Rol Fessenden and Joan Pomo were talking about whether there should be a
commitment to outcomes or process. If I understand the way life works and
how we have projected that onto our understanding of organizations, I would
say a focus on a process would be what you want to foster, along with an
emphasis on continuous improvement of process operation and the delivery of
outputs that satisfy and even delight customers (nothing original there).
I have been working on a project that deals with the values of a quality
culture. Two of those values are "focus on processes" and "there are no
successes or failures, only learning experiences." These values are
important because they affect our behavior. They certainly do not suggest
accepting mediocrity as OK. On the other hand, they do not suggest doing
anything to get a certain outcome. That kind of focus is essentially the
approach that fosters a "make your numbers" mentality.
The point of these values is that work does get done by processes, so we
need to pay attention to that and keep getting better at it. The idea that
there are no successes or failures just learning experiences helps people
appreciate that (1) successes and failures are always value judgments
rendered after the fact and no one intentionally fails, and (2) that
successes and failures are always temporary and arbitrary stopping points on
our journey. If we focus on learning from our experience, we will also be
doing exactly the right things to get better at what we are doing. That
doesn't mean don't celebrate your successes or be disappointed when things
don't work out so well. Today's success can be tomorrow's failure if we
don't keep particularly focused on the learning part of the experience.
So I would say focus on processes (which is similar to saying focus on the
system) and on learning from your experience. Such values will inevitably,
I believe, bring about great performance.
John Woods
jwoods@execpc.com
--John Woods <jwoods@execpc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>