The Exception or the Rule?

The improvement battle continues

Thu, 03/28/2013 - 15:39

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As a consultant, it’s easy to lose touch with reality and become a platitude-spouting machine. I always like hearing from my readers because it keeps me grounded—and I try my best to reply to them all. My heart lies with the hard-working front-line folks doing the real work.

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As long as I can offer real solutions and reassurance to people passionate about improvement, as in the unedited conversation below, my passion for helping practitioners like this to create a culture where improvement is embedded into the organizational DNA will not fade.

It started innocently enough with a comment on my article, “What Are You Tolerating?”

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Comments

A little too close.

Your reader's response is right on.  I've seen a couple of common tactics - 1) data taken to the point of minutia to demonstrate there is no problem, rather than addressing the commonality of the causes, and 2) creating a 'new better system' for tracking the problems that assigns responsibility for resolution and correction but avoids identifying cause.  Justification being the most important thing we can do is resolve it quickly to keep the shipment moving and the customter 'satisfied'.  When there is no improvement, the 'new better' system' is touted as the solution. 

The elusive question is how to move beyond that situation and actually drive improvement.

Hi, Tim,

Thank you for your spot on additional examples. Until cultures are created where the words "statistical" and "quality" are dropped as adjectives because they're "givens," "quality as bolt-on" mentality will continue -- and the status quo will win every time. Until improvement is "built-in" to an organization's DNA, these power struggles (with "quality" virtually always losing) will continue to be the norm.

And quality people have a role in this, too -- stop BORING people to death and solve MAJOR problems (Unilke this person:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdqRqRXeS-Q).  The person whose correspondence formed the basis of this article is on the right track. 

Davis

Dear Davis,

That was a great exchange. And, as Tim put it "too close to home". As I was reading your reader's points, I could relate to each one of them.

As quality professionals we tend to emphasize "Knowledge of variation" at the expense of "Knowledge of Psychology". We almost never address the "Theory of Knowledge" or practice the "Appreciation of a System". All four are critical to transform how we function.

Best regards, Shrikant Kalegaonkar (Twitter, LinkedIn, Iterations)

Nice comment. You're obviously a fan of Deming, as am I. I feel that his philosophy is still the most robust and no one -- I repeat, NO ONE -- has implemented it as he intended. Deming's "psychology" was the least developed of his four facets of Profound Knowledge, and it even goes beyond his emphasis on intrinsic motivation (Dean Spitzer has done some wonderful work on "demotivators." Look up his book "Supermotivation."  Chapter 4 & 5 of my book develop psychology as well). I've been fascinated by this and researched it heavily the last 15-20 years. Until the narcissistic, egocentric psychology of the "executive club" is cracked, it's going to be a long, ongoing struggle.  Passionate lip service is alive and well...and quality professionals "tolerate" it.  So, what are THEY going to do about it?  In my articles, I try to make suggestions.

Good luck!

Davis

Exception is Mother to Rule, and viceversa; but who's the Father? The problem with any Improvement Battle is that - so far - it has no "soul", no inner afflatus, it is fought only because it has to be fought. Anatole France wrote "we believed we were killing each other for Freedom, but it was for the Banks' vaults, instead". I find the Standards' requirements for continual - or continuous - improvement as the most hypocrite ones: why don't the Standards' makers improve themselves, in the first place? Certainly they make the Rule, but allow themselves to be the Exception. Thnak you.

 

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