Perfection Is Possible for All of Us
Pat Townsend & Joan Gebhardt
Perfection. Are humans--particularly
normal humans--truly capable of perfection on a sustained
basis?
It’s a basic tenet of life for most of us that everybody
makes mistakes, that nobody’s perfect. Statistics
courses and quality/productivity gurus assure us that there’s
always variation. Perfection, we’re assured, is a
nice goal, but unattainable.
Regardless, we all sustain long periods of perfect achievement
in the processes that compose everyday life. When, for instance,
is the last time you put on mismatched socks or put your
shoes on the wrong feet?
Here’s a more applicable example:
At the end of the workday, most of us head for our car to
drive home. The first task is to drive out of the parking
lot, where we are faced with a decision: Do we turn left,
right or do we go straight ahead? If we screw this decision
up, it will add considerably to the time it takes us to
get home.
Every day, we turn the correct direction. We then go through
a long series of decision points--intersections. Again and
again, we are faced with the same set of options: Left?
Right? Straight-ahead? And, again, we make the right decision.
Every time.
If we make the decision to alter the route (because we
need to buy a gallon of milk or a six-pack of something
stronger), we are capable of introducing an additional set
of steps to our process. We make different-than-yesterday
and different-than-tomorrow sequences of moves and—after
buying the milk—find our way back to our normal process
to resume our trip home.
Alterations can also be forced by external elements. If
we hear that a bridge on our normal route is undergoing
repairs, we introduce a unique-for-today (or perhaps, unique-for-this-week)
set of steps to get around the special circumstance before
resuming our normal process.
And we get home. Every night. Perfectly.
How is this possible? If we’re so good at this, why
can’t we be more consistent at work?
The factors that make it possible to drive home perfectly
are:
* We know the value of the process.
* We defined the original process--but only after some research
and some trial and error.
* We’re in control of the process and responsible
for dealing with special cases.
* We have the option to change the process (if, for instance,
we find that the way around the bridge is actually better
than our old way).
How many times do those same set of characteristics apply
to work processes?
If a manager wants his or her subordinates to perform their
jobs more consistently, the first step is to talk with them
about their drive home.
If someone--at any level--understands the value of a process,
takes part in defining the process and is allowed to introduce
special case alternatives to handle unusual instances, perfection
is within reach.
Pat Townsend and Joan Gebhardt have written more than
200 articles and six books, including Commit to Quality
(John Wiley & Sons, 1986); Quality in Action: 93
Lessons in Leadership, Participation, and Measurement
(John Wiley & Sons, 1992); Five-Star Leadership:
The Art and Strategy of Creating Leaders at Every Level
(John Wiley & Sons, 1997); Recognition, Gratitude
& Celebration (Crisp Publications, 1997); How
Organizations Learn: Investigate, Identify, Institutionalize
(Crisp Publications, 1999); and Quality Is Everybody's
Business (CRC Press, 1999). Pat Townsend has recently
re-entered the corporate world and is now dealing with “leadership.com”
issues as a practitioner as well as an observer, writer
and speaker. He is now chief quality officer for UICI, a
diverse financial services corporation headquartered in
the Dallas area. Letters to the editor regarding this column
can be sent to
letters@qualitydigest.com.
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