Re the question: "With respect to commitment in general, and more
specifically commitment to change processes, is there a fundamental or
essential difference between different levels of management and the
workfloor?"
At least in my company, there are major differences between the workfloor's
perception of change initiatives and those of executives. I think that much
of the difference lies in the nature of the work, specifically with respect
to the objectivity of measurement and the societally perceived nature of the
work.
I have found that, the closer people are to the production line, by and large
the more receptive they are to change. Conversely, the more senior the
manager, the more resistant they are to change in their own job (though they
seem quite willing to change other people's work).
I think that one reason for this is the nature of production lines; they lend
themselves to objective measurement. How much product was scrapped? How
long does it take to make a part? and so on. The whole point of measurement
is to have a standard to improve against, and improvement, by definition,
means some change, even if it is just changing the setting on a machine.
Thus change, at least on some level, is a fact of life for manufacturing
folks.
Perhaps even more significantly, production lines are based on technology
and there is a widespread acceptance, even an expectation, of constant
technological improvement. Thus, it is not only accepted, but expected that
there will be a never ending parade of newer, more productive machines and
techniques displacing older, outmoded technology.
I do not mean to equate technical improvement with fundamental organizational
change, but I do want to point out that there is a fundamental acceptance of
at least some sorts of change in production lines that is driven by a
societal belief in technological progress.
Let's contrast that, however, with a senior manager's role in a company. In
all but the most extreme cases of success or failure, it is extremely
difficult to measure executive performance objectively. Is an executive who
raises market share from 10% to 20% a hero for the increase, or a failure
because the product "should" have a 30% market share?
Even seemingly fundamental questions like "how well is our advertising
campaign working?" can be extremely difficult to answer in practice.
The difficultly of objective measurement means that credit for achievement,
or blame for error, is assigned based on opinion. Since there will always be
different opinions, how do people decide which opinion to believe?
A common way is to accept the opinion of people who have been perceived to
have been correct in the past. Thus the perception of always having been
correct in the past makes a manager more powerful in the present. This, in
turn, puts an enormous amount of pressure on managers to never admit error
and to vigorously combat any criticism.
Combine this with the fact that admitting that things can be done better can
be construed as admitting that they are currently being done wrong . This
can lead to a situation where admitting the need for constant change is
equivalent to constantly admitting error, which, as I have discussed, is
anathema.
Thus the difficulty of objective measurement criteria hinders upper
management's cultural acceptance of change.
I think this is one reason why armies are always accused of "being prepared
to fight the last war" and corporations will delay change until their very
survival is threatened (i.e. until the need for improvement is so obvious
that there is no fear of being lableled "incorrect" for seeing it).
I also think that it is perhaps even more significant that there is no
societal belief in the improvement of "soft," managerial skills analagous to
the belief in the improvement of technology.
Anyone suggesting a manufacturer with 1930's machinery and no computers could
compete effectively today would be laughed out of the room, but one doesn't
have to go far to find 1930's management practices, or their defenders.
To put it another way: if I suggested that a manufacturing plant of today has
machinery that is 10 or 20 times more productive than what was available 50
years ago, that would almost be expected. But, if I said a factory had
managers who made decisions 10 or 20 times better than the managers of 50
years ago, that would be greeted with incredulity.
Ironically, while there is a fundamental societal belief that machines will
get smarter every year, there is no corresponding belief that organizations,
or individual managers, can get smarter at all (except, of course, by using
smarter machines....).
This effectively lets senior managers off the hook for continuous
improvement: because they are the farthest removed from the technology that
drives their business, they are also the farthest removed from any pressure
to be more productive with the passage of time.
This, of course, brings us full circle to the issue of using organizational
learning to produce management improvement in the head office that is
analagous to technological improvement on the production line.
But it also brings up the point that, apart from the tools and processes that
can be used to produce change, a fundamental issue is "do managers expect
change? Deep down, do managers expect to be doing their jobs differently
next year than they did last year, and do they expect this to always be
true?"
If there is no real belief that the way a company is managed will change,
evolve, and improve over time, as a natural matter of course, any change
efforts may be constrained to be, at best, one time successes.
Sorry about the word count: believe it or not, this started out as a very
brief reply.
Robert Lucadello
RLucadello@aol.com
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