OST as an "halfway technology"

[EVERETT813 at aol.com]

Artur,

Very interesting speculations, those.   Some of them assume knowledge that I
don't have and reveal an in-depth study of the ideas on your part.   Very fine
piece of work.

Not to hook you up with my thesis, or imply that you are aligned with it, but
earlier in the year I speculated that real change from OST efforts seems hard
to find.   By that I meant significant outcomes that made significant changes
in the organizations over time.   I was 'assured' by OST posters that I was
just not seeing what was happening and dropped the discussion because I'm
rarely directly involved in OST efforts.   However, I respect the process and feel
it has real possibilities.

I do deal in organizational change through my consulting in Lean Thinking,
which is the Toyota Management System that is shaking the corporate world these
days.   Having passed Ford, after spotting them a 40-year head start, they
have the attention of companies all over the world.   They will be the largest
auto company by 2010, barring some kind of societal disaster.   They seem to
have solved the transfer of power and leadership conundrum because of the
longevity of the progenitors and the Systems demonstrated superiority to any other
currently known management system.

My observation is: most organizational change is temporary (by definition,
maybe?) and companies soon revert to the mean.   How soon depends on the
Leadership.   Welch and Goizutta moved their organizations to new heights.   So did
the head of Motorola, but when he left, they stumbled badly.   When leadership
changes, the company changes, despite numerous 'change agents' working in the
organization on strong trajectories.   I can cite dozens of examples where
very significant change and results were being achieved, the leader of the
corporation changed, and they rather quickly reverted to a mean (which may be a
slowly rising slope, slowly declining slope, or a flat line, whatever it was
before the prior leader came and 'did things.')

Hence my thesis: who leads OST change efforts makes all the difference, and I
mean ALL the difference.   If you don't have the top honcho, you can get one
or two standard deviations away from the mean for a brief time but reversion
is sure when the middle leaders change, or more likely, are fired or quit.
Or, in the case of government, lose the election or position.   They get too far
out of synchronization with the culture and get spit out.   (I know of a
study that found that the initial change agent in a company had best be prepared
to be fired or quit part way through the effort because almost all were.   Then
a new change agent was appointed and s/he continued the effort and brought it
to some semblence of completion.)

Anyway, one of the issues in American management is constancy of purpose, as
Deming noted.   We catch fads like colds because we change leaders like we
change our clothes.   Only when the exceptional leader lasts a long time do we
get a marked shift, imho. (A sobering comment on our democracy).   Seeing this,
I always try to start with the leader first, and if I can't do that, I don't
usually waste my life's time messing around in a change process that doesn't
involve the top people.   It's too precious.

Best to you in your seeking and discussion, Artur.

Paul Everett



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