Standardized Work: Avoiding the Complexity Trap

Tweet

“No matter how great the principles behind a manual are, it has no value if it cannot be applied in practice.” – Taiichi Ohno*

One of the most critical but challenging elements of an organization’s lean transformation effort is the adoption of standardized work.  Often underestimated by those just learning lean, the benefits of standardized work include among others, reducing process and product variability, providing a starting point for investigating problems, helping people identify when a problem is about to occur, and enabling improvements to be sustained. 

Within the oil and gas industry, it is common to face resistance from people recounting images of one of the major players known for creating large, overly complicated instructions that strangle innovation and, in reality, cannot be fully followed - and oil and gas is unfortunately not the only industry where this happens.  There are companies in virtually every industry that complicate documentation to the point of ineffectiveness and crushing the creativity of team workers.  Documents in these companies tend to be long, complex, and rarely change, and as a result, create a false sense of security that the standards are helping achieve consistent, predictable, and inherently safe performance throughout the operation.

How Much is Too Much?

So what is the difference between a lean thinking approach to standard work and one where the documentation is ineffective and stifling?  Both approach standardization with the objective of reducing variation in the way work is done.  Both use standards to assure the most important aspects of the process are followed and work is done safely and with a high level of quality.

To prevent heading down the wrong path when rolling out standardized work, it is important to understand the key differences between the two approaches and what it is that makes one more effective than the other.

Guided by Scientific Method

Although there are numerous differences between a lean and traditional approach to standardization, the most glaring is that work in lean thinking organizations is guided by scientific method or a PDSA (plan-do-study-act) mindset, while traditional organizations are not.  Although a seemingly simple difference, the effect on standardization, as well as other aspects of the business, can be dramatic.

In both types of organizations, standardized work is the best current practice known at the time it was developed and is expected to be followed as written.  Organizations guided by PDSA thinking, however, consciously accept the notion that following the practice to consistently producing safe, efficient, and high quality work is a hypothesis - and people are always looking for the hypothesis to fail.  Whenever a defect, delay, or incident occurs, it is understood that the hypothesis has failed and that a quick adjustment - or improvement - is necessary to prevent a similar failure from occurring in the future.  The resulting change to the process becomes a new hypothesis that it will operate as expected and, when it fails, will drive further action.

Traditional organizations do not approach standards in this manner because it is not normal behavior for people to be looking for something they created to fail.  A significant amount of time would be spent creating the perfect document that includes enough detail to accurately describe the prescribed process.  When the instruction is released, the work would be considered "done" and the person would move on to his or her next project.  The document would only be revised when a big problem occurs that identifies a glaring weakness needing attention.  And since people are not specifically looking for the practice to fail, the small issues would be ignored.  As a result, continual improvement of the process does not occur and variability between operators in the way work is actually done grows.

A Shift in Thinking

Keeping instructions short, visual, and easy-to-follow requires more than just telling people to do so.  It requires a far more significant shift in thinking than many people realize or are ready to accept.  When standardized work is approached standardized work as part of a continual experiment toward creating the perfect process, it will become seen as far more than just a way to convey information.  It will become seen as the anchor to learning and effective problem-solving, and a critical element to the company’s overall success.

Copyright © 2014 Gregg Stocker

* From The Toyota Mindset: The Ten Commandments of Taiichi Ohno by Yoshihito Wakamatsu (Enna Products Limited, Bellingham, WA, 2009)

Making Learning a Habit

Tweet

“The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage.” – Arie de Geus 

Ever since the The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization was published back in 1990, business leaders have talked about the need to transform their companies into learning organizations.  And although the concept of organizational learning and its connection to competitive success is logical, there seems to be significant differences in what people think the term learning organization means.  As a result, in the 25 years since Peter Senge wrote the book, it seems that very few companies have successfully implemented the concept and truly become learning organizations. 

Learning and Performance 

The first point to clarify about organizational learning is that knowledge means nothing if it doesn’t eventually result in improving performance in some way.  The value of knowledge is in the ability to use it to improve quality, cost, safety, revenues, or some other aspect important to the organization’s success.  It should be noted that the value of knowledge could also be indirect - e.g., by coaching others to improve performance. 

Secondly, it's important to understand that there is a difference between individual and organizational learning.  Although there is obviously a relationship between the two, competitive success will occur on a much more consistent basis when people improve their ability to learn as a team. If we think of success as resulting from a continual cycle of learning and applying, the faster an organization is able to move around the cycle, the more success it is likely to achieve. 

Making Learning a Habit 

Creating a learning organization requires establishing the culture, methods, and systems that support learning and make it become a part of the work people do every day.  Leaders can talk about the importance of learning, but without a method that institutionalizes it in some way, it will never become a part of the organization's DNA.  Besides enabling is to occur on a consistent basis, effectively standardizing an approach can make learning an expectation of everyone in the organization. 

This is where many people fail to understand the significance of the PLAN-DO-STUDY-ACT (PDSA) cycle.  Often thought of as only a tool to address problems, the PDSA cycle is a method to drive individual and organizational learning. 

Based on scientific method, the PDSA cycle drives learning through a conscious understanding that every action is  based on a hypothesis that a specific outcome will occur and, when the outcome does not occur as expected, the hypothesis needs adjustment.  It is in the failure and subsequent adjustment of the hypothesis where learning occurs. 

As an example, the current design of a process is a hypothesis that it will enable work to be consistently produced in the right quantity and at the right quality and cost when needed.  Whenever this doesn't occur - e.g., defect, delay, cost overrun, etc. - the hypothesis is proven wrong and something about the process needs to improve.  Team learning occurs through the understanding of the root cause(s) of the problem, and in experimenting with countermeasures to address them.   

Learning driven by the PDSA cycle can be applied across the organization from the leadership team to the shop floor.  Selecting where and how to set up a new factory, deciding whether or not to enter new markets, or choosing where to focus capital investment in the coming year are all hypotheses that can drive learning.  The key is to consciously understand that the hypothesis, to study outcomes closely to know whether or not results met expectations, and to discover how to close the gap between the two. 

The Classroom is Where the Work Occurs 

For years we've been taught that learning takes place in a classroom where experts convey knowledge to students.  When looking at the value of classroom learning in terms of improving performance and competitiveness, though, it becomes evident that the connection is weak, at best.  And although there are some benefits to conferences, seminars, and in-house training classes, they are not the type of activities that drive team learning. 

Establishing PDSA-thinking throughout the organization is a significant change for most companies, but the results in terms of advancing team learning and improving performance make it well worth the effort. 

Is Assessing Lean Wasteful?

Tweet

"The most important things cannot be measured." - W. Edwards Deming  

  

The other day, I was asked my opinion about assessments to measure an organization's progress on a lean journey.   Although I generally don't use assessments, I really hadn't given the subject much thought before our discussion.

The idea behind a lean assessment is to identify the gap between the current state of the organization and where it will be when it is "fully lean."  Although it should make perfect sense to assess the current state to better understand the gaps and whether or not the deployment is progressing, I have never seen assessments result in any real value for an organization.

Organizational transformation is a complex undertaking, and attempting to improve the process by formally assessing progress can actually drive the process off track.  When using an assessment to gage progress, the focus can easily become the score rather than true culture change.  Also, attempting to objectively measure change by assigning a number or score to the effort is still very subjective.

Some of the problems I’ve encountered in the past when using an assessment tool to gage and drive progress toward a lean transformation include the following:

1.  Disintegration with the Business  

Assessing lean separately from the business can strengthen the belief that it is another flavor-of-the-month initiative that has nothing to do with actual business results.  Companies exist to serve customers, and if it is not absolutely clear that the objective of pursuing lean is to help do it better (more safely, with better quality, and lower costs), it doesn't matter what the assessment is showing; the effort will fail.

The real assessment occurs during the reflection of business results and target conditions during the annual planning process.  Creating an effective annual plan requires developing an understanding of the reasons for the gaps between what the organization tries to accomplish and what it actually accomplishes.  Besides the fact that this process is itself a lean effort, taking action to close the gaps can be used to further drive lean behaviors and systems.  Developing a plan that fails to address the big issues, attempts to take on too many priorities, or is ignored throughout the year shows a problem with the lean deployment – and you don’t need an assessment to show it.

Whether or not the effort is referred to as “lean” does not matter - people will see that it as a way to improve business results and be much more likely to join the effort.

  

2.  Subjectivity   

Regardless of how clear the assessment questions or elements appear to be, the process is still subjective.  Attempting to increase the clarity of assessment questions generally requires additional effort, training, and time, and you have to ask if this is really where you want your lean resources to spend time. 

Another issue with the subjectivity of assessments shows up when people are held accountable for the rating number or grade from the process.  When assessment scores are used for performance reviews or bonuses, the focus becomes the score rather than the application of lean thinking to improve performance.  And arguments around the scores is nothing but waste. 

  

3.  There is no End 

Deploying lean is like climbing a mountain that has no peak.  Since there is no end to the journey, there is no way to clearly define the target.  If a team scores a 5 out of 5 in kaizen activity, for example, does it mean that they have no room to improve?  This type of thinking is the complete opposite of what a lean transformation is trying to accomplish.

4.  Change Requires Dealing with People 

Building sustained success with lean requires continual coaching, developing, and stretching of people.  Changing the way leaders and team members think is critical to the process and unfortunately there is no set formula for change.  Besides the fact that people learn at different rates, each team member will have different levers for transformation, and what is successful with one will not necessarily work with another.  Because of this, it is not possible to standardize the change process.  Successful organizational transformation requires an understanding of W. Edwards Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge.  One of the four elements of profound knowledge is psychology.  Leading a lean transformation requires an understanding of people – how they think, how they learn, and what motivates them to continually improve.  Attempting to standardize the process by tying it to an assessment ignores this and relying on the tool to drive change.  

5.  It’s Still About Gemba

Assessment processes often turn into office exercises where an auditor meets with a supervisor or manager in an office to discuss the area being assessed.  Even if the assessment is conducted in the actual workplace, it is generally nothing more than a snapshot of how things are working at a specific point in time.  Afterwards, some type of report is written that may or may not be read by the organization’s leaders.  Even if a leader reads the assessment report, it is not possible to develop the level of understanding needed to lead the change without regularly going to where the work is done.  Assessments shifts leadership from a face-to-face coaching and development process to one of judging and grading – definitely not a lean leader behavior.

In the end, it’s important to remember that the effort is about continually improving toward perfection rather than “adopting lean.”  Using an assessment to gage progress on the journey can easily shift the focus away from this and toward the idea that lean is another trendy business initiative that will eventually go away.  Letting an assessment take the place of everyday interactions – including meetings, one-on-one discussions, and observation – misses valuable coaching opportunities that are the basic responsibilities of leadership and much more effective in changing behavior.

Simple Formulas Are Nice But They Don't Work

Tweet

American business loves quick and easy answers.  In fact, the best way to get people to pick up a book or read an article (and I admit, I’ve done it myself) is to provide an easy-to-follow formula that solves a difficult business problem.   While this approach can help sell magazines, it really doesn’t do much to help drive actual improvement.  Organizations are too complex to assume there is a quick answer to any of the significant problems they face.  Although formulas do appear to provide easy steps to follow, they do not provide the knowledge necessary to effectively address the big issues.

Fortune Magazine recently published a one-page article entitled 5 Ways to Stay Ahead of Rising Costs.  The article presents five easy steps to address out-of-control costs in an organization, including a two or three sentence description of how to apply the step.  Although each step appears to make sense on the surface, accepting and blindly following recommendations like this can easily backfire and result in causing more harm than good.

The article’s focus is on imposing accountability for spending in order to drive responsible management of costs.  Although it’s hard to argue with the need for accountability, it is very easy to misapply this type of effort and distract people from their main responsibilities – including serving customers.

Below are the five ideas presented in the article, along with my thoughts about each.

1. Share the Responsibility:  This involves making someone in the company accountable for every line in the financial statements.  By the time the numbers make it to the financial statements, however, it is too late to do anything about them.  While I have no problem with making people accountable for understanding and monitoring spending within their areas of responsibility, it needs to be done real-time, and through a process of comparing actual costs against expected costs.  Also, it is unrealistic to think that one person can be responsible for an item – like a line on a financial statement – that is comprised of so many elements.  This type of approach often clouds the idea that cost is an element of a target condition, which includes safety, quality, and delivery of product or service, rather than an isolated objective.
    
2. Reveal the Price:  Making sure people know what actions cost is important and can lead to improvements as long as the focus does not become solely on reducing the price.  As presented above, the target condition of applying this practice needs to be something like reducing cost while maintaining or improving quality.  I agree with the article, however, that most organizations really have poor cost information systems.  In far too many companies, information on costs is often inaccurate and provided far too late to drive any real improvement.
    
3. Monitor the Use of Items:  Of all the ideas presented in the article, this is the one that’s probably applied the most and resulted in the least amount of improvement in organizations.  Although it’s the easiest step to take, shifting into a counting paperclip mode of operation is one of the most frustrating and distracting actions companies take when costs are out-of-control.  In my first job out of college, I asked for a set of folders to organize the projects I was working on.  A couple days later, the office manager came to my office with an expandable folder that was taped, written on, and worn, explaining that the company was focusing on reducing the costs of office supplies.  After she left, I threw it in the garbage and bought my own folders.  Although that was many years ago, I still remember how demotivating that was, and how it made me feel about my decision to join the company.
    
4. Spend Wisely to Win:  I completely agree with focusing spending on the efforts that are most likely to result in business for the company.  The problem with this suggestion is the difficulty of applying it in real situations.  This is a perfect example of an idea that requires significant knowledge to effectively apply.  A lot of thought, clarity, and planning is needed before attempting to blindly implement this type of thinking within the organization.  It’s just not that simple
    
5. Raise Your Prices:  As with the idea of spending wisely, raising prices can be very dangerous if not done correctly.  Determining what your products or services are worth lies with your customers – not you.  If you can’t make money by selling at the price the market is willing to pay, you’ve got to find ways of lowering costs without lowering quality.

I’ve seen many organizations over the years go through periods where costs became the focus, and each time people would respond by lowering spending.  More often than not, though, while short-term costs dropped, longer-term problems increased significantly because of the lack of knowledge and planning behind the approach.

Although controlling costs is obviously important, companies are not in business to save costs.  If your approach to managing costs is not backed by knowledge, you can wind up saving your way into oblivion. 

Formulas for success – like the one in the Fortune article – make running a business seem easy, and although the elements of leadership are simple, they are anything but easy.  You still need to be able to communicate the purpose, develop and deploy an effective strategy, and continually adjust along the way to be successful, and an overly simple formula will not make it any easier to do.

Making Problems Visible Is More Difficult Than It Sounds

Tweet

One of the many elements of lean that is conceptually very simple but difficult to put into practice is the need to make problems visible.  Although highlighting problems so they can be addressed makes sense, there is often a reluctance resulting from fear that doing so can damage one's career.  In organizations with highly competitive cultures, for example, openly discussing problems can make a person appear incompetent and ineffective. Even without open competition, organizations that tend to promote those who hide problems by putting a positive spin on poor performance are unconsciously cementing a behavior that it is not okay to openly discuss problems.

It is perfectly normal for people to want to show that processes are running smoothly and things are under control.  Because of this, it is up to the company's leaders to instill the idea that highlighting problems is not only acceptable but expected within the organization.  This means that there should never be negative consequences for making a problem visible.  On the contrary, it should be made clear to everyone that hiding problems or failing to take action to address them is an unacceptable behavior.

Two areas where it is important to make problems visible are dashboards and meetings.

Dashboards

The objective of a dashboard for an area or process is to clearly and objectively show the gaps between expected performance and actual results.  Hiding the gaps or continually putting a positive spin on how things are going misses the opportunity to align team members on what's important so the problems can be addressed.

Posting charts that track what's critical for an area keep people focused on how a process is expected to perform and, the more sensitive the chart, the more quickly action can be taken when a gap occurs.

It is important to note that dashboards become ineffective when too much data is displayed. Think how difficult driving would be if your dashboard contained 10 or 12 gages.  The same applies to a dashboard for a work area.  Make it simple and clearly connected to company or system targets.

It is also critical to keep dashboards simple and easy to maintain. Fight the urge to multi-color, three-dimensional graphs that show too much data.  To purpose of a chart is to highlight performance, not prove how adept someone is at creating graphs.

Meetings

Many companies waste a lot of time in meetings talking about what is going well.  Performance is reviewed and discussed - sometimes in excruciating depth - even when processes are on-target.  People learn to dread meetings and use the time to catch up on email or the latest headlines on their smart phones.

The more the daily and weekly meetings are focused on the gaps - existing and potential - the more engaged people will be.  The dashboards should drive the meetings and, the better the dashboards, the quicker people can zero in on the gaps and talk about the actions to address them.

When we do this well, we begin to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the team by focusing on improving performance.  If we dance around the real issues by ignoring the gaps and attempting to put a positive spin on how things are going, we miss an opportunity to build teamwork and fail to address the real problems.

The Problems Are There - Why Not Look At Them

Every organization has problems, and a key determinant of success is how well the problems are addressed.  Openly showing the problems is the first step at resolving them.  Getting to this point, however, often requires shifting behavior to make it okay - even expected - to look for the gaps.

Growing Deadwood in the Organization

Tweet

“Were they dead when you hired them? Or did you kill them?* -  W. Edwards Deming


Who is responsible for the poor performers in an organization? These are the people about whom leaders regularly complain and blame for many of the company’s problems. According to Jack Welch, they are the 10% of the workforce who need to improve or be fired.

In most organizations, there are processes for documenting poor performance and terminating employment of the nonproducers, but very little for developing and helping these people improve. It is fairly uncommon, though, for organizations to hold the leader accountable for hiring poorly or failing to help the poor performers on his or her team.

Leader as Teacher

In his book, Getting the Right Things Done: A Leader’s Guide to Planning and Execution (Lean Enterprise Institute), Pascal Dennis presents his list of Lean Mental Models to describe the methods and behaviors of lean leaders. One of the mental models is Leader as Teacher which describes a lean leader as one who continually develops the ability of team members to identify and solve problems to improve the organization’s performance.

Developing talent is one of those things that most people would agree is a part of effective leadership but how many organizations truly hold their leaders responsible for doing it? When managers complain about a team member, it should be viewed as a reflection on their leadership capabilities and used as a coaching opportunity to improve.

I have found that, in many organizations, the responsibility to coach and develop talent is much lower on the list of priorities than documenting and replacing the poor performers. This is surprising when one considers what it costs the organization to hire, train, and fire employees. In my experience, this type of situation generally results from a lack of knowledge of how to develop people and/or impatience (or short-term thinking).

Instituting Leadership

In Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming wrote, “The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.” One of the areas Deming felt was in need of transformation was the poor track record and lack of personal accountability of leaders to coach and develop team members.

So what do we need to institute leadership within organizations? One step is to address the culture and systems related to team member development. Like much of organizational transformation, it is not easy, but there are five steps that can help jumpstart the process.

1. Make it difficult to fire someone for performance issues.
   When it is easier to coach and develop “poor performers” than to fire them, leaders will begin to find the time to coach rather than just give up and remove the person from the organization. One of the roles of Human Resources should be to help the leader work with the person to develop his or her abilities or find another role in the organization that would be a better fit for the person’s talent and abilities.
    
2. Recognize terminations as a failure of the system.
   A decision is made to hire someone because one or more people feel the candidate is a good fit for the organization and the specific job. When it doesn’t work out, we need to look at the hiring process to understand why it failed and what needs to be done to prevent if from happening next time. Defects within the hiring process are costly to the company and, as with any process, continual improvement is required.
    
3. Establish systems and support for team member development.
   Transformation will not happen by merely telling leaders to start coaching and developing those on their team. Leaders must be taught how to coach, and the proper systems and structure must be available to support the process.
    
4. Make it clear that developing team members is a responsibility of leadership.
   Leaders must be held accountable for developing the people on their team and understand that coaching and mentoring it is a condition of remaining in a leadership position within the organization.
    
5. Promote based on leadership abilities.
   Promotion into a leadership position must be based on the person’s existing or potential leadership capabilities, including the ability to coach and develop the talents of others. Too often, promotions into leadership are based on personal preference or a person’s performance in a current position rather than the ability to lead others.
    

Besides showing respect for people, placing a high priority on coaching and development will help the organization improve performance by reducing turnover, improving morale, and engaging more people in improvement efforts. Like any element of transformation, though, success requires clarity, consistency, and the patience to stay with the effort.
____________________________________
*I remember hearing Dr. Deming say something like this during one of his 4-day seminars but couldn’t remember the exact quote Thanks to Garold L. Markle (www.energage.com) for the wording.

The Enemy Within

Tweet

“Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you're getting." – W. Edwards Deming

When I was first learning to play tennis and would hit poor shots, my instructor would say, “You shouldn’t be surprised. The ball went exactly where you were aiming.” I still think of this whenever I play tennis or golf and am beginning to see implications to business, as well.

Although companies face external forces that impact results, it is generally the internal forces that cause the major problems.  In fact, when it comes to organizational performance and improvement, we are our own worst enemy.  We continually throw up barriers that interfere with focusing on what is truly important . . . serving customers.

Countermeasure Without a Problem

There are countless examples in organizations today of initiative overload, where one or more “support” areas throw out a new system or policy that impacts the work of people throughout the company.  The reasons behind the new initiatives are not often clear – it could result from an article someone read or a meeting held in a corporate office – but on the front line, it does not appear that they came from a fundamental business need.  Although driven by good intentions, this type of activity tends to result in initiative overload for the people trying to serve customers.

The larger the organization, the more likely it is for people to get further away from the company’s purpose resulting in the creation of countermeasures that, although appearing to make sense, create more problems than they address.

Back to Basics

The only way to minimize initiative overload and the negative impact associated with the practice is to continually return to the basics and understand what does and doesn’t support the organization’s reason for existence.  This means getting people to regularly reflect on four basic questions:

• What is our purpose?  Why to we exist?  Who are our customers and what value do we provide to them?
• What is our value stream?  How do we deliver value to our customers?  Within the value stream, which activities directly provide value and which exist to support the direct activities?  This requires a significant commitment to go to gemba to talk to team members and see how things are done firsthand.
• What is our ideal condition?  How would our value stream operate if we were absolutely perfect?  Although it may seem crazy to think you can ever achieve perfection, it is critical to get everyone focused on a consistent direction.
• How do we compare with our ideal condition?  What are the gaps we need to address to move toward our ideal and what are the root causes of the gaps?  How can we support efforts to close the gaps?

A servant leader mindset needs to be created throughout the organization that questions every decision and initiative to assure that it supports the company’s fundamental purpose. Although not necessarily an easy task, the above questions can provide a framework for coaching discussions that can begin to create the type of culture where people start supporting, rather than interfering, with serving customers.

Profound Knowledge & Sociology

Tweet

Sociology: noun \ˌsō-sē-ˈä-lə-jē, ˌsō-shē-\.  the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships; specifically : the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human beings. [Merriam-Webster.Com]

W. Edwards Deming’s Systems of Profound Knowledge has been a cornerstone to successful lean deployment for the last 20 years (longer, if you consider that it began with his 14 Points for Management).  As written in an earlier post, I am a strong believer that the level of success with lean is directly related to the level of understanding and application of Deming’s system of management.

The four components of Profound Knowledge as presented by Deming include Knowledge & Learning, Appreciation of a System, Variation, and Psychology.

Deming rightly presents the need for leaders to have an appreciation for psychology because of the fact that effectively leading requires knowing how to relate to people.  Although it should be obvious, I have run across many people in leadership positions over the years who were severely short of people skills.  There are differences in people and effective communication and motivating individuals requires understanding and working with these differences.

How About Sociology?

One aspect of leadership I always felt was missing from Deming’s system is sociology.  Organizations consist of a number of individuals and teams, and in addition to knowing how to relate to and motivate people individually, leaders need to be able to continually develop and improve teamwork.  This can not be done without an understanding of sociology.

There are natural and cultural forces within people that drive them to identity strongly to the teams to which they belong.  Although these forces can be beneficial to improving performance, they can also be destructive to the organization, as a whole.  It is all too common for people to put the needs of the immediate team ahead of those of the company.  Even if this is unintentional – which in most cases it is – it is still very toxic to the company’s culture.

Maintaining a Unified Focus

One of the basics of organizational sociology is tendency of a group to break apart when its members start developing conflicting interests and objectives.  Competition between factions develops and the ability to keep people focused on a common purpose becomes difficult, if not impossible.

Without strong leadership and an understanding of group behavior, internal competition (or apathy toward those outside of the immediate team) can grow to the point where correcting behavior can be extremely challenging.

Many leaders do not recognize the complexity involved in the individual and team goal-setting process.  In far too many instances, there is too much going on to take the time necessary to assure objectives are aligned and well understood by all involved.

Catchball, a process for communicating direction, expectations, and objectives between levels in the organization, is critical to assuring that consistency is maintained and people work toward the achievement of a common purpose.  Unfortunately, catchball takes time and, without a respect for organizational sociology, will not help prevent competition from developing and sub-optimizing performance.

Although sociology is apparent throughout Deming’s writings, I believe elevating it to the level of importance assigned to psychology, variation, knowledge, and systems thinking would help more leaders understand how critical it is to organizational success.