> I don't know is this is the right question, and the issue of
>amount of change might be more of externally determined issue. By this I
>am saying that organizations may not have a lot of influence into how much
>to change, which might be more influenced by competitive forces. What
>bothers me the most is the fact that the different approaches are adopted
>or presented as distinct, when they may be very closely related. The
>ineterconnection between JIT, KAIZAN, KANBAN, TQM, Reengineering,
>Organizational Learning to me is clear. In fact, in some cases one seems
>to be really an improved (or more advanced) version of another. I
>understand what you are saying if the company adopts one model today, and
>dumps tomorrow to move on to a new one! But, there so many connections
>and synergies that can be obtained when they are understood in an
>integrative way. An example is something I have been saying for a long
>time now is the TQM and Organizational Learning are so closely
>interconnected that TQM would fail is OL is not allow to develop.
>
>Ivan,
Ivan,
I understand your comment. What I mean is in some ways very close to your
thoughts. The necessity for change comes mostly from the marketplace, but
if the company is forced to change most wait until it is nearly too late
and then implement a change program top-down and very rigid. Everybody is
occupied by e. g. TQM, everybody talks about quality, and if the payoffs
fdo not start very soon the mentality is: Let's try harder, let's push. As
we all nkow we cannot escape the drop in the change-curve at the start but
there is the human element which asks for soonest response. As this
response is normally that there has not been an immediate success there
are two possibilities: the company sticks to it and develops something
like ignorance against the troubles at the start, or they change to
another strategy which e. g. a clever consultant brings in...then the
chances are high that after the third change in strategy people are
ignoring these efforts. You are right that there is connectionn between
the concepts I mentioned, but most companies ignore the philosophy behind
the concept.
As an example: I am responsible for improving on-time-delivery in my
company. When I took over this job the performance was poor. We spent the
first three months with finding a common language, with understanding each
other's problems and with rethinking the process. Then we changed the
process, and immediately after doing the presentation on our ideas our CEO
expected results. The first two months the delivery performance was lower
than ever, so he becam upset and it was hard to convince him that this is
natural, that if he now would change back to the old ways we did things we
would screw all our efforts. He waited for another two months and he was a
real pain, but then the performance rose up and he relaxed. If the team at
this time when he got nervous would have changed to another strategy we
would have lost our credit with the people. Here we needed to stick to our
ideas even if it got worse.
What do you think?
Tom
-- Thomas BertelsUlrich-Jakobi-Wall-Str. 1 A 59494 Soest Germany
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