Optimum versus Ideal

We recently implemented at work our new Organization Optimization plan after completing a downsizing. First you downsize, then you roll out the optimum organization. Of course, about two and a half years ago we did an even larger downsizing after which we rolled out the Ideal Organization. It was so ideal that some folks never did quite figure out what their job was. So now we are un-doing the Ideal in favor of the Optimum. We have also done several other ideal organization plans over the past several years. The ideal never seems to remain ideal for very long. I expect that the Optimum Organization will fare similarly.



'Optimize' is an interesting concept and is much like 'utopia' only more technical. In the engineering world, where a response variable may be expected to follow a response curve across a range of conditions like varying temperature or pressure or concentration, it makes some sense. In that technical case, the curve may indeed have an 'optimum' point where it is best to operate a unit operation. Of course, even these technical 'optima' often only exist on paper: in the real world we are usually happy to have an 'operating window' as a range of conditions within which we get good commercial results. This is because almost every commercial process has many things varying all the time to some degree: raw materials vary, wear and tear of the equipment, temporary malfunctions, operator skill, and so on all vary at once, so the optimum conditions are rarely seen. And in reality, all products can be made better and all processes can be improved so today's 'optimum' is tomorrow's 'obsolete'. So while the concept has some value in identifying the response curve so you can avoid really bad places to operate, truly 'optimized' processes don't really exist.



Once you start talking about humans, there is truly no 'optimum'. There is no more an optimum organization than there is an optimum economy or optimum marriage. That is one of the great flaws in the current universal health care proposal: it assumes the government can do centrally for a huge economic system what communism was unable to do centrally for any portion of an economy. It is an attempt at utopia in one large area of the economy by means of centralized planning and control. Some areas (like Europe) claim to be doing this successfully for health care, but I see them as free-loaders, sponging off the American system where the vast majority of new drugs and treatments are funded and developed. If America loses the economic incentive to create new drugs and methods, no one will have that incentive and they will cease. That would certainly not be optimum. As with our Ideal Organization, however, it would take time for this to be clearly seen. It took a long time for communism to fail, too.