The Value of a Management System Accommodating Remote Work

Working remotely creates a significantly different system than working all next to each other. There are big advantages to working right next to each other. There are also really bad office designs (which are very common) which detract from success of working next to each other (distractions etc. that cubical farms, "hoteling" create etc.).

There are challenges to managing a system of work with people not being right next to each other. There are also huge advantages of hiring people that are not within commuting distance of your location. In my opinion organizations that learn to manage a dispersed workforce effectively will have huge competitive advantages long term.

Of course we have decades of evidence of organizations electing to ignore better management practices so I imagine most organizations will be dragged kicking and screaming into the future (if they ever get there at all).

There is some sense in my opinion to focusing on working all next to each other as your organization's management style. But my guess is for all but the richest organizations (that can afford to overpay, pay premiums to those that are willing to commute, willing to tie themselves to one physical location, happen to be in the area...) there are large gains possible by learning and creating a manage system that works effectively with remote workers. When you can't just pay huge salareis to put up with the large shortcomings of your management system it is important to find other ways to compete in the marketplace.

Figuring out how to work effectively remotely provides huge potential advantages for many organizations.

Related: Employees That Telecommute are the Most Loyal (2007) - The Management System is the Key - Shared Principles for Managing People Engaged in Diverse Tasks

Shared Principles for Managing People Engaged in Diverse Tasks

This post expands on my response to Michael Sweeney's (Cloud Infrastructure Engineering for Salesforce) comments on Linked In:

This is a great blog to follow [Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog] if you aren’t aware of it. I agree with John, in general, but in this post I felt the missed one basic thing that I’ve seen in my own career- software is not physical and people who write great software and people who make great physical things MUST think (and therefore be managed) differently. The crossover between Agile and Lean thinking, to me, is the ability to identify non-value added activity (waste) in the Toyota sense, and empower small teams to make decisions and charge forward in the Agile sense. Getting a combination of software and hardware thinking together will be the key to winning the Cloud Wars and moving into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Thanks for your comments. I do agree that the system within which people are operating determines how they must be managed. There are definitely features of software development that are significantly different than manufacturing scalpels or basketballs or tables. As there is a difference between a surgical team in an operating room, road construction, mining, editing books, investment banking, manufacturing industrial robots, researching new drugs, manufacturing drugs, teaching in a university, maintaining plane engines, coaching an athletic team...

I see universal principles of management (respect for people, customer focus, continual improvement...) that cross all different human enterprises. How those principles should be manifest in a particular situations depend on the work being done, the management system that is in place, the individual people involved, the specific focus of the effort right now... The way those principles are manifest will look very different in all the varied types of organizations we create and the different work and processes used within those organizations.

John Hunter, presenting at a Deming management seminar in Hong Kong

It is interesting (on the software v not software divide) to note that 100 years ago what was manufactured didn't contain software elements. And the manufacturing process also didn't involve software. That isn't very often the case today. Think of all the manufactured things you use and a high percentage (measured by the cost of the manufactured goods) have software components (cars, phones, appliances, speakers...) and they are built with a great deal of software involved in the manufacturing process.

In addition, the sales process and other processes involved in the organization doing the manufacturing rely heavily on software. As you say "Getting a combination of software and hardware thinking together" is indeed key today and will be continue to be in the future. While relying on software as part of the manufacturing process (and in the supporting processes) isn't the same as developing software the thought process on how to use software within manufacturing systems and how that software should work, be adjusted... is very different from the work of manufacturing tires 100 years ago.

I also discuss related ideas in: Deming and Software Development.

Related posts: How to Manage What You Can’t Measure - Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work - Good Process Improvement Practices - The Importance of Management Improvement - Thinking Required, No Simple Management Recipe to Follow -Unpacking the Components of Hard Work to Design Better Work Conditions - Do We Need to Find Management Ideas from Our Industry? (No) - Avoiding Difficult Problems

Learning from Gemba Walks

comment on: What’s the Right Way to Do a Gemba Walk?

Well said. Both "treating people as individuals and showing them respect" and "learning how they wish to influence outcomes in their lives and work" are very important. I also think one of the keys that makes gemba walks valuable is for the person doing the walk truly seeking to learn; a curiosity about the nature of the work at this particular gemba seems present in those that make it a valuable process (that curiosity continues and grows it isn't satisfied on a walk instead it is stoked to encourage more learning).

Related: Deming Wanted Managers to Understand the Systems They Managed and to Visit Where the Work was Done - Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno - Out of Touch Executives Damage Companies: Go to the Gemba

Avoiding Difficult Problems

Response to: Toyota is Admired for Good Reason… But About Those Rotating Job Shifts…

Thanks for another good post. It points out that while Toyota does many things very well they have opportunities to improve. And I am sure they agree they have a huge number of things to improve.

I agree, this rotating shifts seems like something important to try and improve. One of the things that happens in many organizations is that working on things that are going to make lots of people mad are often avoided. This rotating shift work seems like something that is likely to make people upset.

Even if you worked on improving it, likely during those PDSA cycles many people would be annoyed. And if you were working on it, you could get blamed, you could be tarnished as someone people didn't like it and didn't appreciate "you doing this to them." If, on the other hand, no one is making significant efforts to improve, even if people are annoyed it is at some amorphous policy and usually doesn't stick to 1 person.

If the dis-satisfaction does accumulate toward 1 person (say the plant manager) that person then often will push through and deal with it - or assign someone to deal with it and stay on them to make sure they do the difficult work (even if doing so will make that person's life much more difficult).

Now I would hope Toyota is better managed than that and doesn't shy away from important work just because the people that would take the lead have strong reasons to avoid working on that task.

There are often so many things to improve that it isn't too hard to shift the focus away from something that no one wants to take on. Sometimes though things are so important they must be taken on. Usually those would be more direct and obvious problems. Systemic problems that cause great damage but in a less visible way (such as rotating job shifts) are less likely to be addressed.

Coping with this issue (of avoiding unpleasant, systemic and long term rather than acute problems) is one of the things that separates great corporate culture from decent or bad corporate culture.

If there are fairly obvious or fairly easy improvements those would likely be acted on. There are, rarely, but still sometimes, instances where those vocal or politically powerful individuals who would lose out in a fairly obvious improvement will prevent action.

I am pretty sure Toyota doesn't have fairly easy improvements on this issue, that they must realize is important, that they are just not getting to. I am a bit less confident that Toyota isn't avoiding trying to find solutions using a PDSA type effort because it would be really hard and risky work for whoever takes it on. Also Toyota can try to rely on the good will built up through their many efforts to expect enough employees to say that they will accept the suffering caused by this policy for the good of the everyone.

I am not convinced there are not ways to improve the situation. And I am pretty confident it is important enough to try. And I believe (though I might be wrong) with a concerted effort of knowledgable people improvements that would make a big difference in the quality of life could be achieved. I am not so certain those people involved in leading the effort would be seen in great lights though even if they "succeed." People are much more likely to remember negative consequences to them personally, even if they gain much more than they lost overall. And most will remember the effort negatively if they lost only a little but overall the gains (to the overall organization) were much bigger: in such cases many will hold onto feelings that they were harmed by those that took action.

Related: Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism - The Importance of Critical Thinking and Challenging Assumptions - Unpacking the Components of Hard Work to Design Better Work Conditions

Leadership: Finding the Right Path

Response to: The Simple Leader, Find Your Unique Path

Like the spiritual journeys of Buddhists, Gnostics, and Christians like Thomas Merton, when you are on your own journey, you must first seek to learn, understand, contemplate, and reflect on your circumstances and beliefs. Only then can you apply what makes sense to create your own path. Don’t simply accept what others say or copy what others do.

Very well said.

The value of being open to ideas that are not part of the dogma is overlooked. And as a leader highlighting those that challenge the dogma (such as Thomas Merton for the Catholic church) is wise for a leader to do. Of course, you need to highlight efforts that hold true to the spirit/core-values while challenging dogma. It isn't just different ideas that are needed but the right different ideas.

Bench in forest at the Abbey of Gethsemani (where Thomas Merton lived)

Priorities

Too often people chose "no" for the things they were planning on doing because they say "yes" to some new thing without comparing to what will have to be sacrificed in order to say "yes" to this new option.

Being open to new possibilities is good. But they must be considered within the context of what must be let go to accommodate them.

My comments on: The Simple Leader: Just Say No

Related: Manage Better by Managing Less - Carve Out Time to Think

Transforming a Management Culture

Thoughts on: Where Lean Went Wrong – A Historical Perspective

I believe that companies that say they are attempting to become lean fail to do so in the most important ways. I do believe most efforts result in improvement but usually are fairly limited by the existing management system and refusal to really change much.

More than "lean failing" I would say transforming to a different management culture fails. Saying lean fails makes it seem to me that what a lean management system was in use and failed which is not really the case it doesn't seem to me.

I wrote about these ideas on my blog: Why Use Lean if So Many Fail To Do So Effectively

and discussed them in this podcast on Building Organizational Capability.

Related: Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Management Methods? - Transforming a Management System – A Case Study From the Madison Wisconsin Police Department - Culture Change Requires That Leaders Change Their Behavior - Change Management: Create a Culture Seeking Continual Improvement or Use Band-Aids?

The Sociology of Organizational Change

Comments on: Researching Laggards

The Late Majority is the stabilizing force, the repository of institutional knowledge that slowly absorbs and productionizes the ideas proven to best serve the organization. They aren’t as eager for change as the Early Majority, but they’re happy to adopt proven practices.

The Laggards provide challenge the Instigators most directly, questioning or outright denying the value of a new idea, and provide the most vocal and active resistance. However, their direct criticism may inspire the Instigators to find unexpected common ground and more effective solutions than they otherwise might.

Yes, I think laggards really are common. The grey area between laggards and late majority may be pretty large. Many are swayed by the critical mass of opinion. At first they seem like laggards because they side with them, as the momentum grows they side with late majority...

True active laggards fighting well after the critical mass makes it obvious the culture expects the "new" behavior" isn't a huge group I don't believe. But getting the point where the those siding with laggards switch to siding with late majority is a very challenging point to reach for most significant changes.

How you help change the culture of an organization requires understanding the inertia against change in most organizations and the strategies that are useful in creating the critical mass to accept new ideas and cultural attributes as the new normal.

Related: Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Management Methods? - Podcast: Building Organizational Capability - Culture Change Requires That Leaders Change Their Behavior - Transforming a Management System – A Case Study From the Madison Wisconsin Police Department - Change Management: Create a Culture Seeking Continual Improvement or Use Band-Aids? - Communicating Change - Building Adoption of Management Improvement Ideas in Your Organization - Grow Your Circle of Influence

Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Comments Blog

The most popular posts on this blog (10 May 2010 through today - the data I have doesn't let me just look at data for 2015):

1. Profit = Market Price - Actual Cost or Price = Cost + Desired Profit (2012)
2. Mistake Proofing and Mistake Making Less Easy (2013)
3. Performance without Appraisal (2005) - which was my 100th post
4. Cease Mass Inspection for Quality (2006)
5. 14 Plus Potentially 14 More Years for Copyrights Has Become 120 Years (2013)
6. Sustaining Management Improvement Through Personnel Changes (2014)
7. Causes of the Health Care Crisis (2011)
8. Global Manufacturing Data by Country (2006)
9. Data Must be Understood to Intelligently Use Evidence Based Thinking (2014)
10. Deming and Toyota (2006)
11. The Failure of Hero Worship Thinking at JC Penney (2013)
12. Customer Focus is Central to Lean Thinking (2012)

Breakdown of popular posts by year: 2014 - 2, 2013 - 3, 2012 - 2, 2011 - 1, 2006 - 3, 2005 - 1.

I started this blog over 10 years ago. After I figured out that I thought blogging would work for me I created a self hosted blog (the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog) and moved the content to that blog. But I kept up the post here since web pages should live forever. For several years (about 2005 to 2011), I posted occasionally to this blog, sometimes the posts were comments made on other blogs.

In 2011 I started to use this blog a bit more consistently to collect the management and leadership related comments I made on other blogs here (when they seemed to say something useful or interesting that were worth posting on this blog - often things I wanted to be able to find later).

Related: Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Comments Blog (2014 edition) - 10 Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Blog in 2014 - 20 Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Blog in 2015 - 10 Most Popular Post on The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog (2015)

Quality Digest: How to Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Quality Digest published my article: How to Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Related: Change and the Management System - John Hunter online - Lowering Expectations Isn't Showing Respect

Spend More Time Doing What You Do Well

Comment on: Is it Better to Work on Strengths or Weaknesses?

As you say to the extent your weaknesses are things you have to do spending time improving them usually makes sense. I think often the most productive thing is to spend time working on the system to maximize the use of people's strengths and minimize the use of their weaknesses. This often has a big impact without much effort.

And when you do that it is often the magnitude of strengths that makes a big difference. So you can avoid dealing with much of the weaknesses in the team and focus most effort on the strengths. And when you do that my getting even better at x allows the improvement not to just be x * 1.1 but (x * 1.1) + (y * 1.3) + (z * 1.4) - (if say I am now 30% "better" than y at the task and 40% better than z. Obviously it doesn't work so cleanly in the real world but that concept that you can get way more improvement normally by adjusting the way work is done than just by having everyone get less bad at the stuff they really should avoid doing most of the time.

You do also have to pay attention to the long term, so if someone wants to move into supervision but has some weaknesses they need to address and strengths to improve working on that makes sense.

Related: Take Advantage of the Strengths Each Person Brings to Work - Helping Employees Improve
- Many Good Employees Want to Continue to Do Their Current Job Well - Lessons for Managers from Wisconsin and Duke Basketball

Change and the Management System

comments on: Better Change Leadership as a Countermeasure to “Resistance to Lean”

I agree, the problem isn't change but the process for change. There are many smart things to do to help the process work better.

The most important thing though is the entire management culture. Tactics can help change efforts be more successful. But if the culture is hostile to continual improvement (fear based, performance appraisal based, target based, blame based, imposing from on high...) the tactics are working in a difficult situation. Still a good idea, but no matter what tactics are used it will be a challenge.

When the culture has the right environment (PDSA, seek to continually improve the system, respect for people, support for innovation, understanding of variation in results, seek process weakness to improve not people to blame, provide training...) change is set in a system where resistance is much lower (and in very highly functioning systems it is encouraged not resisted).

Change tactics are still sensible but often they are baked into how things are done. As you grow more toward becoming such an organization change tactics fade into the normal process and the resistance fades too.

Related: Communicating Change - People Take Time to Believe Claims of Changed Management Practices - Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone

The Use and Misuse of Technical Jargon

Comments on: You want muda? Let’s talk about muda!

Essentially the terms are precise technical jargon. As with nearly all technical jargon it is very useful for experts and confusing (and, to many, off-putting) to people that are not experts.

You are exactly right, overwhelming people with jargon when trying to introduce new ideas is not usually helpful. Using a couple pieces of jargon can be helpful as it reinforces the idea that this is new stuff and can make people tie the new ideas to new terms.

When some people are learning it is easier to think of muda than "waste." They have an understanding of "waste" and it may well not include what is meant to be included in a lean context. They can rearrange in their head that in the context of lean "waste" is different - we do this all the time.

For some people using muda to think differently is helpful, for others it is not and often creates resistance.

English has many words we understand differently depending on the context (for example, "lean"). It works remarkably well but especially when people are learning it is easy to miss special "lean" meaning when using common words. Technical jargon is helpful with experts being able to quickly communicate unambiguous (well less ambiguous) specific meaning which is why jargon usually exists - to allow for communication to be more effective.

Certainly at times jargon is also used by experts to baffle or impress non-experts rather than to help communication. Reducing this use of jargon would be a good thing.

Related: Learning, Systems and Improvement - Open Source Management Terms - Getting Known Good Ideas Adopted

Businesses Need to Capture Potential Information and Use the Creativity of Employees

Comments on: Asking the Employees

The problem I see is that management systems can't be seen as independent from the specific tactic in some area (for example getting employees to share ideas). So the effectiveness of soliciting ideas from employees varies mostly by the overall management system unrelated to the specific tactics of the attempt to get ideas from employees. The specific tactics matter but less than the management system (which is often a mess and something no one wants to address).

My father wrote an article a long time ago on how to use ~"two resources, largely untapped in American organizations: potential information and employee creativity."

I think it provides worthwhile ideas.

Related: Trust Your Staff to Make Decisions - Leading Improvement and Enjoying the Rewards - Do What You Say You Will

Lowering Expectations Isn't Respect

My comments on good post by Michael Ballé - How demanding can a lean leader be while remaining respectful of staff?

Being respectful means first not dismissing people’s difficulties but making the utmost effort to figure out the problems they mention and their origins.

...

Being demanding is a large part of lean leadership and, to be honest, in most cases, all goes well and people respond... there’s always one in ten who throws up a fuss, makes tantrum and will accuse you of being disrespectful in your very requests.

...

Being respectful means making sure people can succeed to the fullest of their abilities.

...

as a leader, your first job is to teach people to change.

A big problem we have (at least in the USA) is the opinion some people develop that respect has to do with not making anyone uncomfortable. That isn't respect, that is creating a dysfunctional mindset.

Fear driven culture that give mouth service to "respect" often create a climate in which managers find themselves fearful of being blamed for "disrespecting people" (which often means making someone uncomfortable). If they truly are being dis-respectful their boss needs to be dealing with that and helping them improve (which their boss should know because they are actually involved in management - but in many organization, probably most, the their boss would be clueless).

These management system concepts are all connected - weaknesses in critical areas create huge problems. If management doesn't know what is going on in the gemba they are suppose to manage, problems are very likely. Sadly this is often the case.

What you say is well put. We need to have high expectations and expect that people will rise to the challenge. And if people can't (with help and good systems) we need to find them a new position at which they can excel. Babying people isn't respectful to them or everyone else.

Helping people be as contribute is respectful. While ignoring poor performance is often easier for the manager than addressing the issue and helping the person improve doing the difficult task is what managers need to do if they respect people. And likely managers should be spending a lot more time doing this and eliminating other things taking up their time (unless they are in an amazing organization where coaching is a huge part of the managers job - in which case, wonderful).

I have written about this several times: Practical Ways to Respect People - A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas - Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism

A Good Management Culture Encourages the Debate of Ideas

my comments on Political Correctness Comes To Lean

Criticism is one of the ways in which knowledge advances. It is a type of thoughtful feedback (and subsequent dialogue) that helps expose blind spots, identify misunderstandings, provide alternate explanations, or uncover errors that others cannot see or are unwilling to acknowledge.

...

Without criticism from others, we are unlikely to challenge our own thinking or escape the comfort of self-satisfaction. We fall prey to the confirmation bias and accept information that confirms one’s views and reject all information that does not. We also develop a love for the status quo. Criticism is rejected without consideration and attributed to people who are simply uninformed or who suffer from professional jealousies.

The outcome is blocked information flow, which is the opposite of what we seek to achieve in Lean management.

I agree with you. I put much of the blame on insecurity and mistaking respect for people with not making anyone uncomfortable. When people are insecure or unconfident they often take criticisms of ideas, plans, results, etc. as personal attacks. Then misunderstanding of don't be "dis-respectful" to people comes into play.

I have written about this several times

Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism

Building a Great Software Development Team, a significant part of which was hiring people that would debate ideas without becoming overly personally defensive.

And those posts link to more related posts. The retreat into criticism of ideas is dis-respectful is a real problem for management improvement. Usually there are plenty of other more severe problems, but if you are doing well and getting rid of common failures to manage the organization as a system, experiment and base decisions on data (in many ways) you are likely to reach a point where the fear of debating ideas common in the USA becomes a serious problem.

Related: What Does Respect for People Actually Mean? - Disrespecting most people in order to avoid confronting one person is not good management (or respect for people)

Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Comments Blog

The most popular posts on this blog:

• Profit = Market Price - Actual Cost or Price = Cost + Desired Profit (2012)
• Mistake Proofing and Mistake Making Less Easy (2013)
• Cease Mass Inspection for Quality (2006)
• 14 Plus Potentially 14 More Years for Copyrights Has Become 120 Years (2013)
• Sustaining Management Improvement Through Personnel Changes (2014)
• Causes of the Health Care Crisis (2011)
• Performance without Appraisal (2005)
• Boston Lean? (2013)
• Data Must be Understood to Intelligently Use Evidence Based Thinking (2014)
• The Failure of Hero Worship Thinking at JC Penney (2013)
• Customer Focus is Central to Lean Thinking (2012)

I started this blog over 10 years ago. After I figured out I thought blogging would work for me I created a self hosted blog and moved the content to that blog. But I kept up the post here since web pages should live forever. For several years (about 2005 to 2011), I posted occasionally to this blog, sometimes the posts were comments made on other blogs.

In 2011 I started to use this blog a bit more consistently to collect the management and leadership related comments I made on other blogs here (when they seemed to say something useful or interesting that were worth posting on this blog).

Related: 10 Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Blog in 2014 - 20 Most Popular Post on Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog in 2014

Managing the Organization as a System with Many Stakeholders

Comments on "Deming’s thinking is alive and well…in China! That's why those looking for evidence of Profound Knowledge in the US may be looking in the wrong place." (my response is to a discussion on The W. Edwards Deming Institute LinkedIn group - I can't link to the original comment because it is a private forum)


(Jack Ma) If you want to invest in us, we believe customer number one, employee number two, shareholder number three. If they don't want to buy that, that's fine. If they regret, they can sell us. 


(Lara Logan) In the U.S., the shareholder is usually first.


(Jack Ma:) Yeah. And I think they were wrong. The shareholder, good. I respect them. But they're the third. Because you've take care of the customer, take care of the employees, shareholder will be taken care of.“

Deming couldn't have said it better. And it illustrates why he often insisted that the CEO, who invited and introduced him to his staff, actually stay and listen.

The problems are real. But there is a significant minority of companies that don't accept the Wall Street conventions. There are very few companies that don't allow CEOs to steal from the corporate treasuries - through completely unjustifiable "pay" packages (but there are some - Berkshire Hathaway, Costco and I believe Bezos, Larry Page and Sergy Brin also don't behave like kleptocrats).

But I can't include Google and a company that doesn't let those with power take the companies gold, senior executives have taken ludicrous pay including past CEO Eric Schmidt. I must say I think Schmidt has done an excellent job at Google (the lame decisions by Larry Page only make it more obvious) but even so his pay was insane.

If you look at Google and Amazon they both also refuse to bow to the idea that their job is to please wall street analysts. A fair amount of the interest business companies in the last 15 years don't place much faith in wall street "wisdom."

Google from their start with their IPO didn't accept wall street dictates. They are actually moving to become much more conventional, ever since Larry Page became CEO. The new non-voting class stock they created GOOG (GOOGL is the stock that has actual ownership voting rights) could be seen as fighting wall street convention or could just be seen as founders greedily setting up the rules so they control no matter what.

Jeff Bezos is a former Wall Street analyst and knows the games and what matters. If your business NEEDS to get cash from Wall Street - raising equity or bonds you might have to listen some. Otherwise the talking heads regurgitating wall street dictates are entirely pointless. While Amazon has very little profit, the cash flow situation is much better (Bezos doesn't need to raise capital and therefore what wall street says just doesn't matter and he is smart enough to know that unlike the majority of CEOs that do as Wall Street wishes).

But even the companies that are doing some things very well (Google, Amazon, Apple...) have a very long way to go in learning about managing organizations. But those companies have some aspects of they are doing very well.

"At Berkshire, managers can focus on running their businesses: They are not subjected to meetings at headquarters nor financing worries nor Wall Street harassment."
- Warren Buffett

Related: Google is Diluting Shareholder Equity with Massive Issuing of New Shares - Amazon Innovation

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.

Evolutionary v. Revolutionary Management Improvement

My post on this topic goes live next week: Revolutionary Management Improvement May Be Needed But Most Management Change is Evolutionary.

My comments on other ASQ Influential Voices posts on the topic: Future of Quality: Evolutionary or Revolutionary?

I agree both have great value. Revolutionary management improvement is really hard though. Evolutionary management improvement is hard, and rare, enough. Revolutionary management improvement is very rare and while doing better in that way would help I am skeptical.

Technological change that benefits performance can provide great leaps. It can seem revolutionary but really just keeping the same management mindset and adopting a couple really useful tools or concepts is most likely evolutionary; and where so far most improvement benefit has come from in my opinion.

ASQ InfVoices – Quality Evolution and Revolution (QUALITRIX)

I do think both are needed. But I also think we exaggerate our revolutionary management changes - I just think it is really rare. We normally keep pretty much the same management system and tweak it will a couple new tools and maybe some new concepts.

The change provide using a few tools (PDSA, flowcharts, control charts) and concepts (mistake proofing, true customer focus) can be huge. But usually these big gains are evolutionary it seems to me. Most often the basic management system remains as it was.

Viva Quality! [the broken link was removed]

The consistent application of evolutionary change can result in revolutionary results (birds provide evidence we can see every day - they evolved from dinosaurs). Luckily, evolutionary management improvement takes less time than evolution in animals to provide revolutionary results. It still isn't quick. But another few decades of evolutionary management improvement may provide us revolutionary outcomes in the practice of management in the executive suite.

Growth of Quality: Revolutionary or Evolutionary? [the broken link was removed]

I agree with the idea that most change is evolutionary. The accumulation of evolutionary gains can result in revolutionary results over time. We still have quite a way to go to achieve revolutionary results in the practice of management, in my opinion.

The Future of Quality: Evolutionary or Revolutionary?

I like your thought that quality will be 80% evolutionary and 20% revolutionary and that 20% revolutionary quality will provide 80% impact to our society. I think that one of the tricks is these changes get muddled together. So that the interaction of lots of evolutionary improvement results in revolutionary practice. It wasn't any single revolutionary change that got us there but the results of the continued evolutionary progress.

That dramatic result for management can be seen in much the same way that dinosaurs evolved into birds. It didn't happen in one revolutionary change but at some point the result of continued evolution becomes revolutionary. But each step is often small and difficult to see as revolutionary.

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Wordpress wouldn't let me post the last one as a comment as they claim "You do not own that identity." while I am actively logged into my open id account (what bozos). Wordpress have blocked me from making lots of comments over the years. Wordpress blogging software is great. Their commenting processes are horrible and I would suggest anyone relying on them validating people stop. They have had 5 years of failures I have seen, it is time to abandon them and use providers that don't consistently fail for years (for 5+ years Wordpress validation failure revolved around email signins an their messing up the gravatar merger now it has extended to open ID failures by Wordpress). The commenting solutions they offer are sensible in concept just pitiful in practice.

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Related: Continual v. continuous improvement - Most of what claims to be management innovation amounts to declaring old ideas as new innovations