Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Get fired by quoting Deming!

No, thankfully I've not tried this one out, but I bet that in a lot of companies,you'd get fired if you told people, as did Deming, that 85% of quality problems are problems with management.

For that matter, in all my years in working, I've never seen any trainer of managers and leaders advocating a slavish adherence to quarterly or monthly sales numbers, or to use brute intimidation to "motivate" employees.  I've never seen it recommended that managers micromanage, pushing trivial decisions up to the executive level, and I've never seen anyone recommend that companies pretend to do "housekeeping" by eliminating vital tools.  I've never seen anyone recommend pushing out routine maintenance on vital tools or suspending employee training to make quarterly numbers.

But, that's what I see.  W. Edwards Deming, we miss you.  Or did we ever know you?

6 comments:

GotToBTru said...

I'm confused. You've never seen it. You see it now. Which is it?

Bike Bubba said...

Think about it a moment, my friend. And welcome here.

Elspeth said...

I think I follow you, Bubba. This is the way business is conducted in many companies now.

Shortcuts and substandard conditions for the sake of the almighty bottom line.

Bike Bubba said...

Short term bottom line, at least. For the long term, visit Marysville, Ohio or Georgetown, Kentucky and see how many engineers and designers are there because all that the Detroit 3 offered as contract jobs.

And then ask whether that might have something to do with market share and profitability.

pentamom said...

He's never seen X, Y, and Z advocated or recommended, but he sees X, Y, and Z constantly.

Practice doesn't measure up to theory even among those who are best schooled and most strongly believe in the theory.

Bike Bubba said...

:^) I seriously think it's a nice way to "cheat" to make monthly or quarterly numbers that tempts people from good practices. In other cases, it's all they know--all too often, the path to management is not wisdom, but rather 12 hour workdays six or seven days a week.

So we tell people that the way to get a job working with people is to abandon the people they ought to cherish most, and then we wonder why they do the same to subordinates.. Hello? Anyone in there?