On 10/01/95 Jim Michmerhuizen replied
>
>I heartily agree. To identify what _can_ be handled mechanically or
>automatically, and to construct the system that will do so, is as big a
>challenge as ever, and as necessary as ever. This, in the end, is one of
>the critical operations by which we _free_ ourselves from the delusion
>that we ourselves are automata. In every situation in which I've had a
>chance to make comparative observations, it has turned out that the
>organization that _knows_ its dataflows is a pleasanter environment -- in
>ordinary human relations -- than the organization that doesn't.
>
>There are mornings when I really _want_ only to make little checkmarks
>against a long list of items. Maybe this is a fundamental human need,
>like food or sex.
I deeply believe that every human being has to a certain extent the need
for routine in order not to collapse by information overload. We need
filters for the perception of the world otherwise we are caught in
innovation. A study of Peters / Waterman's excellent companies a partner
and me carried out proved that the highly innovative companies failed ..
one reason might be that they were to innovative. People need just the
right amount of change, and different people need different shares of this
change. If not, change in organization is hard to realize. We must get
away from this white-board solutions where after realization we see that
only 1/3 of the staff is really able to cope with. We must learn to serve
the right size of change to the people, and we must do it constantly, but
we must build in routine...
Another inportant point I would like to add is that companies need to
stick to one change effoert at a time not only that change loses power in
companies if you change too often (from JIT to quality circles to KAIZEN
to KANBAN to TBM to TQM to SIXSIGMA to Learning Organization, every effort
1/2 year after another) - because people do not believe in it -, a
constant effort routinizes learning which means it lifts thinking up and
we begin to see the patterns...but for that we must practice, practice,
practice.
The question is: WHAT is the right amount of change which makes the
company effective?
-- tb@knipp.de (Thomas Bertels)