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Two interesting posts from Compound Thinking: What is Management?:
Well said. As Deming would say management’s responsibility is to work on improving the system (to allow everyone in the system to do great work). This encompasses a wide variety of things. Creating sensible hiring processes. Designing systems that allow people to do great work and take pride in what they do. Providing a system of education and training.
Instead, they want to achieve greatness on their own — which can be a worthy goal. It’s just a terrible goal for a manager. Good managers are relentlessly focused on helping the people they work for perform at their best.
There certainly is something about MBA graduates that they often focus on measuring how important they are and how much they should be paid. I think his statement that managers should be dedicated to helping others achieve greatness. This can run counter to performance appraisals schemes where people have to claim responsibility for successes in order to get more cash. It is hard enough to move toward great systems when you have to have credit for each success fought over so it is known who gets the spoils it is much harder.
Related: Joel’s MBA - Deming’s 14 obligations of management - posts about respect for people - Seven Deadly Diseases
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November 15th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Answering Their Own Question…
Page 48 of the November 27th edition of Forbes has two short articles that have a definite relationship. I doubt the editor realized it at the time. The first, titled Why Detroit Can’t Compete, details the average vehicle price differences…
October 7th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I still see far to many managers thinking in a theory x way - 50 years after McGregor’s The Human Side of Enterprise. If there was not such a systemic failure to apply effective management practices and such a desire to substitute motivation for management I wouldn’t see this as a big deal…
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 am
Unfortunately, I tend to agree with your assessment of (most) MBAs (I’m a 2005 grad from the Stanford GSB). Of course, it is hasty to make generalizations based on MBA’s as a whole.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:11 am
“Time after time, and scandal after scandal, it seems that a school that graduates just 900 students a year finds itself in the thick of it. Yet there is remarkably little contrition…”