In 2001, days after the 9/11 attack, I began a new chapter in my life as I returned to school to seek an MBA at Pepperdine University with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of management systems and theories taught in business school. During this period, I studied the theories and history of scientific management, reviewed and discussed various approaches, studied and dissected companies, experts, outcomes and theories.
I looked at newer, “better” thinkers who led the successful companies like Coca-Cola, Dell, Toyota, General Electric, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Berkshire Hathaway, and McDonalds to name a few. I looked at companies and approaches that were failing including Enron, Lotus, the Big Three Automakers, Apple (ok, Steve Jobs fixed that), and numerous Internet companies.
Through this review I became more impressed with the System of Profound Knowledge. What struck me most was the simplicity of the Deming approach and how it addressed all aspects of a business (and how the world worked).
The challenge was and continues to be the amount of work that is necessary to implement a ‘systems’ approach – it requires management to work hard and maintain a commitment to building long-term value instead of focusing on short-term incentives and rewards. It is humanistic and relies on cooperation. It also requires self-reflection, a commitment to ethical practices, and on-going learning instead of “instant pudding” solutions.
Up next: Putting principles into practice (next week’s first post). In the meantime, here’s wishing everyone a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!
By coincidence I’ve been examining, learning and digesting the world as I now see it evolving with particular emphasis on artificial intelligence, more specifically:
(1) object oriented programming
(2) relational database designs and tools including XML
(3) heretofore unheard of computing resources including Amazon’s unlimited EC2 scalable computing resources and ‘cloud’ based storage resources Amazon S3, as well as their other scalable resources including fulfillment and the ‘Electronic Turk’ (albeit poorly named) an example of a completely scalable intellectual workforce.
In your blog entry you address the System of Profound Knowledge and Deming but recall your frustration with the amount of time required to implement a ’systems’ approach. It’s true that Deming approach is inspirational. The reality is the human approach to problem solving lacks the precision and flawless memory of a CPU, RAM and disk space; and humans usually lack perfect information for want of analysis. Thus, “seat of one’s pants” management is the defacto reality of all but a very few enterprises.
In short (as if that’s possible now), to date, the perception (and thus reality is) that humans do not have cost-effective tools to apply Deming’s approach on a day to day basis. It’s like asking a subsistence rice farmer to develop a new biotec drug candidate based upon methods developed by Genetech. While it’s possible, there’s an expensive learning curve. But, what I’ve come to realize recently is, the aforementioned resources and tools are the building blocks (largely open source and thus low cost) of an artificial intelligence infrastructure which will soon dramatically reduce both the learning curve and the costs associated with what you appear to be proposing here.
I predict that great leaps will be achieved soon after we effectively and practically replace the keyboard with a usable voice recognition interface. Computer Science would benefit from Darwinism and Biology. Rapid changes can be expensive to the resources in an (eco-)system. Typing is not talking, it too darn slow moving great leaps forward will require favoring the ‘human’ approach to communicating over the machines: Any tool, be it XML, enterprise resource planning or simply computing resources must become as transparent to the human manager as the timing of an engine’s firing sequence is to the human driver. P.S. Happy Birthday
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