Deming and Senge Comparison LO9516

John Constantine (rainbird@trail.com)
Tue, 27 Aug 1996 08:53:36 -0700

Replying to LO9468 --

Michael McMaster noted regarding the "insider/outsider dilemma" that:

<The owner, in my first review meeting said, "If you want to have an
impact here, you have to begin where you are.>

...and went on to say:

< I had to get completely "inside" the organisation and really have it
expressed in and through me or that it would reject me and my influence
would be minor.>

Michael,
You point out in a very concise manner why it is so important that the
leadership responsibility have the capacity and the initiative needed to
"change skins" as it were, and "see" a systems model as the janitor on
the first floor would see it. The CEO's role is not to be cold and
distant and make decisions about other people's lives without having
first suffered the pain him/herself. While that does not guarantee
success, it might just make it easier and faster to attain. It certainly
does little good, and much harm, to consider the others in the
organization as "unwashed rabble".

It may not be necessary to start out as the clerk in the mailroom or the
janitor on the night shift, but to at least have the capability to
empathize and sympathize. Most CEO's I have come in contact with have
been the normal, hardworking people with the same attributes of the other
people in the organization, but with a different role to play. How could
one make an informed decision without an in-depth knowledge of the
capabilities of both the organization and its members? (Eg., some of
those who were most in favor of "downsizing" at the outset have now
"reformed" and become apologists for their earlier decisions.)

Unfortunately in todays economic culture the prevailing mode deals with
ROI, and it is far too common for "outsiders" to be brought in for the
express purpose of demolishing the status quo, which they do quite
readily. It is the THINKING which needs changing, and that takes time as
both Deming and Senge point out.

Consider the difficulty with culture change within government as opposed
to private corporations. Primarily a culture of fear, with the attitude
of "battening down the hatches" every "x" number of years as the
leadership changes. Yet the same culture change is possible, if enough
"attractors" want to move such change forward. Difficult, but not
impossible. As you have said before Michael, the process takes on a life
of its own, and the ripple effects often carry much further than we might
realize. Your post opens up many other areas to ponder such as management
possibilities in government vs. private enterprise, the influence of
politics on management systems, models for optimal time-frames in
government culture change vs. private sector, etc., etc.

-- 

Regards, John Constantine Rainbird Management Consulting http://www.trail.com/~rainbird

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