Kaoru Ishikawa is one of the most famous Japanese Quality Control thinkers, teachers, and authors. His books What is Total Quality Control? (1985) and Introduction to Quality Control (1990) are still among the most influential books I have ever read. Ishikawa is most known for the Ishikawa Diagram one of the seven basic tools used in quality problem solving. People may know the Ishikawa Diagram as either the Fishbone Diagram or the Cause and Effect Diagram. It is a tool used to brainstorm and capture the potential causes for the quality problem a team is trying to solve.
While the Ishikawa Diagram is an important contribution, Ishikawa was a broad based and practical quality thinker. He is probably more responsible for the Japanese ascendancy to high quality in the 1960s – 1980s than anyone else. I remember mostly for one very profound quote in What is Total Quality Control? :
If there is no leadership from the top, stop promoting TQC.
It is simple, to the point, practical and the older I get the more and more I firmly believe it. I believe it with regard to TQC for certain. While TQC is not bandied about much these days, I believe the essence of this message can be applied for many of the popular initiatives todays.
Notice, Ishikawa does not say “if there is no support from the top.” He specifically uses selects and uses the word “leadership.” This is the critical key word. Management must own the initiative and want it to happen. It must be part of their management strategy and key part of where they want to take the company and how they plan to get there. That is Leadership. All the people must know is the importance of the initiative and how it fits in the overall management policy and what it means in their day to day lives.
OK… you are probably thinking, why I am writing about this? No one talks about Total Quality Control anymore. It is an anachronism, just one of the many failed programs, from the 1980s and 1990s. Who cares? I think the message is very clear especially if you replace TQC as I have done in many LinkedIn and other discussions as follows:
- If there is no leadership from the top, stop supporting Six Sigma
- If there is no leadership from the top, stop supporting Sales & Operations Planning
- If there is no leadership from the top, stop supporting EOHS, Green, [fill in the blank]
Basically, we believe this to be true in any instance where the initiative in question is ambitious, has the potential to positively change the company, touches a large number of the employees, and requires cross-functional commitment and coordination to be effective. Any initiative, program, system, or project (call it what you will) of this scope can only be successful if owned and driven by Top Management. Owned and driven sounds like a definition for Leadership to me.
How many initiatives, programs, systems, or projects can an organization manage at any given time? This is a very interesting question. Certainly, too many initiatives, too many moving parts, could and often does dilute the focus of the organization. As a result, nothing is done well, nothing is accomplished.
No matter what the Quality pundits may think and say, management teams believe their primary obligation is to operate the business on a daily basis and are responsible for delivering quarterly and annual business results to the shareholders. Beyond this, management teams must grow the business over the long term. In order to do this, they must develop products and services that customers will value. These two activities can and do consume a lot of management team time and energy.
Management teams also want to operate more effectively and efficiently. So, management teams decide to implement:
- An ERP system, upgrade an existing one, or expand their ERP functionality by adding new modules.
- Kaizen, Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Sigma, S&OP, or some other modern variation on or subset of Total Quality.
- Any variety of other activities from re-organizations, acquisitions or mergers, environmental, health, safety, and many others.
It is no mean task to pick, choose, and sequence the variety of initiatives that are possible. This is something management teams need to include in their strategic planning. They need to pick and choose the appropriate measures to realize their strategic objectives. It is hard to pick a fixed limit on the number of these kinds of initiatives that a management team should consider running at any given time. The answer is much more situational. It is dependent on the quality of the management team and the kinds of initiatives being considered.
The one thing that is clear is that the management teams need to own the planning and execution of every one of these initiatives.
- They need to set the tone and direction of the initiatives.
- They need to allocate human and budgetary resources.
- They need to provide the organizational structure and management review process to ensure the initiatives are on time and target
- They must also inspire and motivate the organization through communication and other incentives.
As stated above, most of the initiatives discussed, require cross-functional cooperation and coordination to achieve any meaningful results. Thus, delegation below the management team level needs to be well thought out and minimally a management team member must be sponsor of any of these large scale initiatives. There are countless examples of failed or lame ERP implementations and Six Sigma Initiatives.
One company comes to mind which in one year had a single division implementing SAP, restructuring from a geographical country based subsidiary structure to a Global Business Unit structure, beginning an S&OP structure, and firing and replacing the division management. The organization was overtaxed and the results were resoundingly mediocre. The SAP initiative should have the sole focus of the activities listed. It was a lack of leadership from the top that allowed this happen and is exactly what Ishikawa’s statement warns against.
At DemandCaster we wholeheartedly believe this. Our mission is to help manufacturing and distribution companies
- Reduce Inventory
- Improve Service
- Generate Cash
We can help achieve this. Our expert and experienced consulting combined with our powerful DemandCaster software tool enable us to help. There is, however, an Ishikawan caveat. We can only help those companies where the management team truly wants to change and truly wants to own and lead the improvements. If they simply sign a contract with us, delegate the project, and maybe even send out a companywide communiqué announcing our engagement, and then do not very much more, there is little probability we will be successful. Sure, we can do the analysis and recommend a course of action. We do that very well. It is this Management Leadership we are talking about, that is necessary to then make things happen. The Leadership has to want things to improve and committed to the course of action they started by engaging our firm. They have to be eager to see the data, our analysis, and recommendations. If this level of eagerness and excitement is there, they will take and fine tune our recommendations to make it their own. They will then push and steer the organization make it all happen. The probability of success is much higher in this kind of scenario. Together we will work to put all of their initiatives into perspective and prioritize them. This will also increase the probability of success.
So, in summary, we truly believe that:
If there is no leadership from the top, stop promoting…
