Introduction

Escaping Management Fads

Seek the unpredictable…yearn for surprise.

Author

PURPOSE

Have you sometimes wondered why people become cynical about new management theories and view them as fads? Promising permanent revolutionary change, they seem to ignite and extinguish like fireworks—e.g., management by objectives, zero defects, total quality management, quality circles, and all manner and styles of process and quality improvement teams. What amazes me is how many employees (I call them healthy skeptics) seem ready, in spite of being burned more than once, to try the next management revolution coming along. They are rightfully skeptical but healthy in their optimistic expressions that 1) they like the ideas, 2) they do not think that they will work here, and 3) they will give it a try if they are only allowed to give it a try.

Why, if these designs have merit, do they so regularly die? The answer, I believe, rests on a kind of round peg-square hole phenomenon. Having observed it for over two decades—as private- and public-sector manager, consultant, trainer, speaker, and author—I believe that most organization personnel fail to realize 1) what they are getting into, 2) how conditioned and addicted they really are to things as they are, 3) what they must do to succeed, 4) the impact of human resistance to change and how to overcome it, and 5) how much their change efforts depend on management philosophy. I have watched countless numbers of people attempt to use new management techniques (brainstorming, team building, network analysis, nominal group technique, fishbone and Pareto diagramming, and so on) without comprehending their larger purposes and the kind of cultural atmosphere they require to breathe and survive. It is like attempting to use hammers and screwdrivers without ever having heard of wood, nails, or screws or envisioned what you want to build.

This book addresses these issues and offers a principle-focused teaming process that helps good change happen. You will see how it works—from abstract philosophical grounding, through strategic design (theory), to concrete tactical implementing tools and techniques (technology). We shall compare and contrast pertinent quality and project management mindsets, principles, and practices, learn how to implement effective corporate cultural change, and learn how to overcome resistance to that change. Chapter 6 guides you through every teaming step required to implement the abstract but vital principles and strategies offered in Chapters 1–5. The book is, therefore, both text and handbook and has four specific purposes:

1. Present a complete and tested teaming philosophy, theory, and process, ensuring that people who choose to work together will experience exceptionally high levels of bonding, individual creative expression (innovation), and collective agreement (consensus). Teaming is represented as an act (verb) conducted in specially designed corporate environments by cooperating individuals in both formal groups and informal transactions. All of the concepts, rules, procedures, and steps required to conduct user-friendly teaming (Process for Innovation and Consensus [PIC]) are defined in Chapters 5 and 6.

2. Compare and contrast teaming-supportive and teaming-inhibiting corporate cultures, and learn how to turn the latter into the former, a critically necessary prerequisite for effective teaming.

3. Examine the root causes of resistance to change so often preventing creation of teaming-friendly corporate cultures, and offer recommendations for overcoming them.

4. Unite common, but often separately expressed, quality management and project management teaming principles and practices.

PERSPECTIVE

Good management philosophical principles are generic and invariant. If they apply in one management area, then they pertain to all others. I shall show that they can be expressed through many varied implementing practices, techniques, methods, and exercises.

The invariant principle, for example, that moral leadership demands acting in the interest of constituents, rather than in one’s own self-interest, can be internalized through virtually infinite varieties of simulations, discussions, stories, confrontations, and life experiences. Constant management principles, hence, wear multiple situational costumes. Ends are absolute! Means are not! Teaming, as a discipline, is no exception.

Those who think that people either cannot or do not sense these philosophical connections deny five decades of collapsing corporate teamwork histories. Given the challenge, even highly cynical employees and managers will try a new management-improvement technique. But the minute that they spot it as yet another gimmick lacking substance or direction, they bury it in the fast-growing cemetery of broken management fads. Be assured that those who rote-memorize PIC steps without internalizing and following its internal values might just as well forget it. Effective teaming practices depend on a firm grasp and acceptance of fundamental teaming philosophy: no principles—no results!

This book illuminates philosophy-to-practices teaming linkages by 1) specifying realistic generic teaming principles, and 2) defining consistent theory-based implementing teaming tools and techniques. Being simultaneously a text, reference guide, and handbook, it therefore addresses both what and how-to teaming questions and answers. Constructed around the two distinct but closely interrelated quality management and project management disciplines, the work thereby extends, enhances, and unifies several decades of accumulating teaming experience.

MERGING TWO MANAGEMENT DISCIPLINES

Both quality management and project management gurus tend to offer adherents somewhat exclusive toolboxes, overlapping at their edges but essentially separate and unique. This essay dissolves that boundary and weds the two disciplines. We shall, in effect, “join together” what practitioners have unintentionally “put asunder.” Readers will find interdisciplinary methodological linkages that at once blend quality and project perspectives, illuminate possibilities, and extend horizons. An entirely new holistic quality/project management child emerges, clearly greater than the sum of its parents’ parts and ready to grow.

AUTHOR’S APPROACH

Four critical points: First, I shall write in the first, second, or third person using narratives, outlines, quotations, and stories, as necessity dictates. I want to reach you at all levels—intellectual, emotional, imaginative, and moral. We must therefore establish a warm personal rapport if the spirit, as well as the letter, of our teaming message is to enjoy successful delivery.

Second, I am not objective! I have a distinct viewpoint to promote and an agenda to fulfill, both of which will emerge in the process. The words “ought” and “should” join “is,” “what,” “why,” and “how” throughout these pages. This does not mean that I lack conceptual rigor; it simply means that I have, for good or ill, a moral compass directing me toward what I believe and hope to demonstrate are valued ends. Teaming requires moral direction. It binds participants into functional and dysfunctional intimacies not unlike those defining families. People risk much in accepting such intrusive partnerships. The rewards can (but not always do) outweigh those risks. Our task is to ensure that they do.

Third, we must immediately replace the word team (noun) with the word teaming (verb). Teaming is an act, performed in concert with individuals, sometimes in formal groups but mostly in informal conversations with others. Groups (call them teams, committees, task forces, and the like) cannot and do not act. Only living, breathing human beings can and do act. This distinction involves far more than mere semantics. I shall argue that it explains why quality management organizational change efforts so often fail, and why project team-member relationships sometimes erode. We shall examine basic group theory assumptions, realign our thinking about joint behavior, and create a consistent principles-to-practices image of effective human cooperation.

Fourth, I am a management theorist, not a physicist, psychologist chaos expert, or cosmologist. Even so, I adopt and adapt broad insights, as imagination and opportunity allow. Although I encourage you to judge my accuracy for yourself, such cross-disciplinary borrowing is common and legitimate practice. Compressing (reducing) ideas into tiny isolated academic boxes and locking people into rigidly defined disciplines is a peculiarly modern and unfortunate Western tradition that can deny us much of life’s richly varied experiences. We, as complex human beings, are more than our job descriptions and more than what we do. Different philosophies of knowledge, whatever their other faults, appreciate this bonding of ideas and nature into holistic ecosystems. This reductionism trend is finally reversing under the onslaught of undeniable globally integrating corporate realities. Remember:

Actions anywhere have consequences everywhere.

TOPICS

Our study begins at the top with management philosophy and ends with the complete PIC presentation. We shall:

1.   Define invariant generic management principles, and explain why they can be expressed through many effective practices (Chapter 1).
2.   Examine the nature of corporate culture and how to change it into a teaming-friendly environment (Chapter 2).
3.   Offer an original approach for overcoming resistance to organizational change without which effective teaming cannot and will not occur (Chapter 3).
4.   Merge quality and project management principles regarding teaming and the nature of process (Chapter 4).
5.   Construct the PIC teaming model (Chapter 5).
6.   Present complete, step-by-step PIC actions, derived from the model, and implement PIC’s underlying philosophy, i.e., teaming mechanics (Chapter 6).
7.   Describe informal teaming, and set a vision for the future (Chapter 7).
8.   Provide supporting definitions, ideas, and references (appendices).

Built on these foundations, teaming philosophy, theory, and technology gain a firm and user-friendly operational context. That is why four crucial preparatory chapters pass before the teaming model and mechanics, themselves, are addressed. The PIC design bears directly on both quality management and project management principles.

You may, in the press of events, choose to jump directly to Chapter 6 on teaming mechanics. Remember, however, that we are asking people to leave their comfort zones and behave in strange new ways under conflicting daily personal and work-related pressures. When obstacles impede teaming progress in seemingly irresolvable conflicts, as they most surely will, correctives will not be found in unending reviews of teaming mechanics. They rest instead in comprehension and appreciation of the philosophical principles underlying those mechanics. Decide for yourselves, then, when you will address the first four chapters—sooner or later. Do not doubt, however, that if you are really serious about teaming (and not just mouthing words to suit the boss, or find some quick fix), then you will address them.