10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Inscription on the James Farley Post Office, New York City, New York, USA
William Mitchell Kendall pace Herodotus
Now, that’s what I call a slogan. Is this what Point 10 of Deming’s 14 Points was condemning? There are three heads here, all making quite distinct criticisms of modern management. The important dimension of this criticism is the way in which managers use data in communicating with the wider organisation, in setting imperatives and priorities and in determining what individual workers will consider important when they are free from immediate supervision.
Eliminate slogans!
The US postal inscription at the head of this blog certainly falls within the category of slogans. Apparently the root of the word “slogan” is the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm meaning a battle cry. It seeks to articulate a solidarity and commitment to purpose that transcends individual doubts or rationalisation. That is what the US postal inscription seeks to do. Beyond the data on customer satisfaction, the demands of the business to protect and promote its reputation, the service levels in place for individual value streams, the tension between current performance and aspiration, the disappointment of missed objectives, it seeks to draw together the whole of the organisation around an ideal.
Slogans are part of the broader oral culture of an organisation. In the words of Lawrence Freedman (Strategy: A History, Oxford, 2013, p564) stories, and I think by extension slogans:
[make] it possible to avoid abstractions, reduce complexity, and make vital points indirectly, stressing the importance of being alert to serendipitous opportunities, discontented staff, or the one small point that might ruin an otherwise brilliant campaign.
But Freedman was quick to point out the use of stories by consultants and in organisations frequently confused anecdote with data. They were commonly used selectively and often contrived. Freedman sought to extract some residual value from the culture of business stories, in particular drawing on the work of psychologist Jerome Bruner along with Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 thinking. The purpose of the narrative of an organisation, including its slogans and shared stories, is not to predict events but to define a context for action when reality is inevitably overtaken by a special cause.
In building such a rich narrative, slogans alone are an inert and lifeless tactic unless woven with the continual, rigorous criticism of historical data. In fact, it is the process behaviour chart that acts as the armature around which the narrative can be wound. Building the narrative will be critical to how individuals respond to the messages of the chart.
Deming himself coined plenty of slogans: “Drive out fear”, “Create joy in work”, … . They are not forbidden. But to be effective they must form a verisimilar commentary on, and motivation for, the hard numbers and ineluctable signals of the process behaviour chart.
Eliminate exhortations!
I had thought I would dismiss this in a single clause. It is, though, a little more complicated. The sports team captain who urges her teammates onwards to take the last gasp scoring opportunity doesn’t necessarily urge in vain. There is no analysis of this scenario. It is only muscle, nerve, sweat and emotion.
The English team just suffered a humiliating exit from the Cricket World Cup. The head coach’s response was “We’ll have to look at the data.” Andrew Miller in The Times (London) (10 March 2015) reflected most cricket fans’ view when he observed that “a team of meticulously prepared cricketers suffered a collective loss of nerve and confidence.” Exhortations might not have gone amiss.
It is not, though, a management strategy. If your principal means of managing risk, achieving compelling objectives, creating value and consistently delivering customer excellence, day in, day out is to yell “one more heave!” then you had better not lose your voice. In the long run, I am on the side of the analysts.
Slogans and exhortations will prove a brittle veneer on a stable system of trouble (RearView). It is there that they will inevitably corrode engagement, breed cynicism, foster distrust, and mask decline. Only the process behaviour chart can guard against the risk.
Eliminate targets for the workforce!
This one is more complicated. How do I communicate to the rest of the organisation what I need from them? What are the consequences when they don’t deliver? How do the rest of the organisation communicate with me? This really breaks down into two separate topics and they happen to be the two halves of Deming’s Point 11.
I shall return to those in my next two posts in the Deconstructing Deming series.
Unanticipated Knowledge 