Welcome to the first work week of 2009. There are no more opportunities to hide behind the holidays. It’s time to face the worst economy of our lives head on with a steely resolve to overcome and succeed. It's also time to quit preoccupying on the negative news that bombards us and to focus on generating victories.
Dr. Deming indicated that he hoped one of his life’s accomplishments was to keep American companies from committing suicide. The public spectacle of Detroit and Wall Street committing suicide in the same quarter would indicate that he failed in his mission. Deming’s Theory of Profound Knowledge and 14 points offered (and still do) keys to many of the answers. They are not prescriptive, but rather they combine to create a philosophical approach to running a business, that if adhered to, will stand a chance of succeeding for customers, workers and partners on a global stage.
It takes no management skill whatsoever to spend a fortune building up clicks and it definitely takes no skill to slash budgets, cut headcount, freeze programs and hunker down and wait out the storm. It does take remarkable management courage and skill to run against the crowd and conventional wisdom by investing in strategic initiatives and talent during tough times and resisting the temptation to chase mythical fortunes during boom times.
In discussions and lectures with the up and coming generation of leaders, there is widespread cynicism over the intentions and the capabilities of many of their firm’s senior leaders. There is little faith expressed that their leaders understand their firm’s key drivers and little confidence that the leaders are taking actions and measuring performance based on anything other than preconceived notions of what they think is right. Fewer organizations than you might think are doing anything to engender employee satisfaction…which is ironic given the mountains of data that indicate that employee satisfaction flows through to customer satisfaction and strong financial performance. This current generation of senior leaders is failing, and the very imbalanced scorecard is visible all around us
