“Thon’s an unfierdy teuchter thon!”

Translate:

unfierdy: clumsy, awkward.

“That is a clumsy bumpkin that is!”

clumsy.

Quality workers are worth a lot.

People I know have been made redundant and it seems to me that often the choice made is to keep those that ‘control’ or are ‘controllable’ as against keeping those that are ‘awkward’.

It’s the quality of your workers that make the greatest difference and give you a consistent sustainable great product.

Quality workers will not stand for shoddy raw materials, poor end product, or doing anything but the best for the customer. That spells out awkward to too many line managers.

To me ‘awkward’ is a quality to be harnessed.

What’s the difference between a real manager and a pseudo manager? The real manager sees the balance sheet as only one indicator amongst many of how things are going.

The pseudo manager thinks maximum profit is the only measure.

And the worst sort of pseudo manager is the one that thinks that everything that lessens the profit numbers is the enemy.

Things like training, quality control, research and development, and worker’ well being.

These same managers will spend extra money on bonuses in an attempt to increase efforts at cutting spending to increase profit.

They believe that if only they had total control of everyone in the world everything would work perfectly.

Where did that sort of management come from and how come they think industry would grind to a halt if their control disappeared?

Could you do your job without someone constantly telling you exactly what to do? If you can’t perhaps you’ve been set up that way to justify some certain person’s existence.

The way Pixar is run is an example of harnessing quality employees which in turn revitalised the Hollywood animation industry. They try to employ people better than themselves. It’s a rare thing.

The Scottish Word: unfierdy with its definition and its meaning illustrated and captioned with the word used in context in the Scots language and in English.