Barnes Wallis, the English scientist of ‘bouncing bomb’ fame, once said: “There is a natural opposition among men to anything they have not thought of themselves”
He might better have said ‘western men’ – ‘eastern men’ can be ‘all ears’
Once upon a time, just after WW2, three eminent American statisticians tried to convince US businesses of their radical new ways to improve productivity by reducing waste and improving output volumes and quality – ways which employed basic statistics at their heart
But those same US businesses chose to ignore them, preferring more obvious stuff like Work Study and O&M, then Mathematical modelling via Operations Research, then TQM for culture changes and employee engagement – and nowadays ICT systems rule the roost
Fed up with those deaf ears, the three statisticians – Doctors Edwards Deming, Philip Crosby and Joseph Juran – crossed the Pacific to Japan where they were listened to intently – the result was the Japanese economic miracle – a transformation over a decade from a reputation for widespread shoddy goods to one quite the opposite – and with exponential increases in profit margins and overall profitability
In the 80s and even 90s, the US, and West in general, could no longer ignore this huge change in their competition – they flew thousands of managers to Japan to discover their secrets – they also came back no wiser, thinking it must be something to do with culture differences and changes
Hence TQM (Total Quality Management) was born, and it took over a decade before most in the West realised it was not the answer – worse, it was an expensive failure given it produced few quantifiable and significant results yet cost a lot in time and effort
Meanwhile, productivity deaf ears continue in the West
Readily available common sense about productivity improvement is again being ignored whilst organisations believe it’s ICT systems plus digitisation of processes that will transform their financial accounts and improve their service levels
The first problem is productivity has been so downgraded in the minds of most managers that it no longer features on any boardroom agenda – some soul-searching is thus required straight-away
Then consider what’s on offer to organisations in the West if and when any of them do seek to improve their productivity – if only as a by-product of some other worthier aim:
- Management organisations like the CBI and IoD offer no help via their websites and largely ignore the topic
- UK business schools, to their everlasting shame, offer no courses on productivity improvement
- And UK management consultancies that peddle good practical sense for big productivity improvements are as rare as hen’s teeth – but there are hundreds, including all the top ten, who do not – they prefer to address leading-edge thinking in more strategic or technical areas, which also command higher fees
And none dare offer their services to clients at a cost which includes a ‘payment by results’ element – as per investment advisers with their win/ win 2/ 20 charging formula i.e. 2% to cover their basic costs plus 20% of any resultant profits (and no recompense if any losses)
It’s another example of an ‘elite’ bubble, all thinking and speaking the same way and blotting out pesky outsiders with their differing views