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A common dilemma of the private sector is staying ahead of the pack.  More common is the need for innovation to just keep up.  Thousands of companies struggle with price wars, cope with labor disputes.  Management from the world's largest and most profitable firms are always seeking an answer to their multitude of problems.  Billions are spent on consultants and seminars to save companies, increase productivity, inspire teamwork and innovation.  It seems to be  a weary pursuit of the impossible.

Very often the genius so prized and sought after rests directly under the noses of the most elite of managers.  Too often the power center spends its time courting the cream of the crop, the best candidates for the most important of tasks.  What results is a disaffected legion of employees whose talents are never truly tapped. 

A perfect example of fleeting excellence is the Messenger industry.  Elite companies come and go.  Different crews of Messengers hold the license on vogue until inexplicably the crown is passed.

The phenomena if studied from a "managing by walking around" perspective is painfully simple.  The formula is as easily implemented as breathing.

Bike Messengers typically operate in an "underworld" of sorts.  A place where few would dare lower themselves to tread in.  It is this very attitude of elitist displacement which precludes the possibility and probability of brilliance.

Any Messenger who has worked on an "elite" crew looks back on it as a golden age.  It was an arduous time yet profitable and often the most rewarding period of a Messenger's career.  The profit takes two forms- the tangible in the form of compensation and the intangible in the form of synergy.  The synergy occurs when the individual feels his own personal power and the effect of a team coming together which yields more together than the sum of its parts.  It is precisely this phenomena which successfully eludes most organizations.

People, process, performance; is a mantra that is uttered in blind lip service to quality and innovation.  People, is who  is hired and how they are assimilated into a crew.  Process is the way they work which yields ever improving productivity from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view.  Performance is the measurement of that process and its real success, plateau, or failure.

In business, a plateau can become a failure as competition evolves beyond the organization which stands still.  When despite environmental pressures, an organization continues to stand still it runs the risk of complete failure, indeed obsolescence.

These trends have occurred in the Messenger industry with text book predictability.  It happens with every city.  A company has a good management mix, hires a good crew, goodwill grows amongst the workers, the company delivers exemplary service, Messengers of other companies aspire to work at "the company", the company reigns, the company grows exponentially and then somewhere it all starts to fall apart.  The first fissures occur on the street then move into the clients' offices, then the phones ring full of complaints, the company reprimands its crew, the crew loses loyalty, real earnings drop, and before anyone can explain it the company has fits of desperation hiring and eventually becomes a bottom feeder battling with the other bottom feeders.

The crux of the issue is a poor management of growth.  To arrest the slide in quality service the companies should, out of common sense enlist the help of the ultimate experts, the Bike Messengers themselves.  The reason management never explores this viable option is because they frankly become too big for their britches.  Management distances itself from the grunts because they are grunts.  With growth and prosperity a bike crew never really loses its raw edge, due to circumstances of the street, the Messenger on that crew cannot afford to.

A case study could be made of XYZ of SF.  At first glance XYZ is the vanguard for the future of Messing.  Typically Bike Messenger companies begin as small entrepreneurships.  Bike help at the outset is contracted out and as the company grows they are made employees.  This transition has proved ruinous for many companies because it often attracts the attention or is the product of unwanted attention form the IRS.  Audits that may ensue are frequently the death knell for a new growing Messenger service.  What separates XYZ from the typical Messenger service is a strategy the owner adopted at this crucial point is the free-call system.  Free-call, a new operating method was developed in Australia to increase the productivity of the Messenger services by harnessing initiative in the Messenger crew.  Unlike the dispatch, taxi style operating mode , Free-call a licensed system allows the Messenger more autonomy according to his abilities and needs.  XYZ was the 1st SF Messenger company to convert to this system and soon recruited other small companies to function as a cooperative creating a seamless operation each company filling a niche to fully service the SF Bay Area.  It is unusual for co owners to band together and maintain their own organizational identities.  As the new cooperative grew and companies joined the DMS team (the licensed name "Dispatch Management Service" by Kiwi co from Australia) the popularity of the DMS grew and its component co's began to enjoy a certain mystique, an image that clients paid a premium for, and m respected.  XYZ, the most visible  was known to pay well and be good to its Bike Messengers.  A high standard of performance was expected and soon the most eager of Bike Messengers were clamoring for jobs.  These were not necessarily the  best Messengers of SF, but their individual talents previously reluctantly appreciated, became synergistic when the m were put in an environment of expected teamwork and high performance.  In short the average Messenger was inclined to rise to the challenge when the benefits were clearly evident.  The benefits being affiliated with the "elite company" and  substantially more lucrative pay than the average SF Messenger company.

Unfortunately like every other star company XYZ began to plateau.  the returns began to level out and the owner took the typical measures.  A once admired company began to fracture.  The very  management style which created and grew it began to suffocate and constrict it.  in the beginning XYZ was a critic of the ambivalent rule of dispatch operated companies.   Now XYZ is widely recognized as a dictatorship of meaning.  Where other companies show their naked might, XYZ uses a veil of subtleties.  Peer pressure mores take the place of management edicts and a company that once appreciated the dynamism of its crew now uses the interpersonal networks like a bludgeon for top down directives.  A hiring procedure that was once potential based has become type based veering dangerously into a homogenized workforce based on gender and race.  Only one Asian male keeps XYZ from looking completely racist.  Perhaps the most telling flaw of the DMS which is now essentially run by XYZ is a complete disapproval of m who deign to stand up for themselves.  Not only does it erect a wall between worker and management but it also opens doors to organizational suicide.  Under the peer management of the DMS there is a strict adherence to professionalism.  Professionalism is however extremely subjective.

In the landmark case Ellison vs the IRS, the Supreme Court made a decision instituting the "Reasonable Woman"  concept.  This concept asserts that in issues of Sexual Harassment, men have never been in a position of threatening  advances that a woman by virtue of assimilation into society is forced to weigh  an advance in terms of her own well being.

Forcing a workforce to adhere to an exclusively male perspective of "Professionalism" is utterly ludicrous and leaves the management of that concern liable for identity disfigurement that could result in unnecessary harassment of its employees.

As a Bike Messenger woman, people do not leave me feeling uncomfortable, or threatened for long.  Directly corollary to this fact is my reputation for being a trouble maker.  As a Bike Messenger, one works alone.  It is seldom that Messengers work in close proximity to one another.  Another fact is that downtown centers attract a wide range of personality types, are crowded and are known for unexpected circumstances.  As a result of being poorly protected, and alone in this potentially hostile environment, women particularly, are forced to adopt attitudes and knowledge that will keep them alive and intact.

The Bike Messenger women who last, are the ones who have developed the assertive or "bitchy" aspect of their personality.  "Bitchiness," is not professional.  It is however, that attitude which keeps threatening forces at bay.  One of the DMS's female m  was stalked for months.  This highly skilled extremely intelligent woman was effectively placed under martial law.  Her job was made harder because of the threat she had to consciously avoid.  Had that threat precipitated into a rape or killing, the DMS could have conceivably be held responsible.  As a woman I have never felt I couldn't go somewhere because of my gender.  I have fought hard for this luxury, but this woman and attitude are unwanted at the DMS.

Another problem with this "professionalism" is that it causes Messengers to develop self destructive coping mechanisms to deal with either the complete rejection of self-determination, or a constant game of faces, the one for the boss, the one for the friends and peers.  The price of this disempowering of the XYZ bike crew is radio air that is extremely hostile in nature, cherry picking jobs leaving less arrogant personalities less lucrative work and a depreciation of overall service.

Even a negative downturn is salvageable.  Any company short of being on its deathbed can turn itself around and again reign supreme.  What it takes is the courage of management to walk on fire, to accept harsh criticism and build on the expertise that already exists.  The danger will always remain,  the danger's name is complacency.  even the best co should be ever vigilant of its own tendency toward a superiority complex.  Like a drug, dominance lulls the owner into a false sense of security.

This is evidenced by the American auto, textile and computer industries.  Many great companies have been dealt crippling blows leaving them sputtering for years, and not until they have fallen to the depths of their humility can they realize the crystallization purpose.

In the Messenger industry, opportunities swim by like salmon swimming upstream to spawn.  The energy and clarity needed for change is written plainly in a frown, hostility and laziness.  The change can't happen if it gets judged the moment it leaps from a disgruntled mouth.  Cut a commission, and cut a company's throat.  Nothing reverberates quicker than a forced depreciation  of living standards.  Cost cutting is a quick fix approach which only plants seeds for a plethora of problems later on.  The margins fatten for a moment...until the next guy discounts.  Discounting quite literally undermines the perceived value of a service or product.  In the beginning, the m is the first to suffer, but ultimately it is the whole company that suffers.

Listening to the unlikely expert, the Bike Messenger, about company operations, creates an environment of trust and from there growth can be stratospheric.  If proof is needed one need only look at the history of IBM in the last 10 years.