Costa Rica: Exotic land of the surreal

[ar81]

Our road maintenance system (very cheap, roads are useful as training field to drive lunar rovers or to fake moon landings in NASA films)

Our waste management system (aerobic digestion in the open)

Education and driving (trucks and their payloads become missiles, truck driver freed next day)

 

[ar81]

Country bashing not allowed? This is not bashing. I am criticizing my own country. Abuse requires silence, so I am not silent. Silence is the best path to no solution.

Americans should know that they may have a bad situation in USA, but we have this...
I do not know if I should laugh of my country, or cry...

 

[Urwumpe]

 

[Xantcha]

Interesting photos, was nice to look at your country (even through those chronics of road incindent)

[RANT]
And about country bashing thing.

Often I strongly disagree with your views but does it really matter? From what you are saying I can see that you are decent person with a strong intolerance to 'injustice'. Also you seem to be very emotional.

It is already really really hard to convince someone during discussion and absolutely impossible to do so when emotions start to flow.
If you really want to convince someone try be more coldblooded. Preferably use facts and neutral words. If you think that other side have heard all that you have to say on subject and you have adressed all them wanted to say - finish discussion, repeating would not make you more convincing.
And don't think that you can change one's opinion during discussion. People are very stubborn and rarely will admit their mistake when directly opposed, so it make some time before they will decide to rethink that subject. Also - sometimes you can realize that that other side is right in something, have courage to admit that too.
And don't be deaf - even if it's difficult to listen to other side during conversation, try to think about opposite view after that. At least prepare counterpoints. When you will have enough new ideas - continue disput when you wish. Just don't start it too soon.

And please, please, don't be offende about what I have wrote above - I'm not trying to teach you or something - it's just sad for me to see you feeling bad about political discussions you participate in.
[/RANT]

Also - laughing at ones own country is just wrong, try using irony instead

 

[ar81]

Nice feedback. I will take it into account.
One starts to become more intolerant to injustice when you have been stepped on.

The last biggest one took place when I had to tolerate harassment and backstabbing for months because I did not align to fraudsters from the ruling party, some years ago.

My exboss is now facing jail in a known national scandal.
See spanish news on the trial here http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2008/septiembre/03/pais1686882.html

If I had aligned to them I would be in jail now, instead of annoying people here. It was a surreal experience, when you are punished for doing what is morally correct and legal. It was months of despair, harassment, personal attacks, and finally backstabbing. The more they punished me, the stronger my conviction became.

To me, a country is a land that is managed by a bureaucracy. So to me, bashing or laughing of my own country is just laughing of some bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that persists in the wrong path.

Patriotism is, in my opinion, turning bureaucracy into a religion. That's why I do not consider "bashing countries" (constructive criticism on what's wrong in the world) as a sign of disrespect. Of course, that's just my opinion. I apologize if I ever offended someone based on that way of thinking.

If I ever need to be a patriot would be a patriot from planet Earth, so every human is my fellow citizen. Boundaries can't be seen from space.

But again, your feedback is valid. Thanks for sharing it. I will give it some thought.

 

[Belisarius]

What is CCSS?

 

[Heywood]

What is CCSS?

Look this: http://www.ccss.sa.cr/

Heywood

 

[SiberianTiger]

Patriotism is, in my opinion, turning bureaucracy into a religion. That's why I do not consider "bashing countries" (constructive criticism on what's wrong in the world) as a sign of disrespect. Of course, that's just my opinion. I apologize if I ever offended someone based on that way of thinking.

If I ever need to be a patriot would be a patriot from planet Earth, so every human is my fellow citizen. Boundaries can't be seen from space.

I think you are entitled to your opinion, but from my point of view you are wrong twice.

First, IMO, bashing a country is not just telling what a country does right or wrong. It is an expression of someone's disliking of a certain country based on his/her stereotypes and laid out through a hate speech. Also, country bashers are rarely rational thinkers: they borrow ideas of others or something they learnt from mass media without giving it much thought. In many cases they aren't aware that expressing their view of a country in question may be regarded bashing by that country's citizens. But the ultimate vote on whether something is bashing or a "constructive criticism", as I believe, belongs to the citizens of the country.

Second, patriotism has little to do with bureaucracy. If we mentally peel the concept off all its shellings, we get love, a basic feeling of a human being. You are born in a family and you feel love towards your relatives and your family. You live in a town or a village, you've got friends and lovers here that share some of your personal history. In a bigger scale, this extends to the land you inhabit. It may be a bit vague in Latin America, because your folk speaks in almost or perfectly the same tongue as in the countries abroad, so there hardly is a cultural boundary between, e.g. Costa Rica and Panama. But in other parts of the world, such boundaries exist. That's why people enclosed in such a boundary develop their own, a bit enclosed culture, their own perception of the things, feeling of uniqueness of their country in the world. Ask an average Chinese if he thinks that China is just another country in the world, and he might get offended by your suggestion. In their mental view, China is a center of the world, different from everything else.

It's certain that people are different and they don't have to feel this way towards their country and fellow citizens. But mostly they do. Patriotism is something that justifies being a citizen and taking up certain citizen's duties. This is, as you mentioned, is often abused by governments you call bureaucracies. Patrotism benefits from victories and suffers from losses and defeats (widely understood ones). It is very individual, may turn rational or irrational in various people.

Speaking of patriotism toward planet Earth, I think it's pretty meaningless today. You can leave a country, but you have no other choice than to live on Earth. I know no one who would hate Earth or bash Earth. And seriously enough, only one certain person had a soul generous enough to really love each human as his neighbour, and you know the name. Having no opposite, I believe, Earth patriotism is a false feeling.


-----Posted Added-----


And BTW, you are not alone with your road maintenance policy.

 

[GregBurch]

Very good post, Tiger.

BTW, I've only been in Costa Rica once, many (many) years ago. I was there as tourist, and loved it. I read a little about CR, and was impressed with some elements of its history, that has some important distinctions from many, if not all Latin American countries. I've been very saddened by some of what I've read about CR in the last 10 years or so -- but I definitely don't know enough about what's going on there to reach very strong conclusions.

 

[cjp]

If I ever need to be a patriot would be a patriot from planet Earth, so every human is my fellow citizen. Boundaries can't be seen from space.

If we mentally peel the concept [patriotism] off all its shellings, we get love, a basic feeling of a human being. You are born in a family and you feel love towards your relatives and your family. You live in a town or a village, you've got friends and lovers here that share some of your personal history. In a bigger scale, this extends to the land you inhabit.
[..]
That's why people enclosed in such a boundary develop their own, a bit enclosed culture, their own perception of the things, feeling of uniqueness of their country in the world. Ask an average Chinese if he thinks that China is just another country in the world, and he might get offended by your suggestion. In their mental view, China is a center of the world, different from everything else.
[..]
Patriotism is something that justifies being a citizen and taking up certain citizen's duties.
[..]
Speaking of patriotism toward planet Earth, I think it's pretty meaningless today. [..] And seriously enough, only one certain person had a soul generous enough to really love each human as his neighbor, and you know the name. Having no opposite, I believe, Earth patriotism is a false feeling.

I'm on ar81's side here. If there is one soul generous enough to really love each human as his neighbor (and I know the name), we should all follow that example. Ar81's "Earth patriotism", as I understand it, has an opposite, or opposites: the opposite of loving all of mankind is loving only a part of mankind, or maybe loving nobody.

I think loving the group of people you belong to more than other people is a very natural thing (it seems to be in our genes), but it's a dangerous one. We all love our family and relatives more than other people, but this tendency can be abused by redirecting it to larger, completely artificial groups, like countries. There's nothing wrong with taking up one's citizen's duties, but please let it be the duties of a world citizen, not a country's citizen. If you only serve one country, you could be prepared to sacrifice the interests of other country's citizens for your own country. That's a bad thing.

I know people in a lot of countries are very patriotic. I am proud to live in a country that isn't really patriotic. Think about that paradox! No, it isn't really true. The people in the Netherlands are more patriotic than they think (possibly including me), but I think it's more about how we do some things in the right way than about being loyal to our country. When I look at the pictures in this thread for instance, I think the roads in the Netherlands aren't that bad .

OTOH no culture is perfect: here, many people have become quite rude and ignorant in the last decades, and I think we'll lose a lot of technological expertise in the future, because there aren't enough people with the right education. And maybe an outsider may see a lot more weak points, but that's OK for me; I won't feel insulted (although I will explain if something is criticized incorrectly): I like to think of my country as just another country on this planet. Boundaries can't be seen from space.

 

[ar81]

What is CCSS?

CCSS: Confortado Con los Santos Sacramentos
CCSS: Casi Casi Se Salva

Humorous parody of the state of health reform here.
The fraud that took place, stopped the reform, which was aimed at improving health system with the lessons learned by UK.

Still, New Zeland, Canada, UK and Costa Rica have the most advanced health systems in the world.

The scandal is about politicians who used money that should help people to live better to buy defective equipment to a company from Finland. In exchange they are supposed to get some money.

I can say that project director and project manager did not want the project to be used for their evil purpose. Me neither. So facing the overwhelming odds resulted in being the only project that was not used for the fraud. Proyecto Finlandia and Proyecto España did not follow the same fate. The price of saving the project and saving our own resume was months of harassment, backstabbing, and retaliations, until they fired us.

After working for the project I went to work for the planning department where they used some bureaucratic things to fire me. Basically what they did was to start a contest for my job and use HR bureaucratic tricks to make sure I was out of the contest.

To me, only a portion of the gang is being in that trial. The rest of the gang is there, waiting for some missing pieces to reactivate fraud and money laundering schemes.

I'm on ar81's side here. If there is one soul generous enough to really love each human as his neighbor (and I know the name), we should all follow that example. Ar81's "Earth patriotism", as I understand it, has an opposite, or opposites: the opposite of loving all of mankind is loving only a part of mankind, or maybe loving nobody.

I think loving the group of people you belong to more than other people is a very natural thing (it seems to be in our genes), but it's a dangerous one. We all love our family and relatives more than other people, but this tendency can be abused by redirecting it to larger, completely artificial groups, like countries.

If our countries were at war, you would be evil for me, and I would be evil for you. Wars means that people lose perfect ocassion to be friends. According to Genographic Project, 60,000 years ago we all came from the same tribe in Africa. So the concept of "race" is as stupid as discrimination based on the size of the hand.

Earth patriotism means that countries are like municipal entities. Seeing a war between municipalities would be stupid. Seeing a Washington vs California war would be stupid. A war between Paris and Lyon would be stupid. A war between Moscow and St. Petersburg would be stupid. A war between you and me would be stupid.

China earthquake killed 15 times the amount of soldiers dead in Iraq, and natural disasters killed more people in the last 50 years than global terrorism. So what is a major threat to nationaal security? Sometimes I believe politicians of Earth municipalities exaggerate their own importance to make us fight and have some fun.

We should make an online game, so politicians play their games of power in a virtual online game and leave world people alone.

Second, patriotism has little to do with bureaucracy. If we mentally peel the concept off all its shellings, we get love, a basic feeling of a human being. You are born in a family and you feel love towards your relatives and your family. You live in a town or a village, you've got friends and lovers here that share some of your personal history. In a bigger scale, this extends to the land you inhabit.

China did not exist by the year 250 AC.
You had 3 kindoms struggling. Wu, Shu and another kingdom I do not remember.

You love your family.
I love my family too. It is a family called mankind.

In a family brothers fight each other when they are kids.
As they grow they learn how stupid it is to fight between brothers.
If your brother moves to another country and he is forced to serve as soldier and you too, and you know that your brother is in the battlefront, serving the enemy, I think you would have a great dilemma between saving your family and patriotism. If you shoot someone, he could be your brother. Else, your brother could kill you too.
You both would be serving bureaucracies.

Let's say you fight for Wu kingdom, and your brother fights for Shu.
What would you think if you travelled to the future for one hour and you see that in less than 2000 years none of those kingdoms would exist. Bureaucracies would not exist, but cultures and people will continue existing.

You also may realize how the culture of those 2 kingdoms were preserved as an ancient culture that is 4000 years old. But the killing of your brother would become meaningless.

Now let's say you are immigrant, your kids have sons, and so your grandchildren were born there.
Since your family looks like freigner, in case of war they will be treated like the enemy.
Would you advise your grandsons to be patriots?

Let's imagine that climate change made USA and Europe inhabitable, just like it happened with Egyptians, according to some versions.
Since we are so limited by boundaries, how are people going to escape?
Would other countries deny entrance to their homeland to environmental refugees?
Nowadays people from New Orleans are refugees in their own homeland and nobody cares.
What if Americans became refugees in a Latin America where the most significant and relevant intellectuals blame "US imperialism" for causing poverty. Are Americans my brothers or not? Should I discriminate them as foreigners or not? I would not, for my country is called Earth, and USA is just a county of this planet.

Will they remain inside boundaries or will they be immigrants? Where would be the national pride?
If you think patriotism is about Wu or Shu, or about an inhabitable country you left, you may feel sorrow as you know about the future.

But if you think that you belong to Earth, moving will be like moving to the next city, and you could see that other countries are like other rooms of the house. Each room is decorated differently, and still it has one of your brothers.
Wars based on patriotism makes people to kill brothers.

Nicaraguan war was based on patriotism in 1979. The slogan was "patria libre o morir" (free country or to die).
What changed was the name of the guy in the presidential office. It has 70% of poverty that causes immigration towards Costa Rica. If Nicaraguans remain in Nicaragua, they will certainly die, and they are free.
Does it worth to die for in the name of patriotism?

 

[Eagle]

My exboss is now facing jail in a known national scandal.
See spanish news on the trial here http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2008/septiembre/03/pais1686882.html

If I had aligned to them I would be in jail now, instead of annoying people here. ...

Maybe getting in trouble for misusing your email was a blessing in disguise?:angel:

 

[Urwumpe]

Against whom should we be patriotic as Earth citizens? Marvin the Martian? Without others to compare against, patriotism is not existing.

And if you know, how borders look like, you can easily spot them from space, even in Orbiter. Many borders in the world follow natural barriers.

 

[ar81]

Against whom should we be patriotic as Earth citizens? Marvin the Martian? Without others to compare against, patriotism is not existing.

And if you know, how borders look like, you can easily spot them from space, even in Orbiter. Many borders in the world follow natural barriers.

The question would be if patriotism requires an enemy, or if patriotism is about keeping the house with everyone enjoying welfare.

Boundaries are usually set by ethnic differences, sometimes by geographical elements. The walls of my home are barriers. If I move to your country would I be authorized to claim that my home is an independent country because of such barriers?

To me the concept of barriers and boundaries is a concept to divide people. Space is a boundary, sea is a boundary, a river is a boundary, a speedway is a boundary (if you cross it you endanger your life), nearly everything is a boundary. Boundaries divide.

If we divide our families we certainly have nothing to be proud in the future.

And BTW, you are not alone with your road maintenance policy.

The road I showed belongs to San José, the capital. It is not a countryside road.

The accident took place in a countryside town. Trucks here do not pass minimum conditions and still they go here and there as if there was no law.

In this country, robbery is legal, if it does not exceed a certain amount. So if you are a tourist and you want justice, you must lie so thief goes to jail... or you could say the truth and let injustice to go on.
Criminals here use your name before the judges, so you could suddenly appear like a convicted criminal without notice. No one verifies their identity. Many citizens have that problem here.

And now congressmen got rid of a chapter of a law that punishes money laundering because it is "too complex" to analyze.

This country is surreal.

Maybe getting in trouble for misusing your email was a blessing in disguise?:angel:

It tells me that I am not in jail. So not aligning with fraudsters was good, despite of all the punishment and evil that you could face.

 

[SiberianTiger]

I think loving the group of people you belong to more than other people is a very natural thing (it seems to be in our genes), but it's a dangerous one. We all love our family and relatives more than other people, but this tendency can be abused by redirecting it to larger, completely artificial groups, like countries. There's nothing wrong with taking up one's citizen's duties, but please let it be the duties of a world citizen, not a country's citizen. If you only serve one country, you could be prepared to sacrifice the interests of other country's citizens for your own country. That's a bad thing.
...
I like to think of my country as just another country on this planet. Boundaries can't be seen from space.

You know, I love the idea that we would unite in a planet-wide harmony, forget wars and hatred, and redirect all the money we spend on warfare to everybody's welfare and don't forget peaceful space exploration, please. I just don't like the possible ways such a paradise can be reached. Fiction writers who described a future Utopia had always be cloudy about this. It's most likely that the new world has to be built upon the bones of the old sinful world. Who likes to contribute his bones for the basement first?

Regarding sacrificing interests of other coutries' citizens: first tell me what do those people have in mind about my country, the nature of their interests - and if I like that, I welcome their interests. Otherwise, I, of course, will sacrifice their interests for mine.


-----Posted Added-----

The question would be if patriotism requires an enemy, or if patriotism is about keeping the house with everyone enjoying welfare.

No, patriotism is not about keeping the house. It's about love. And also, it is about sticking to your ways and requires at least some point of comparison, if not an enemy.

To me the concept of barriers and boundaries is a concept to divide people. Space is a boundary, sea is a boundary, a river is a boundary, a speedway is a boundary (if you cross it you endanger your life), nearly everything is a boundary. Boundaries divide.

Yep, but barriers are just there, not because of somebody's evil plot. They make crossing them difficult. This is an objective reality which you perceive through your senses.

In this country, robbery is legal, if it does not exceed a certain amount. So if you are a tourist and you want justice, you must lie so thief goes to jail... or you could say the truth and let injustice to go on.
Criminals here use your name before the judges, so you could suddenly appear like a convicted criminal without notice. No one verifies their identity. Many citizens have that problem here.

And now congressmen got rid of a chapter of a law that punishes money laundering because it is "too complex" to analyze.

This country is surreal.

If you had not had good feelings towards your country, you just wouldn't mind all that. You know that there are countries that keep justice better than yours and you wish the same for Costa Rica. Don't you? Or you are just going to migrate elsewhere?

 

[ar81]

I do not have feelings towards bureaucracy.
If the house is dirty, you need some clean up, no matter where you are.

As for a world in harmony... a big threat nowadays is poverty. Not for me but for developed countries.
Just like if you pollute you affect your neighbors, poverty is now about to be reflected in world economy in developed countries.

Jobs are going overseas as US crisis moves to other developed countries. People from developed countries are less competitive than people in poor countries. US jobs are moving. And as crisis hits Europe, jobs will be moving too.

For example, a French worker has many rights that Costa Ricans do not have, and French are expensive. I know of a company that moved jobs from France to Costa Rica already.

Costa Rica is closer to Miami than Seattle, and it is cheaper.

People from India and China are cheaper.

The problem of that is that less jobs means those who have jobs must work more for less money. It also means less tax collection for the government. It means commerce in the country will have less customers with less money.

In a global picture, workers that are at leas 2X more expensive than workers in poor countries are not competitive. In the long run developed countries won't be able to subsidize companies to keep them from sending jobs overseas.

It is curious how people claim to be patriotic, but for the sake of business the send jobs overseas. It seems that when it is about business, either patriotism is no more, or sending jobs overseas is not seen as patriotism.

I do not complain about this, for we get lots of jobs. So if I was patriotic (in the sense of having feelings towards my country) I would not mind about attracting jobs to my country at developed countries expense, and remain silent about this issue. But as I said, Earth is my country. So if someone loses a job elsewhere and this job comes and makes someone here to have a job, I feel the need to find a solution to the one who is unemployed somewhere else.

The cause of this price unbalance in the job market is poverty. But today poverty will be globalized after the crisis that started in USA. It seems apparent to me that solving poverty elsewhere will be the only workable long term strategy to prevent developed countries to face an ugly long term crisis. Anything else will be procrastination of unavoidable.

I think the world itself will make people to care about other people from other countries. Poverty is globalized and retaining companies or forbidding immigration will not stop globalization of poverty. Poverty elsewhere causes poverty in your country. Globalized economy has no sense of "patriotism" and people who make business decisions do not see patriotism as a priority.

 

[Urwumpe]

Actually, the whole globalisation stuff also backfires quite often.

Costa Ricans sure don't buy expensive television sets, do they?

It is the same in Poland, which was once the El Dorado for Asian and US companies to produce in Europe. Cheap salaries, cheap transport to the rest of Europe... guess what happened there: The companies started with literal sweatshops, and then, when the skilled workers got rare, started making better offers to the employees of their rivals. The market regulated it.

Guess why the salaries in Europe or USA are higher than in Costa Rica. Because things here also cost more, and workers are not at all like the majority of Costa Ricans. Even if German companies like to complain about German workers - many of them found out, that even simple tasks in German eyes are not at all easy, when you expect them from workers who did not have the same education and training system, like you have in Germany. In Germany you can expect people to have skills after leaving school. Many companies, who wanted to produce in China, already returned to Germany, because the Chinese workers had not been what they expected. While capable of doing what you tell them, they failed when you needed initiative - an important factor for producing high quality goods. And the really skilled workers in China are not less expensive as similar skilled workers in Germany: They know that they are rare.

So, when you think, poverty is a market mechanism, you err. Poverty is a market failure. No market can tolerate poverty as poverty is bad for the business. Poor people consume less and buy lower quality goods. They look only for the price and not for the quality and are thus, switching products faster as better earning people. You can't plan your market reliable on poor people.

Also, if Rock'n'Roll is called dead every year, I think I can also say: Globalization is dead. It choked on it's own system. In the subprime crisis of the USA, you can see what really made globalization possible: Privatice profits and socialize losses.

As long as companies had only been able to run away from the losses, globalization works. And it fails when the companies get caught by the losses.

 

[cjp]

You know, I love the idea that we would unite in a planet-wide harmony, forget wars and hatred, and redirect all the money we spend on warfare to everybody's welfare and don't forget peaceful space exploration, please.
I just don't like the possible ways such a paradise can be reached.

How about voluntary cooperation? Isn't that how the first governments were formed? People just didn't like being robbed by other people, so they organized themselves in clans and built castles and fortified cities to defend themselves. People joined these clans voluntarily because it gave them safety. In return, they had to conform to the laws of the clan, because protecting against an evil outside world doesn't make sense if you can't trust the insiders. Therefore, authorities had to be created to make sure everybody conforms to the law.

Now, that's all nice for as far as it reduces crime, and lets people live under the laws they choose to have. However, two problems can arise:

1. There may be situations where the law doesn't match what its citizens want. In ar81's case there seem to be not enough laws, but there are also oppressive countries with "too many" laws, or wrong laws.
2. When all space is filled with countries (as is the case on this planet except Antarctica), resources turn out to be limited, and countries' interests can become conflicting. Now, inside countries there might be laws, but there are no laws on how countries should behave towards each other. So you have the same situation as without countries, but now with countries instead of individuals. This is the source of large-scale conflicts called "wars".

Now, there is a point where people have enough of all this international violence and injustice. So, just like they did when they organized into countries, they start cooperation between countries, to create some kind of international justice.

Most attempts, like the UN, have been fairly unsuccessful, as they had no real power. The only successful one seems to be the European Union. You can say thousands of bad things about the EU (and you'd probably be right), but at least the EU created peace in this part of Europe.

Now, if some part of a country doesn't like its central authorities anymore, I'd say: let it be independent for a while. Cooperation must be voluntary. Some years ago there was a neighborhood in one of the larger cities here where people really didn't trust the police anymore, as a policeman supposedly killed an innocent man. It was a real crisis, as they attacked any police force that tried to enter the neighborhood. My solution would simply be: don't let the police enter that neighborhood, until the relations are OK again. At the same time, make sure the neighborhood has some own organization, to protect its citizens against crime. Then, when things have calmed down, and the neighborhood realizes it's better to be part of the country again, the two parties can be united.

 

[ar81]

Even if German companies like to complain about German workers - many of them found out, that even simple tasks in German eyes are not at all easy, when you expect them from workers who did not have the same education and training system, like you have in Germany. In Germany you can expect people to have skills after leaving school. Many companies, who wanted to produce in China, already returned to Germany, because the Chinese workers had not been what they expected. While capable of doing what you tell them, they failed when you needed initiative - an important factor for producing high quality goods. And the really skilled workers in China are not less expensive as similar skilled workers in Germany: They know that they are rare.

The key is process design. When you design a process that uses too many specialized skills, companies become dependant on workers and companies do not like that.

As process is designed to be easily done by everyone, then differences do not matter.

Multinational companies use to be unlike those companies you mention. Since different cultures makes management very different, multinational companies design their processes to make them easily implemented by nearly everyone. They also use mentoring and training to solve the gap. Training cheap workers to solve problems is cheaper than paying expensive specialized workers.

Also, multilevel services design is one way to save costs. That way the amount of highly technical and educated people is minimized.

Companies that fail to do that, will be less competitive for their payroll will be more expensive. Current world crisis is likely to stress on that factor.

If you have an inadequate design that can't be implemented in China or Costa Rica or any other place where things are cheaper, or managers who have no mentoring skills and understanding of cultural differences, your company is likely to operate with higher costs and be less competitive in a globalized world.

 

[Urwumpe]

Process designs are like battle plans. And an old german wisdom (Yes, we are violent) is: No battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy.

Applies to all situations, where a theoretical concept should be implemented in reality.

Many managers, who have no clue how a product is produced, love process designs and think, they are the answer to anything. But strange... they usually fail. Guess why.