The quality of yesterday

"The quality of today, the quantity of tomorrow!" - I met this sentence at Kuhn in Saverne, France, back in the 1970s. In Western factories, passwords were rarely painted on the wall, which is why I was interested in what the inscription might mean. Slogans were more common than we did, but we learned that quantity translates into quality and not the other way around. At the company, however, we insisted more on the industrial wisdom seen in the Alsace factory. [...] I make no secret of the fact that I have been offered the opportunity to privatize me in the name of building national capital. Whoever contacted me said that they would like to see him in a very high position. The offer was unexpected. Many times later, I feel like I made a bad decision when I finally didn’t accept it. I am convinced that the highly experienced professionals, the existing good Western embedding, would have ensured staying afloat. However, I was averse to some elements of the conditions. I do not want to cast a shadow over other privatization procedures, and it is clear that they were all different in their own way. In any event, in my case, "redistribution" clearly appeared as a requirement after the necessary credit had been provided. I should have allocated different amounts to several places. It bothered me. Describing my reluctance as childish, they tried to convince me that I didn’t have to breastfeed something like that. Numerous examples have been given that we live in an age in which one should not be heartbroken. They advised me to take ownership not for myself, but for the company, for the jobs, in a word, for others. I’m too “angular,” but I can also say I was law-abiding. In addition, I also struggled with the moral barrier of mastering the results of our many years of working together alone. So after a short thought, I said no. Afterwards, of course, I wondered a lot about what would have happened if I had decided otherwise, only because of the later fate of the Field Machine. I think on the one hand I am very sorry that I did not take the opportunity to unfold the ownership, I did not show what I am capable of as a manager of my own company. It never turns out to be so, so it obviously seems arrogant, but I think it's likely that under normal circumstances I could have built a highly technical, competitive company and reached the end of the domestic TOP 100 somewhere as a businessman. I can only blame myself for not taking the opportunity, even if I have to blame anyone ... András Sziráki