Deming and Senge Comparison LO9485

Keith Cowan (72212.51@CompuServe.COM)
26 Aug 96 14:17:22 EDT

Replying to LO9358 --

Rol Fessenden <76234.3636@CompuServe.COM> illustrates some good management
behaviours to influence improvement in the culture of a company and concludes:
>....the culture is everyone's job, but management has more
>power and influence. I myself am only part of a larger organization, and yet my
>organization has a very clear culture that is different than the corporate
>culture. And I know individuals who have their own individual culture and way
>of approaching their work. We all impact the culture.

Rol raises the issue of individuals approaching their work in their own
way. He also illustrates that his way of managing is likely different than
other managers in his organization.

I believe this is the root of executives' difficulties with adopting a LO
style. They have few ways of measuring whether their actions are having
any real effect. If nine managers in Rol's company try to encourage the
individual initiative like Rol did, there would likely be 9 ways this is
attempted with 9 different outcomes. Because the managers have their own
individual styles, the interaction will produce different results. Add to
that the employees' individual styles and you have an exploding number of
outcomes: 9 managers each with 9 employees will result in 81 "flavours".

Measuring is only practiced infrequently through surveys and these are
vague by their statistical nature. Tighter "control" would disempower the
managers by checking up on them in real time. So the change process when
it comes to "style" is unmanageable because the results cannot be measured
in the timeframe needed to make any corrections. This is what gives Rol
the flexibility to try what he wants in managing. But it hinders any
corporate wide change. It is similar to throwing the concepts at the wall
and hoping some of them will stick. Long term change is possible through
repeated indoctrination and through selective hiring and firing, but, even
this is hard to measure.

Because "pockets" will evolve that are having real success, this will have
the effect of destabilizing the organization because the executives are
either unaware of the activity or unable to explain the reasons for the
better results. Most executives get very uncomfortable if this happens in
their organization (and many will act subconsciously to eliminate it)!

Have you ever witnessed executives seeing breakthrough behaviour from
their employees for the first time? Awe, disbelief and panic are common
terms to describe their behaviour/reactions if not carefully orchestrated.
FWIW...Keith

So how can we LO proponents deal with this assertion of executive reality?

-- 

Keith Cowan <72212.51@CompuServe.COM>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>