PARADIGMS, SYSTEMS, AND TQM
John A. Woods
His answer was an old one belonging to a philosophic school that called itself realism. "A thing exists," he said, "if a world without it can't function normally. If we can show that a world without Quality functions abnormally, then we have shown that Quality exists whether it's defined or not."
Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
There are many articles about Total Quality Management not being all it's cracked up to be. Companies try it, and things are no better than they were before. It is just another gimmick, a quick fix that doesn't fix anything. People start creating control charts and set up teams; they profess to focus more on their customers; maybe they look for benchmarks; they decide to give employees a little more authority; they try to reduce cycle time; they look for ways to improve their processes, and the results do not seem to be there. So what's going on?
What's going on is this. There is often a profound misunderstanding of Total Quality Management by both practitioners and critics. On the surface, this approach to management seems like it is about doing the things listed above. In fact, that is just a small piece of TQM. What really distinguishes TQM is the perspective on organizations that it represents. Let me reiterate that in a slightly different way: TQM is a manifestation of our understanding of the nature of organizations. And without that understanding, using all the TQM tools and techniques covered in the hundreds of books on this subject would result only in marginal improvements at best.
PARADIGMS
You will often hear the word paradigm used when describing Total Quality Management. Advocates for TQM say top managers must adopt a new paradigm of business. That is true as far as it goes. What is unspoken is that managers somehow have a choice about whether they will adopt this paradigm. They can continue to do what they already do or they can adopt the new, better way, the quality way, to manage their organization. This is where the misunderstanding starts.
Paradigms do not describe options. They explain things. They provide ways to order and make sense of our experience. They provide a context for understanding phenomena. Every discipline incorporates a model or paradigm for interpreting data and directing behavior. We revise these models, throw them out, or accept them based on how well they explain what we observe and give us direction. In the early 20th century, modern physics emerged as a better way to explain physical observations than Newtonian physics. In psychology, understanding the brain, its chemistry, and the complex biology of this organ is replacing Freudian and other psychoanalytic models for understanding and dealing with psychotic (as well as normal) behavior. Would you think that today's physicists had an option about whether to adopt the modern physics paradigm (at least as their starting point) for exploring the physical world?
A good paradigm, regardless of the discipline, often does not just replace some other one, it subsumes it. This means the new paradigm is more complete, takes in more possibilities, and explains observations better. Finally, it allows us to act in ways that are more likely to get us the results we want and expect. This is the real power of a paradigm. It affects how we behave, and it helps explain the results we get. If managers do not understand or are not aware of the paradigm on which TQM is based, they will be working from some other model that is less effective at explaining organizations and their work. Their results will thus be less satisfactory than those of managers who are aware of the new, more complete model and make appropriate changes in their behavior. W. Edwards Deming, in his inimitable style, said simply, "Theory [he used the word "theory" for the idea of paradigm] is a window into the world. Theory leads to prediction. Without theory, experience and examples teach us nothing." (W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics For Industry, Government, Education, Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1993, p. 106.)
Thomas Kuhn, the author most often credited with the exploration of the importance of paradigms in science, illustrates a change toward a more effective paradigm in this way: "Looking at the moon, the convert to Copernicanism does not say, 'I used to see a planet, but now I see a satellite.' That locution would imply a sense in which the Ptolemaic system had once been correct. Instead, a convert to the new astronomy says, 'I once took the moon to be a planet, but I was mistaken.'" (Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1970, p. 115.) That is a somewhat esoteric quote, but it is from an authority, and it illustrates the point I wish to make here. Better paradigms help us understand and deal with the world more accurately, realistically, and effectively.
THE TQM PARADIGM: ORGANIZATIONS AS SYSTEMS
What's the relation of these ideas to TQM? In terms of organizations and their management, those who understand the paradigm that explains organizations as systems will see TQM as the logical outgrowth of this view. Further, they understand that this paradigm shows that organizational systems consist of interacting parts and that what they do is transform and add value to inputs to create outputs that solve the problems of some group of customers. Managers can misunderstand and act as if an organization were not a system. But this does not change the fact that this concept is a very powerful metaphor for defining what an organization is and does.
In less competitive markets and times, managers did not have to know that their organizations are systems to compete successfully. However, not knowing this undermines their efficiency. It also diverts their focus from delivering products and services that satisfy and even delight customers. Finally, it makes these organizations vulnerable to others whose leaders realize the value of the systems paradigm. These are the companies that have adopted the TQM methods for system management and have become more efficient and effective at creating value for their customers. Recent history validates just how vulnerable many companies have become.
Some managers may believe in the paradigm that states that an organization is a hierarchy. They believe that holding individuals accountable for accomplishing goals or making their quota is the best way to run an organization and get desired results. However, this does not change the fact that this is not the best way if the systems paradigm is correct. In other words, if the organization really is a system, whether managers realize this or not, then the organization-as-hierarchy paradigm is not the best model on which to make decisions. It is not the best way to get the most out of organizational resources. It will not result in decisions and actions that consistently allow a company to profitably delight customers so it will be around in the future to continue doing this.
This is an important point. If the systems paradigm has value, it is not just in telling managers what they should do. It also helps them grasp what they are already doing right now. In terms of Total Quality Management, what this means is that the systems approach helps managers to understand which procedures work well and which ones work poorly and why. It provides a strong context for making sense of the behavior and existence of all organizations. Paraphrasing Thomas Kuhn, the convert to the systems paradigm and TQM does not say, "I used to see an organization as a hierarchy, but now I see it as a system." Instead, the convert to TQM says, "I once took an organization to be a hierarchy, but I was mistaken."
Consider this: If all organizations are systems and TQM is about managing systems, then all managers are practicing TQM at some level of competence. The only issue is whether they realize this and how well they practice it. If managers do not understand the systems perspective, they also will not understand how to get that system to function well in an increasingly competitive environment. They are practicing systems management, but they will just be doing a poor job of it.
For example, the Chrysler Corporation has always been a system that takes inputs and transforms and adds value to them to serve the transportation needs of customers. That is what it was in the late '70s when it almost died, and that is what it is today as it has turned itself around with several different successful new car and truck lines. The difference is that back in the '70s, the system was managed very poorly, and the company did not do a good job of meeting customer needs. Now, with the conscious adoption of TQM practices to manage their systems and processes, the company is performing much better. Back in the '70s, Chrysler managers did not understand their company was a system with the purpose of solving personal transportation problems. Today it appears they do.
TQM, SYSTEMS, AND TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT
I asserted earlier that whether a manager acknowledges it or not, organizations are systems with processes for delivering quality outputs to customers. Thus, what managers do is manipulate system processes, consciously or unconsciously, skillfully or erratically, to get work done. The systems paradigm helps us understand this, and TQM provides guidelines for doing it better.
The questions for the traditional manager, once exposed to the insights of the systems paradigm and TQM, are (1) how well am I doing at making my company's systems and processes work well? and (2) how well am I doing at rapidly improving these processes so we can perform and compete better and better? The answer to these questions is usually: Not very well when one assumes the organization is a hierarchy with little focus on cooperative interaction and heavy emphasis on individual accountability for results.
There is a reason this approach gets poor results. The hierarchical focus-on-the-individual approach to getting things done in a system is not process-oriented. If organizations were really hierarchies and individuals really had control over getting things done as independent agents, then the traditional approach would be the best way to manage. However, since this approach limits the productivity of a system, we should not be surprised at the inability of many companies to compete effectively against, for example, the Japanese, who are guided by the systems paradigm and the principles of TQM.
Before Xerox understood the implications of the systems paradigm for increasing productivity and delighting their customers, this was considered to be a well-managed company in the traditional sense. But in the 1970s Japanese companies began to take serious market share from Xerox. David Kearns, the former chairman of Xerox, tells of this in his recent memoirs:
Whereas most American corporations were advancing 2 or 3 percent a year in productivity, we were achieving gains of 7 or 8 percent. But despite these gains, the Japanese continued to price their products substantially below us. We kept wondering: how were they doing it? Our team went over everything in a thorough manner. It examined all the ingredients of cost: turnover, design time, engineering changes, manufacturing defects, overhead ratios, inventory, how many people worked for a foreman, and so forth. When it got done with its calibrations, we were in quite a shock. Frank Pipp [a Xerox executive] remembers the results as being "absolutely nauseating. It wasn't a case of being out in left field. We weren't even playing the same game." (David T. Kearns and David A. Nadler, Prophets in the Dark: How Xerox Reinvented Itself and Beat Back the Japanese, New York: HarperBusiness, 1992, p. 121.)What Xerox finally discovered was that their approach to getting things done was simply not the best way to manage a system. That's what the Japanese knew as well. They understood the implications of TQM for better managing their systems to create products that customers wanted. And that's why they were eating Xerox's lunch in the copier marketplace.
I do not want to belabor this point, but it is at the heart of this article. If organizations are systems, managers do not have a choice about whether focusing on process management is what they should do. That is what managers do whether they are aware of it or not. Remember what I said earlier, paradigms do not describe options. Traditional business assumptions and practices with their focus on individuals and arbitrary expected results make for very poor management of processes and therefore, ironically, erratic results and performance in the marketplace. TQM, conversely, with its focus on processes, improvement, and delighting customers, suggests ways to maximize system efficiency and effectiveness, enhancing chances for success in the marketplace.
In the book Making Quality Work the authors tell of a conversation they had at the Kansai Electric Company, a Deming Prize winner in Japan:
"'Some IBM executives were here on a study visit just yesterday,' one Kansai executive noted. 'They told us that, at IBM, total quality management is seventy percent attitude and only thirty percent quality control technique. He then frowned and silently shook his head. We could guess what he was thinking. Such a `soft' approach to managing quality might be acceptable but it would never pass muster in Japan. We were wrong. 'In Japan,' the Kansai executive concluded, `total quality management is ninety percent attitude.'" (George Labovitz, Yu Sang Chang, & Victor Rosansky, Making Quality Work, New York: HarperBusiness, 1993, pp. 1-2.)For managers to implement TQM procedures without an understanding of the paradigm that gives meaning to these procedures does not bode well for the success of their efforts. It seems in this country we are constantly looking for the magic answer to all our problems. The latest answer for managing organizations is Total Quality Management. But in actuality TQM and the systems paradigm do not give us answers. Instead, this paradigm suggests what questions we should ask. These are the questions that have to do with understanding our system and its processes and purpose. They are the questions that will help us realistically appraise situations. And they are the questions that will help us develop the course of action most likely to lead to success.
Copyright © 1995 by John A. Woods. All rights reserved.
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