and corporate branding vs. reality

While I like the idea of branding in terms of loyalty and service, with so many industries today the only time you really need customer service is when something goes wrong. Take a grocery store, between prepackaged meats, pre-sliced deli meats and cheeses, self scans, the only time you need to interact with a person is when the price was wrong or you need to return something.

Is the customer going to differentiate between good and excellent service in this case? I believe they'll notice and punish bad service, but there's no adequate reward for outstanding service, when the only time one needs service is when something goes wrong.

Let's not forget Dean Kamen; employees of DEKA have no titles or responsibilities other than what they claim through the force of ideas and leadership. In individual circumstances, I think the concepts that Mackey espouses (other than posting on financial boards using false names) work well, but ultimately, you also have to reward those with the ideas and leadership, and those who provide capital. Are those rewards disproportionate? In some cases, probably.

A good example of where employees get the bulk of the rewards of their labor: GM. I'm not sure that's the role model we want to emulate.

What a completely ridiculous quote from Lincoln.

The concept of "secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor" leaves know room for capital risk, intellectual property, art , etc.

Are we to expect that the guy that works the machine that stamps out DVDs should make more than the screenwriter who writes the movies that end up on the DVD?

Do we expect the guy who runs the DVD machine to make more than the independent producer who risks $10 million of his own to make the movie?

Simply dumb.

Please vet sayings attributed to historic figures before you quote them. I think the "quote" assigned to Lincoln is not one of his. He was much too smart to say something that stupid.

As a man who knew business, Lincoln knew if each laborer were to be given the value of his output, why would the laborer be hired? There would be nothing left for the person who hired him. Lincoln, as an attorney for railroads before he ran for public office, knew that the system would not work without a sharing of the profits of the organization. He knew the sharing would not be equal because the contributions were unequal.

The following Lincoln quotation is much more familiar:

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits.” - Abraham Lincoln

Thanks, Adam! And I've asked my e-mailer for a citation for the other Lincoln quote. Will let y'all know when and if I hear something.

Okay, here's the word. He got it "from the cover of a publication called The Nonpartisan Leader, National Edition, February 7, 1921. It is a farmer oriented weekly of that era oriented towards increasing farmer income from their work. I find nothing in the issue that states where and when he gave that view."

Editors of The Nonpartisan Leader were not available for comment. But given that Adam's much-better-known quote--which is from a speech by Lincoln to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in Milwaukee, September 30, 1859--tends in a similar direction, I'm going to let it stand.