Will the Government Adopt Better Management Methods This Time?

Reaction to, New Administration: Real Improvement This Time?


Sadly I don’t believe the odds of appreciable success are good. I think the odds are much lower than they were for previous attempts. I wrote about President Obama’s appointment of a Chief Performance Officer in 2009

it is dangerous if they believe their propaganda and don’t learn from all the previous essentially identical efforts: a claim of “first” is trying to convince people those past efforts do not exist. This self-delusional pattern is very common in the practice of management and a significant reason why the practice of management has not improved more rapidly over time. To achieve success you need to determine why the problem still exists and exploring the very similar past efforts is critical to such study.

in which I pointed out similar ideas as you state here about past efforts that amounted to very little.

I think there were some reasons to hope Gingrich might help apply some better management methods if he were in a position that gave him authority to do so in the 1990s, today I am very skeptical that he would help.

Related: Better Management in Government (2012) - Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site - Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency - Doing More with Less in the Public Sector (1986) - The Public Sector and Deming (2005)

Influential Women in the Field of Quality Management

My response, off the top of my head (there are plenty of others to include) to Who Has Inspired You About Quality? by Nicole Radziwill.

I searched online and found a nice “List of Gurus” that someone put together that includes my extra picks! But!! There’s a problem with it. Where area the women? The one woman in this list is someone I’ve never heard of, which is odd, since I’ve read papers by (or about!) all of the other people referenced in the list. Which brings me back to my original point: Where are all the women quality gurus? It’s time to start celebrating their emerging legacy. If you are a woman who has made significant contributions to our understanding and/or practice of quality and improvement, Please contact me. I’d like to write an article soon.

Joyce Orsini and Gipsie Ranney have done lots of good stuff. So has Clare Crawford Mason.

Gertrude Mary Cox isn't known so much for "quality" as statistics but she was an impressive person and a generation or two ahead of others (and it really is related to quality).

Mary Poppendieck has really good stuff at the intersection of quality and software development.

Meg Wheatley was really popular in the 1990s in the systems thinking area of quality. I thought her stuff was good, but wasn't as impressed with it as many people - I haven't seen her stuff in a long time.

There are a couple recent podcasts from the Deming Institute with Paula Marshall, Andrea Gabor and Monta Akin (as well as others listed above).

Most, or all, of those could be good articles.

Related: My post on Who Inspires Your Management Thinking and Action? - women in science and engineering

Change - Why are We So Slow

Response to: One thought before sleep… why is management changing so slowly?

Psychology. Why it is we hold to beliefs and habits without evidence is a hard question that probably takes several books worth of material to answer :-/

But it is true that change is most often very slow. It isn't only management. It is our psychology that then manifests itself everywhere, even the least likely of all places - science.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Max Planck

Ironically in management we often also seek the new new thing. So while great ideas take a long time to become common practice we stop looking at them fairly quickly because we decide they are old outdated ideas. Not a very effective strategy :-(

Related: Change is Necessary, But it has to be the Right Change - Change is Often Not Improvement - When the ideas have reached the level of habits you have changed.

Remembering George E.P. Box

George Box passed away last week and a long (1919 - 2013), rewarding and productive life. His obituary ends with "a last message from George" (quoting Cole Porter's song - Experiment).

“Experiment! Make it your motto day and night. Experiment, And it will lead you to the light …Be Curious, …Get Furious… Experiment, And you’ll see!”

The full text of the song is quoted in Statistics for Experimenters (a book by George, my father and Stu Hunter on using design of experiments to improve). The song is included in the De-Lovely soundtrack.

If you want to honor the memory of George, contributions could be made to

  UW Foundation - George Box Endowment Fund (link to donate - include George Box Endowment Fund in the box for instructions) US Bank Lock Box 78807, Milwaukee, WI 53278.  This fund was started some years ago with the intention of assisting graduate students. It is a permanent endowment fund, so contributions to the fund are added to the principal and the annual earnings of the fund are used to support the fund purpose. The purpose of the fund is to support activities of the Statistics Department with a primary (but not exclusive) focus on activities of direct benefit to graduate students.  Recipients will be selected by the Department faculty (or their designates) with input from Departmental graduate students."

  Agrace HospiceCare (link for donating online), 5395 E. Cheryl Parkway Madison, WI 53711.

Long History of Lean Thinking in Government

This is my comment from a closed access Linked In group.

It is good news that a government organization is adopting lean thinking ideas, but this kind of thing has been going on for decades. My father wrote a short section in Dr. Deming's Out of the Crisis on applying these ideas in the City of Madison (early 1980's). I was involved in the Public Sector Network (federal, state and local gov in 1990's) that group joined ASQ and is now the ASQ government division. I was involved with the Federal Quality Network 1990s (federal government effort). I worked in the Office of Secretary of Defense Quality Management Office 1996-2001. I created and maintain the Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site.

There have been many great efforts over the years. Sadly most fade away leaving behind the use of a few good tools and a bit better process thinking but that is about it. Executive comprehension of the better management methods seem to disappear quickly (the executives, in government [not all of them of course, some do great stuff], are also much more reluctant to embrace better management practices than others in the organization).

  Doing More with Less in the Public Sector, A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin, 1987.
  Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency by March Laree Jacques, 1999.

We have to expect more of our governments. Better management practices will provide more value at less costs - both of which are badly needed in the economy today.

Related: Managing Our Way to Economic Success Two Untapped Resources - Focus on the Work: Pick Improvement Projects that Really Help Your Agency's Operations - Using Quality to Develop an Internet Resource

History, ASQ and the Future

The Past, The Future, Quality, and ASQ

does the quality community bear some responsibility for making sure its philosophic foundations are not lost to history?

Managers fail to adopt old, proven ideas.  I blame, mostly, managers themselves for this.  Organizations, like ASQ, should also do a much better job, too.  Unfortunately, ASQ has a long way to go in promoting quality.  Huge amounts of historical content is locked away, hidden from the open internet.  Also, I agree with Steve Prevette's comments (Aug 24th comment), in my experience in dealing with ASQ (and watching from afar for years now) there is far too much attention on growing revenue and far to little on promoting good management practices.  That isn't that surprising for a bureaucracy.  They often turn to attempts to grow revenue (and often promotions, bonuses...) over any mission the organization has.

It makes perfect sense for ASQ to focus on the mission and seek revenue to allow greater reach.  I'm sure that is how ASQ wants to see the last few decades.  I don't see it that way, but I doubt that matters much.

I'll actually give ASQ's web presence a good review over the next few weeks.  I haven't paid much attention in a few years and it is good too see if ASQ has started to take providing good content online seriously every few years (but from 1995-2009 I never found much good being done, sadly - the potential is huge for ASQ but it has not been a priority from what I can tell).  At the same time I monitor what is going with management online pretty heavily and find extremely few references to ASQ material in all the content I review (which is not a good sign for ASQ).
I hope ASQ puts promoting better management as the aim and re-orients their actions based on that primary aim, but I am not optimistic. I have seen, for too long, the seeming focus being on maintaining and growing the organization ASQ and selling quality management related material as the means to that end.

Some past, related posts by me: - Classic Management Theories are Still Relevant - Data Based Blathering - ASQ and ACSI - Early History of Quality Management Online