Every organization suffers some waste. We’ve all heard stories of the federal government purchasing thousand-dollar hammers and hundred-dollar nails.
Sometimes we laugh at these matters, but ultimately they are very important to us. Nothing kills our initiative as quickly as the feeling that what we do doesn’t matter. An organization that wastes important resources, like the efforts of its workers, is an organization that will waste your motivation.
“Welcome to the future of farming,” says Rhode Island’s Michael Lydon as he surveys his greenhouse.
Inside the quarter-acre facility, Michael grows as many tomatoes as the typical farm would produce on twenty times as much land. Other farmers “are very dependent on weather conditions. They are very dependent on water supply. They battle insects, they battle disease. They have to waste a lot of their time and money fixing problems they can’t control. I have none of these problems.”
Michael was an engineer before he began farming as a second career. And he looked at farming from an engineer’s perspective, trying to root out waste and increase production. “Greenhouse farming is more about quality control, so my skills adapted very well to this business.”
While the greenhouse is more productive than traditional farms during the growing season, Michael also benefits from a much longer season because his crops are protected from nighttime chills. For much of the year, his are the only local tomatoes on the produce store shelves. And unlike tomatoes that are picked before they ripen so that they don’t spoil on the trip across country, Michael’s tomatoes are picked when they ripen and taken straight to the markets.
Michael predicts the future of farming will be inside a greenhouse. “If you want to stay in farming, and consistently produce a product, your farming has to be done in a greenhouse.”
Corporate inefficiency reduces job satisfaction by 21 percent and increases employees’ desire to find new employment.
Melnarik 1999