Too little change?

Industrial Engineer, Feb 2008 by McManus, Kevin

THIS IS THE 100TH COLUMN I HAVE had the privilege of writing for this magazine. A significant amount of change has taken place in my life since I began this column more than eight years ago. When I started in 1999,1 was the director of quality for a trucking company, my son was in high school, and Six Sigma certifications were not yet available to the general public. Since then, I have experienced two career changes, seen my son become an industrial engineer, and watched Six Sigma certifications evolve into a multitude of public configurations, both good and bad.

I wish I could say there have been similar levels of positive change in the world of work. The prevailing system of management that W. Edwards Deming said was destroying the intrinsic motivation of people 20 years ago still exists.

When I first started writing these articles, I was living a sheltered work life. I was working and hanging out with people who had beliefs about work that were similar to mine. Essentially, everyone I crossed paths with at least had a passing interest in trying to make work a better and more effective place. In the past four years, I have discovered how sheltered my work existence was. I had not realized that the percentage of organizations and people wanting to practice process excellence was so small.

With all the suggestions that I and others like me have shared with people over the past eight years and more, we should be seeing ourselves in a much better position than we are in today. Too little change has occurred for the amount of investment that has been made.

Management waste is perhaps at its highest level ever. The primary focus of many employees is simply keeping their boss happy and off of their backs. Lots of people want to learn new things and change, but they simply don't have the time built into their jobs to do so. Thousands, if not millions, of dollars have been invested in an attempt to teach a lot of people process improvement skills, but only a small percentage of a given work force uses these skills to improve processes each day. To many, work has become a necessary evil that must be endured in order to have some semblance of life outside of work.

But there is a way out of this mess. The challenge lies in building momentum toward making radical, systemic changes in the way we do work as managers and leaders.

I would remiss if I did not come right out and say that a lot of what I have shared with readers over the years has come from my experience as a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award examiner. Through this and other experiences, I know there are organizations that consistently practice the things I write about each month. I have witnessed people not only using these approaches but getting great, sustainable results because they are. If I had to select one thing that I have been happy to see validated over the past eight years, it's this: There are a lot of people who sincerely want to keep learning, making things better, and putting work systems in place that effectively use the intrinsic skills and expertise each person beings to their work.

Who knows? Eight years from now, I may be extolling the benefits that we have realized because of all of the progress we have made. I am going to do my part to make this happen, and I am pretty confident that there are many readers who are trying to do the same. You folks keep me going. Thanks for being a part of my life.

Kevin McManus is a performance improvement consultant based in Seattle and a 23 -year member of HE. He has written several workbooks on personal and team effectiveness. McManus is a senior examinerfor the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Reach him at kevin@greatsystems.com.