The wisdom of Mark Twain.

I'd have to say that Mark Twain is my favorite author and, of all his books and stories, the one I like the most is "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." This is the story of a 19th century factory superintendent blessed with more than his share of common sense and ingenuity who is transported back in time (with the help of a prodigious knock on the head) to sixth century Britain, Camelot and the legendary court of King Arthur. Believe it or not, this story holds lessons for all of us who aspire to 21st century business success.

While entertaining us by poking holes in the silly superstitions of that age and by recounting amusing tales of madcap royalty and armor-clad knights that "clatter like a crate of castings" as they ride, Twain's story unfolds at a much more profound level as a powerful statement about cultural change and modernity. He disguises this in the story by recounting the adventures of a man who in many different situations tries to convince his sixth century countrymen of the truth in his radical- sounding, yet undeniably correct, 19th century ideas.

So how does this apply to 21st century business and the metalcasting industry? One way the story applies is punctuated by a scene in the book's 33rd chapter, "Sixth Century Political Economy." In this chapter, our Connecticut Yankee dines with a group of local businessmen and ends up discussing and debating the rather modern concept of purchasing power. In this exchange, he correctly argues that it is not the absolute level of one's wages, but what one can buy with those wages that ultimately matters and defines "success." However, and to his great dismay, he cannot convince these hidebound merchants. It seems that their definition of business success is altogether too wrapped up in the quantity of their wages--and the social status such an income level bestows--to buy into the Yankee's radical-sounding notions.

To learn a lesson from this story that has real value for 21st century metalcasting industry managers, each of us merely needs to replace Twain's concept of an individual's wages with the metalcasting equivalent of top-line revenues, and likewise substitute the concept of an individual's purchasing power with that of business profit. In those terms, the lesson is this--it's not the level of sales or the quantity of castings produced that matters, but the profit that remains after all business costs are accounted for. And it's this simplest of lessons that I am compelled to teach to managers at metalcasting facilities and workers alike every day of my professional life.

For example, I currently am helping a client to understand that giving up "good volume" from a "good customer" is a good idea. The under story here is that between high quality costs and poor pricing, this "good volume" has cost my client nearly $500,000 more than it has collected in revenues from its alleged "good customer" over the last couple of years. Yet despite this huge negative profit and the fact that the employees' hopes of profit sharing are shipped out the door each day along with these castings, managers and line workers alike are deathly afraid of "giving up the volume" and potentially crossing over to the dark side of a largely superstitious "breakeven point."

And that brings us back to our Connecticut Yankee, the real message of Twain's story, and the moral of this particular column. The truth that Twain in his story and I in this column are telling is that the world has changed, our industry has changed, and the requirements for business survival in the 21st century have changed. Moreover, there is a radical-sounding, yet proven management approach that should be embraced by all metalcasting firms, regardless of what their top-line revenues, production volumes or imaginary breakeven points may be, to move beyond survival mode or mediocrity. This would allow them to achieve superior 21st century business success--that is, sustainable bottom line profit margins in excess of 10% every month of every year.

All that's required is a willingness, on the part of metalcasting firms' boards of directors and CEOs, to recognize, embrace and invest in the metalcasting business equivalent of cultural change and modernity.