【Essay】The silent hero

Misfortunes never come singly in Taiwan

The house leak happens when it rains overnight, and the boat encounters the opposite wind. In addition to the rapid decline of the new crown pneumonia epidemic recently, Taiwan has suffered from frequent power plant accidents, resulting in power outages several times a week. The power outage accident in Taiwan was also reported by the foreign media "The Economist":

 Taiwan imposed more power cuts as a heatwave and drought caused demand for electricity to spike and a generation plant failed. Last Thursday the island imposed similar blackouts after an outage at a power plant in the southern city of Kaohsiung. Taiwan is a leading producer of semiconductors and its electricity troubles threaten to make the global chip shortage worse.

The last two sentences caught my attention. Of course, the foreign media did not care that we had several power outages, but they were very concerned that the unstable power supply was accompanied by the unstable operation of the integrated circuit leader TSMC, which may aggravate the supply of chips. even worse.

And this Taipower accident naturally attracted unanimous bombardment from the public and the opposition parties. Compared with the courteousness we always treat TSMC, it reminds me of TSMC's achievements so far. Is there no credit for Taipower and other infrastructure?

The difference between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises

Taiwan's electricity and tap water are two of the state-run businesses. Because of the tense relationship with mainland China, and hydropower is closely related to people's livelihood, business operations, and even the military, it has not been privatized for fear of being controlled by other countries' forces.

There is a big difference between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. State-owned enterprises do not have much pressure to make money. Instead, the source of pressure is the intervention of political power. The government controls the price of water and electricity for the sake of public opinion or enterprise development. Unable to change with the market mechanism, Taiwan's water and electricity tariffs are very competitive on average in the world.

But also because of the political leadership, state-owned enterprises are relatively uncompetitive in operation, and the people are less cherished of resources because of low prices.

Does the infrastructure work?

Many times we only know how to cherish it after we lose it, and hydropower, the two infrastructures we are accustomed to, can be said to be a fantasy for the people of many backward countries. International companies such as TSMC cannot tolerate the interruption of electricity and water sources for every minute and every second in the requirements of precision manufacturing, but we seldom give corresponding resources and attention to these sources.

I have heard a senior share before. This senior works in the company's power maintenance department and must design, replace and maintain the company's basic equipment every year. However, due to the difficult business operation of the company, senior managers in a certain meeting invited representatives from various departments. State your contribution.

Of course, the business unit said plausibly: "I have brought tens of millions of orders to the company."

The design and manufacturing unit is no less so: "My special design makes us different from our competitors."

The purchasing unit said confidently: "My purchasing strategy has saved the company millions of costs."

Finally, it was the maintenance unit's turn. Everyone expected that this senior would have nothing to talk about, but this senior said aggressively: " My contribution is the sum of the previous three departments. Because if there is no stable infrastructure, Backer, the contributions of the previous three units cannot be established.”

The above little story may be a little dramatic, but it also highlights that we don't pay attention to the infrastructure, or the credit of the enterprise logistics unit.

A successful enterprise must have a foundation on which to take root, and the foundation is unstable, no matter how long the stem extends and the leaves grow taller, it will not help. But I think it's the Taipower turmoil that has been extended to Taiwan Railways and other state-owned enterprises. It seems that it will always attract everyone's attention only when they are out of the package. Usually, they don't feel their existence like transparent people.

This doesn't seem fair to them, and it makes me wonder if I have also made a blind spot, that is, not giving everyone an equal and objective evaluation, and ignoring the group of anonymous heroes.

I wonder if any of you citizens have similar experiences in the workplace?