文章基本信息

标题：Strokes ... from the Penn
作者：Penn, Ira A
期刊名称：The Information Management Magazine
印刷版ISSN：1535-2897
电子版ISSN：2155-3505
出版年度：1994
卷号：Jan 1994
出版社：A R M A International

Strokes ... from the Penn

Penn, Ira A

If you keep them long enough, your old clothes will come back into style. Whether you will still be able to fit into them is another matter, but you'll be fashionable if not comfortable. A similar observation might be made regarding management theories. If you work long enough, you'll see the theory that was ignored and abandoned return to be embraced. Whether it will work any better the second time around is problematical, but regardless, the folks who were not around for the first run will think they've found something new and they'll be excited about the idea--at least for the short term.

The latest theory to be resurrected is Total Quality Management (or TQM as we refer to it acronymically). Quality, which was a management buzzword in the late 1940s is once again a fad in the 1990s. Product or service improvement is going to solve our problems. All that is necessary for success is that we make (or do) better whatever it is we are making (or doing).

I'm not suggesting that quality is a bad concept. Quite the contrary, I'm as offended by schlock as anyone. But I have a problem with the way we're supposed to be getting from here to there. While there are some TQM efforts that have been successful, generally I perceive a managerial preoccupation with the process as opposed to a genuine concern for the product. I see a lot of meetings taking place. I don't see much in the way of improvement.

It's hard not to be suspicious. If the TQM ideas were ignored some four decades ago because they were considered to be too radical, what makes one think that a different set of managers two generations later will adopt (as opposed to merely pay lip service to) them? Today's new manager went to the same school as yesterday's old one. The organizational structure is still a pyramid.

Perhaps that pyramid can teach us something. Perhaps to understand quality we need to go back further than 40 years, to say about 4,000 years, when pyramids--the ultimate quality products--were being built.

I don't think they were designed by "focus groups." I don't think the overseers worried about "empowering" the workers who were doing the construction. I think a standard was set and it was met...or else.

Say what you will, but the pyramids are still standing.