Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog: Deming, lean thinking, innovation, customer focus, continual improvement, six sigma.
October 8, 2006
Doing the Wrong Things Righter

The more we manage, the worse we make things by Simon Caulkin

The distinguished systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes the trap as ‘doing the wrong thing righter’. ‘The righter we do the wrong thing,’ he explains, ‘the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.’ Most of our current problems are, he says, the result of policymakers and managers busting a gut to do the wrong thing right.

I agree. There is too little understanding of what is important and too much focus on what amounts to tampering. As regular readers of this blog know I think Ackoff is great. Dr. Ackoff related info: articles by Russ Ackoff - Doing the wrong things right podcast by Ackoff - On Learning and Systems That Facilitate It by Russel Ackoff

Related: Forget Targets - Life Beyond the Short Term - Managing with Control Charts - Management Advice Failures - Learning, Systems and Improvement

2 Responses to “Doing the Wrong Things Righter”

  1. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Righter Performance Appraisal Says:
    October 9th, 2006 at 11:49 am

    [...] Speaking of “doing the wrong things righter” Microsoft has eliminated forced rankings in performance appraisal: to do performance appraisals righter. [...]

  2. CuriousCat: Deming on being Destroyed by Best Efforts Says:
    September 13th, 2007 at 10:10 am

    Many managers have learned their job is to act, even if they don’t have the knowledge needed to make a rational decision: they don’t just stand there, they do something…

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