Provision #739: Kaizen Matters
Laser Provision
I don't know of a leader who is not concerned with improving performance. That
is, after all, an essential part of a leader's job description. No leader aims
to keep things the same, let alone to make things worse. Leaders are change
agents with a single-minded focus on making things better. But how do we
actually do that? Although, as you will read, I have some objections to
traditional problem-based learning, focused, as it is, on determining and fixing
the causes of whatever is impairing performance, I nevertheless appreciate the
emphasis on continuous improvement and I especially appreciate the orientation
of the Japanese TQM process known as "kaizen." Never heard of it? Read on to
learn more!
LifeTrek Provision
It would be hard for a series of Provisions on evocative leadership to be
complete without addressing the notion of continuous improvement and Total
Quality Management or TQM. These concepts have entered the leadership lexicon
not only in business, where they originated, but in just about every other field
of human endeavor. Non-profits, schools, and even religious organizations have
adopted elements of this philosophy and approach for both planning and execution
of their work.
The concept is simple to describe but hard to practice: everyone in an
organization, at every level and at all times, is constantly striving to make
things better. Sounds both easy and obvious, right? Who doesn't want that? In a
word: most of us. Most people find it easier to do what we have always done than
to shake things up with even small changes, let alone big ones. How does the old
expression go? "Better the devil we know, than the devil we don't know."
Something there is that's comforting about an old, familiar rut. Even when that
rut has outlived its usefulness, even when it starts to pinch and hurt a bit,
even when it becomes more of a toleration than a joy, the familiarity of the
routine meets our needs for safety and security, order and predictability. Once
we have learned what to do and how to do it, our momentum has a way of carrying
us forward. "We've never done it that way before!" becomes a justification for
never doing it that way in the future. People, like other animals, are creatures
of habit.
That's especially true when you consider the social implications of change. If
there is a better way to do something then people assume there must be something
"wrong" with the way we are doing things now. At least that's the way our brains
process the notion of making things better. We don't see it as an amoral and
natural part of life; we see it as a matter of evaluating and judging the way we
have been doing things as somehow inadequate, deficient, and flawed. From that
vantage point, no wonder change is so threatening! It represents an indictment
of the status quo.
The first job of any leader, then, who is concerned about continuous improvement
and TQM is to detach the status quo from a moral sense of "oughtness" that is
linked to our self-worth as human beings. Until we make that shift in our way of
being, TQM will never become embedded in the culture of our organizations. When
we talk about improvement and quality, people will be nervously watching their
backs to get a sense of where the finger is pointing and where the axe may fall.
Until and unless we disconnect the prospect of future improvements from the
critique of current deficiencies, there is no way for TQM to take hold and take
off.
Of all the systems for continuous improvement and TQM, including Six Sigma and
Lean Enterprise, the original and still the best hearkens back to the work of
William Edwards Deming, an American statistician, professor, lecturer, and
consultant who rose to fame through his work with the Japanese manufacturing and
business community in the decades following World War II. If Japanese cars and
products have a stronger reputation for quality than American cars and products,
it's because of Deming. Ironically, given that Deming was himself an American,
it was only after Japanese companies had demonstrated superior quality processes
that American companies took note of what Deming had been doing for many
decades.
Before World War II, Deming was among those who had called into question
Frederick Taylor's "scientific management" approach to deconstructing
manufacturing and business processes into discreet units that could be sampled,
measured, and manipulated with time and motion studies so as to improve both
their throughputs and their outputs. For management to view and treat workers as
disposable parts, without harnessing their power of mind to make things better,
was not, in Deming's view, a tenable approach to either organizational
effectiveness or efficiency. Happy employees are more likely to be not only
productive employees but to also find ways to improve organizational processes.
Deming did not reject the value of statistical methods for improving production
and management. He rather expanded their scope to study not only workers
but management and leadership as well. In so doing, he launched a quality
movement that continues to this very day. Before World War II, Deming honed his
philosophy and put it to work with the US census bureau. During the War, he was part of
a team that helped to improve standards and wartime production. After the War,
however, in the face of huge overseas demand for American products, Deming
encountered a waning interest in continuous improvement and TQM. Why
bother to spend money on TQM, when everyone wanted what America had to sell,
regardless of its quality?
The Japanese, on the other hand, devastated as they were from the War, could not
be so cavalier. To rebuild their society and their economy, they were hungry for
what Deming had to offer: a lean way of getting things done through people with
ever more efficiency, effectiveness, and quality. The message fell on fertile
soil. After more than a decade of work, Deming was awarded the second highest rank in Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasurer by the Prime Minister and Emperor
of the country. The citation on the medal recognizes Deming's contribution to
Japan's industrial rebirth and worldwide success after the War.
Deming was so influential that he is credited with launching the Total Quality
Movement in manufacturing and business. When American businesses needed to
become more competitive in the 1970s and 1980s, they brought in Deming as a
consultant to help turn things around. Ford Motor Company, most notably, worked
with Deming to develop not only a new image but also a new corporate culture
that came to be summarized in their now-famous slogan, "Quality Is Job One." Deming's approach to TQM is summarized by his 14 key principles for transforming
business effectiveness. First published in the early 1980s, these principles
continue to define TQM in ways that stand in stark contrast to many management
gurus:
- Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service,
with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide
jobs.
- Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western
management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities,
and take on leadership for change.
- Cease reliance on mass inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need
for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the
first place.
- End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag.
Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one
item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
- Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to
improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
- Institute training on the job.
- Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people
and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in
need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
- Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
- Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design,
sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production
and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
- Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking
for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only
create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality
and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of
the work force.
- (a.) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute
leadership. (b.) Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by
numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
- (a.) Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of
workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from mere
numbers to quality. (b.) Remove barriers that rob people in management and
in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter
alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by
objective.
- Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
- Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.
The transformation is everybody's job.
Those principles are certainly not scientific management in the Frederick
Taylor sense of the word. They are not even commonly advocated by many, modern
management gurus. Eliminate management by objective? Heresy! Abolish the annual
or merit rating system? Impossible! Such tenets have permeated every corner of
society, with education being a prominent contemporary battleground. There is
more, not less, pressure to set objectives, to evaluate performance on the basis
of those objectives, and to mete out rewards and punishments to those who excel and
those who fail to measure up.
What's wrong with that? Read Deming's principles. Do such high-pressure tactics
"create constancy of purpose"? Do they "eliminate the need for inspection on a
mass basis"? Do they foster "long-term relationships of loyalty and trust"? Do
they inspire everyone to have an equal concern for quality, "improving
constantly and forever the system of production and service"? Do they "drive out
fear, so that everyone may work effectively"? Do they "break down barriers
between departments" and people? Do they mitigate "adversarial relationships"?
Do they "put everybody to work to accomplish the transformation"?
Of course not! Those organizational qualities cannot be legislated, manipulated,
or mandated from above. They can only be inspired through mutual respect and a
common commitment to continuous improvement. That was what the Japanese learned
from Dr. Deming, and they called it "kaizen." The word is a Japanese word
constructed from two ideographs, the first of which represents "change" and the
second "goodness" or "virtue." Kaizen therefore literally means "good change" and is
commonly used to indicate the long-term betterment of something or someone as in
the phrase "Seikatsu o kaizen suru" which means to better ones life.
It is frequently explained as a "continuous striving for perfection."
No wonder "kaizen" came to encapsulate that to which Deming devoted his entire
life. It is both a philosophy of life and a practice of leadership. The present
moment, whatever its shortcomings, is never wrong. It simply is what it is. It
is the starting place for all that is to follow, and it is a perfect place to
start. Indeed, there is no other place to start! The present moment contains all
the ingredients from which we can learn, build, and grow. We need only to
appreciate this moment as a gift in order to take our own game, as well as that
of others, to ever higher levels of performance and satisfaction.
Those are the twin pillars of continuous improvement. The two drive each other
in a never-ending cycle of TQM. The better our performance, the greater our
satisfaction. The greater our satisfaction, the better our performance. Those
two dimensions are dynamic and interactive. Step by step, however incremental,
we strive to make things better.
So don't wonder what's wrong with people and get down on them if they fail to
demonstrate that attitude. Don't crack the whip and try to incentivize them with
extrinsic motivators. Instead, adopt a philosophy of "kaizen" in your life and
in your work. Keep the focus on quality and the rest will follow. It's not about
evaluating what's wrong with the present moment. It's about striving together to
make the present moment the best it can possibly be. Sometimes, even the smallest
of steps can make the biggest of differences. "Kaizen" encourages us to talk
about those possibilities together, in quality circles, and then to take the
most promising of those steps
to see where they might lead.
Coaching Inquiries: How would you describe your approach to leadership and life?
Is quality job one for you? What would help you to make continuous improvement
one of your core values? What would help you to express that value more fully?
How could "good change" "kaizen" take shape today? What are three things you
might do that would make things better for yourself, your family, and your
organization?
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LifeTrek Readers' Forum (selected feedback
from the past week)
Editor's Note: The LifeTrek Readers' Forum contains selections from the comments
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Email Bob.
As pastors at our church, we are leading a counseling-type course titled
"Spiritual Freedom Journey." We have a battery of personal profile sheets and
forms we have developed over the years. As a way of helping the 20-30 people in
this 10-week course best express themselves we will be offering them a list of
"Feeling Words." Although your resource,
Understanding
Needs & Feelings, communicates much the same content as what we currently
use, your format and breakdown of the content is very well executed. Would you
please consider extending a (written) blessing to photocopy these forms to pass
out to those taking the course? That would be such a gift. (Ed. Note: Permission
granted! Many blessing to you both.) Top
May you be filled with goodness, peace, and joy.
Bob Tschannen-Moran
President, LifeTrek Coaching International,
www.LifeTrekCoaching.com
CEO & Co-Founder, Center for School
Transformation,
www.SchoolTransformation.com
Immediate Past President, International Association
of Coaching,
www.CertifiedCoach.org
Author, Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time,
Online Retailers
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