Rodent Regatta

Staying out of the quicksand is much better than getting a good deal on a towing contract.

Philip B. Crosby
from Creating the Reliable Organization

Trust me. It isn’t easy to create a reliable organization. Variation creeps in from all kinds of causes. The unexpected can cost you your reputation. The only way to develop a truly (long-term) reliable organization is to seek ways to prevent variation.

They want me to think like a FedEx employee when FedEx should, instead, think like a customer. They should ask me what matters—speed or cost—and then figure out how to send it for me the fastest or cheapest way…

FedEx, competition to the US Postal Service, has turned into the US Postal Service.

Jeff Jarvis
January 19, 2004

In Search of Excellence came out in 1982 as did Out of the Crisis. Since that time we’ve seen untold numbers of business improvement initiatives aimed at – well – they were supposedly aimed at business improvement. How many thousands of articles have been written that in one way or another state that the only lasting business improvement is customer-focused.

Few companies understand how to see their operations through the eyes of their customers. Few executives ever personally experience the kind of service that his or her customers experience. When that happens you wind up with customer hassles that defy logic.

Lately, we’ve been chasing something called ”customer relationship management,” but we don’t want to say that so we call it CRM. Absent a heart for customers at the very top of an organization, this fad and all those before it cease to be business improvement initiatives. Instead they wind up in the long list of fads that were tried and found wanting. The problem is that few of them were every properly ”tried,” and even fewer executives had the ”constancy of purpose” to stick with them through highs and lows or the announcement of the next big business fad!

Serving customers is such a simple concept. It’s very hard work, but it is such a simple thing to understand. Unfortunately, in too many organizations, reciting and internalizing The Golden Rule is just way too sophomoric for the intellectual standing of those who work there.

In The New Economics For Industry, Government, Education Dr. W. Edwards Deming had this to say about leadership:

What is a leader? As I use the term here, the job of a leader is to accomplish transformation of his organization. He possesses knowledge, personality and persuasive power.

How may he accomplish transformation? First, he has theory. He understands why the transformation would bring gains to his organization and to all the people that his organization deals with. Second, he feels compelled to accomplish the transformation as an obligation to himself and his organization. Third, he is a practical man. He has a plan, step by step.

But what is in his own head is not enough. He must convince and change enough people in power to make it happen. He possesses persuasive power. He understands people.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming
Chapter 5: Leadership

Writing for the Memphis Business Journal (subscription may be required), Ed Horrell offers some solutions to the problem of your entire organization appearing indifferent to the plight of your customer.

This one deserves your attention if you’ve not already read it.

Too many of the initiatives for improvement become mere programs or fads because their regimens obscure the fact that things must get done. Sometimes – often in fact – this is the fault of the leader of the initiative. Sometimes, though, it is difficult to get beyond all of the rigors of the improvement methodology to actually accomplish real work.

In this book you’ll find ways to cut through all of that.