It is often said that the road to damnation is paved with good intentions. Well, at least it’s a well-paved road, and you should make good time.
I am an avid movie buff, and one of my favorite lines is in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? wherein the guitarist sold his soul to the devil in order to have savant abilities playing his instrument. When his carpool associates asked him why he did this, he simply replies, “Well, I wasn’t using it for nothing.”
The soul of an auto parts jobber or a service center is our own unique skill set or experiences. What will happen to our industry when we all achieve a level of parity, or all become equal in all aspects of our businesses? Will our profits match the level of elusive stratospheric efficiency that we are all striving so hard to attain? In a word, no.
Why? We are not robots. The movie I, Robot, in which perfect robots short out and started killing everyone, should be enough to discourage us from trying to be this perfect. If we are robotic in any sense, we are more akin to Rosie, the robot maid from The Jetsons. Rosie was highly emotional, somewhat irrational and suffered from what appeared to be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. That’s why everyone loved her — she was a little nutty, but oh-so-very endearing.
I honestly feel that our industry stands at the edge of a precipice. As many of us teeter towards doom and destruction, others of us are achieving great success, which keeps us all from capitulating into oblivion. It’s the anxiety that we all feel as we the stand on the edge that generates new ideas and creative thinking. Unity in spirit is unlike the unity of sameness.
Mass merchandisers have a unity of sameness, while the independents have a unity of spirit, or for purposes of this article, a collective soul. If a mass merchandiser fails, multiple locations and people suffer. If one of us fails, it’s usually attributed to differences in business practices, and the rest of us learn from it and become stronger. As those remaining become stronger, we tend to gravitate towards each other in all things automotive.
As our respective buying groups grow in size, we have a tendency to try to mimic — you guessed it — mass merchandisers! I have been on a few advisory councils, and each member was an independent jobber or service center owner, most with stark observations about some of the things we were doing as program groups. Even though we objected to implementing a few unpopular items, they were implemented anyway. Why have an advisory council if the people needing the advice won’t take it?
Therefore, by our association, we either live by the sword or die by the sword. We have, at times, put too much faith into the administration managing our associations (and their funds), rather than holding them accountable for failures or applauding them for successes as a result of their proxy management.
If you think your association is running amuck, call up the director and let him or her know as much. Likewise, if they are doing a good job, let them know that also, or how a program has affected your bottom line. The collective soul of the independent is much the same as the collective voices of a choir, with your program group administrators being the band and choir director. If the tenor section is off key, you can’t cover it up with equal amounts of baritone and more cowbell.
If I’m on my personal road to perdition, I want the ride to be rough, bumpy, with a lot of sight-seeing side trips, and I sure won’t entirely trust my GPS. I want the trip to be grueling as I fight for every worthy independent cause. At least I’ll be conditioned and seasoned enough to endure the hostile environment once I get there. Better still, I might just find a shortcut to salvation.
Remember, you have a soul — a voice — and don’t be afraid to use it. Too often we are lulled by the complacency of our day-to-day routine into thinking our opinions don’t matter to the big guys and the manufacturers. They do. So don’t just sit back and enjoy the ride. Be sure to tell the guy driving to stop and ask for some directions.
It is often said that the road to damnation is paved with good intentions. Well, at least it’s a well-paved road, and you should make good time.
I am an avid movie buff, and one of my favorite lines is in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? wherein the guitarist sold his soul to the devil in order to have savant abilities playing his instrument. When his carpool associates asked him why he did this, he simply replies, “Well, I wasn’t using it for nothing.”
The soul of an auto parts jobber or a service center is our own unique skill set or experiences. What will happen to our industry when we all achieve a level of parity, or all become equal in all aspects of our businesses? Will our profits match the level of elusive stratospheric efficiency that we are all striving so hard to attain? In a word, no.
Why? We are not robots. The movie I, Robot, in which perfect robots short out and started killing everyone, should be enough to discourage us from trying to be this perfect. If we are robotic in any sense, we are more akin to Rosie, the robot maid from The Jetsons. Rosie was highly emotional, somewhat irrational and suffered from what appeared to be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. That’s why everyone loved her — she was a little nutty, but oh-so-very endearing.
I honestly feel that our industry stands at the edge of a precipice. As many of us teeter towards doom and destruction, others of us are achieving great success, which keeps us all from capitulating into oblivion. It’s the anxiety that we all feel as we the stand on the edge that generates new ideas and creative thinking. Unity in spirit is unlike the unity of sameness.
Mass merchandisers have a unity of sameness, while the independents have a unity of spirit, or for purposes of this article, a collective soul. If a mass merchandiser fails, multiple locations and people suffer. If one of us fails, it’s usually attributed to differences in business practices, and the rest of us learn from it and become stronger. As those remaining become stronger, we tend to gravitate towards each other in all things automotive.
As our respective buying groups grow in size, we have a tendency to try to mimic — you guessed it — mass merchandisers! I have been on a few advisory councils, and each member was an independent jobber or service center owner, most with stark observations about some of the things we were doing as program groups. Even though we objected to implementing a few unpopular items, they were implemented anyway. Why have an advisory council if the people needing the advice won’t take it?
Therefore, by our association, we either live by the sword or die by the sword. We have, at times, put too much faith into the administration managing our associations (and their funds), rather than holding them accountable for failures or applauding them for successes as a result of their proxy management.
If you think your association is running amuck, call up the director and let him or her know as much. Likewise, if they are doing a good job, let them know that also, or how a program has affected your bottom line. The collective soul of the independent is much the same as the collective voices of a choir, with your program group administrators being the band and choir director. If the tenor section is off key, you can’t cover it up with equal amounts of baritone and more cowbell.
If I’m on my personal road to perdition, I want the ride to be rough, bumpy, with a lot of sight-seeing side trips, and I sure won’t entirely trust my GPS. I want the trip to be grueling as I fight for every worthy independent cause. At least I’ll be conditioned and seasoned enough to endure the hostile environment once I get there. Better still, I might just find a shortcut to salvation.
Remember, you have a soul — a voice — and don’t be afraid to use it. Too often we are lulled by the complacency of our day-to-day routine into thinking our opinions don’t matter to the big guys and the manufacturers. They do. So don’t just sit back and enjoy the ride. Be sure to tell the guy driving to stop and ask for some directions.
