Dear Systems Thinker,W. Edwards Deming has many famous quotes and one of his favorites was, "There is no instant pudding." In context, this meant that short-term management thinkers doing quick fixes only stood to make their systems worse through their actions.
We have also heard the analogy that improvement "is evolutionary rather than revolutionary." Meaning things take a long time.
A time paradox exists when the pressure to improve profits quickly drives the wrong behavior. Hasty plans are formulated with assumptions and not knowledge. In today's environment this usually (but doesn't have to) involves information technology or cost-cutting.
But does slow and steady always win the race?
Not if you are doing the wrong things.
In working with the Vanguard Method, I have learned that while the method itself promotes time frames of minutes and hours. Management thinks in terms of weeks and months, and quite often even years. Improvement may need to be evolutionary from a management perspective ( I even hear misguided quotes of "no instant pudding" as justification - wrong context). However, the only standing in the way of rapid improvement is the ability to think differently.
In manufacturing we may have to move machines to improve flow, but in service . . . improvement can come quickly. The biggest barrier isn't the front-line worker, it is management. Forcing change low on the hierarchy is one thing, but changing thinking in the management factory is quite another.
I am amused when management wants quick results and then stands in the way of achieving them. The task to change management thinking requires:
- Curiosity
- Evidence (over ideology, assumption or best practice)
- Getting in the work
- Cojones
Believe me . . . it is much easier to pay homage to the hierarchy than to change or dismantle it.
Making service systems better is a self-imposed management condition. It is a refusal to embrace evidence from observation and a refusal to do that which takes guts to do.
The bottom-line is there is no systemic improvement without management changing too.
The Vanguard Method requires management to be "bold and different" - rather than "weak and similar." What type of management thinking do you embrace? The answer will determine how fast improvement comes.
