CONFESSION OF THE PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER

CONFESSION OF THE PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2008

“It is not our wrong actions which it requires courage to confess, so much as those which are ridiculous and foolish.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1772 – 1778), Swiss philosopher

(A reply to a friend who embraces the darkness of life and brings light to it, while life often appears only as a chiaroscuro of many shades to me.)

No surprise, enthusiastic and positive people are found inspiring, and you are inspiring in your passion. Tom Peters impressed a lot of people including Dr. Thomas Brown, whom I respect, but he never impressed me, and for reason.

Peters epitomizes what I have thought wrong with American business -- it wants simplistic answers to complex problems and the more simplistic the better.

The problems we solve are the problems we create. Solutions to those problems are not outside but inside operations. People within operations have answers if only they are stimulated to put them forth. Looking at other operations and reading and studying what others have done successfully can inspire, but cannot replace creative thinking, which is pursuing what is not known but can be found out.

The methodology for such solutions was at home, but ignored or rejected. It is the reason why W. Edwards Deming had to go to Japan to apply his statistical quality control methodology.

It is why J. M. Juran had to go to Japan to emphasize process flow analysis and quality control, identifying chronic problems and then treating them at their source. This was his preferred strategy to dealing with problems after tons of scrap and waste had been produced.

It is the reason today, 2008, that Toyota, where these two scientists first applied their technology has become equal in its share of the world automotive market with General Motors, and will by the end of the year pass GM to be the lone leader in automotive production of the world.

Think of it. General Motors in 1982 when "In Search of Excellence" came out enjoyed 55 percent of the world automotive market. Today, it does not enjoy even 50 percent of the American market, and is in danger of joining Ford and Chrysler as part of history. I cover this is A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007).

Think of it. Peters and Waterman fail to mention Deming or Juran in their book.

Peter Drucker, yes, but Drucker was more on the operational side (MBOs, performance appraisal, position power, vertical management), all of which I have written about somewhat critically. Drucker’s management practices have caused the crippling of American corpocracy and have contributed to the inability of the United States to compete.

Yet, Drucker is one of American management’s darlings, while precious few say much about the genius of Deming and Juran. In fact, there is distancing from Drucker today, but a total embrace of the exactitude of Six Sigma and Total Quality Management by most American companies.

This, unfortunately, appears to be a day late and a dollar short for the US now has the best quality in the world but the consumer market, especially in the US, doesn’t seem to notice when it comes to high-ticket items.

I wrote these words (pp. 207 - 208) in WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS 1990):

"We've seen a seismic shift in values within the organization without an appropriate management response (Figure 5-7). There is not an organization in America that has truly restructured itself to align with these value changes. If this were not true, organizations profiled in such works as In Search of Excellence (1982) would demonstrate more consistency. But as reported by Business Week (November 5, 1984) two years later, many of these organizations experienced roller coaster economic cycles since being profiled as models of excellence."

I thought I was being restrained because many of these companies were in fact failing.

Why? They were copying someone else's culture, and disregarding their own. Later in this same book, and elaborated in SIX SILENT KILLERS (1998), I indicated that culture is indigenous to each operation, and within each operation are many subcultures that must be noted and dealt with accordingly.

YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR OWN UNIQUE CULTURE OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

A highflying local Tampa Bay company bought the copying division of Kodak, which swelled its gross sales into the stratosphere, as well as its stock price. The problem was it attempted to assimilate the Kodak culture into its own with draconian determination, when the cultures differed widely. The result was that the business lost focus, revenue, and ceased to be profitable. The stock price went from $40 a share to pennies to no longer being traded.

The answers to this culture meltdown were in WWMs but it was considered an "angry book," which may have been fair, but executives don't like books that direct their anger at them. They like to think they are in charge even when they aren’t.

WWMs is one of the sensible books written in the last quarter century and it sold only about 2,000 copies. A guy that knew nothing about the publishing business but a lot about organization development (OD) obviously took the wrong approach. I am that guy, and am not inclined to be optimistic and cheerful when the message that is apparent is not optimistic or cheerful.

Now, you mentioned CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s. I don't praise Tom Peters. I mention that he like Bill Livingston and myself believe in the wisdom of skunk works (p. 40). Bill knows a lot more about them than I do because he has been directly involved with them.

An interesting aside. I wrote an article for "Executive Excellence" in which I outlined what skunk works were, and how they worked, and I got a letter from the lawyers of McDonald Douglas that I was violating their trademark and copyright. I did it innocently, and apologized. One of my colleagues said to me, "Well, now you know the big guys read EE."

Ted, I am happy for your success, and have no desire to change you. That said if it changes the emphasis of your influence, all the better. I see you as a change agent while I am something of a gadfly.

My last major speech was a few years ago at an AQP Conference in New Orleans.

People filled the room past overflowing and were standing in the hallway. I was profiling "The Fisher Paradigm."

It was clear to me after an hour's effort of a three and one half hour presentation that I wasn't making contact. I raised my hand, and said, "Peace, thank you very much!" They sat stunned. Someone asked me a question on performance appraisal. It was a provocative question, something that had been missing in the session. “I’ve read your take on performance appraisal,” he said, “and I’d like some empirical evidence to support your belief that it is a waste of time.”

What I told him is in WWMs and SSKs in case you are interested. I can summarize it here.

Of a typical organization, 15 percent are hard chargers, 15 percent are foot draggers and 70 percent are palm trees going the way of the prevailing winds.

Of some 4,000 employees (at the time in the facility in which I worked), 600 (4000 x 0.15) should be having performance or developmental problems. In actuality, I found that only six employees were downgraded and four were designated needing improvement (WWMs, p. 169).

More than a thousand hours of company time were dedicated to this cosmetic process only to justify the paperwork for individual rate increases.

For my investigation, I was no longer welcomed in Human Resource records.

In March 1984 I was designated as the principle speaker at a DCAS seminar on the beach in Clearwater, Florida. Generals, admirals, and other procurement military and civilian executives were the audience. Participative Management and Total Employee Involvement were the rage of the time, and empowerment was the theme of the conference.

In my work, I saw that this hyped up intervention was essentially a charade, and was not working; in fact it was counterproductive.

The title of my speech was “Participative Management, An Adversary Point of View.”

For that little exercise of departure from the positive theme of the conference, I was nearly fired, placed on house arrest and not able to give any speeches for two years, publish any articles, my wages were frozen with no increase during that period, and I was “forced” (I was always keeping notebooks anyway) to turn all my notebooks in of all my writings every week to my boss, whom, incidentally, I loved. I filled up an engineering notebook about every three days.

My speech wasn’t meant to embarrass my company or our general manager, but to point out a major discrepancy between intent and reality. Obviously, I knew it would get some cackles up but in my view it needed to be done.

Regarding the notebooks, after about three weeks, my boss gave up. He didn’t want to see them anymore.

While many directors wanted my head, the general manager remained supportive. He told me privately that he had his doubts about the intervention, even after he had given a short introductory speech of welcome to the conference on how wonderful participative management was. Interesting.

I still have a copy of that speech. Three hundred copies were produced for that conference, and not a one was left after I finished.

One bright spot, an admiral, who believed OD was a new science of organization, took me to dinner that night. I often wondered if he influenced the general manager.

There is always a positive to the negative, as you point out. Those notebooks became my theorizing journals, where I developed the idea of the three cultures and the paradigms associated with them. Ultimately, those journals became WWMs, and I should add, have put me on the crusade that I have continued into my senior years.

Incredible as it may seem, in 1986, or when my house arrest was about to expire, I was promoted to director of human resources planning & development for Honeywell Europe Ltd., where I immediately used the experience as my new laboratory. I found the same problems in Europe, and of course, have written about them extensively as well. I am after all a chemist. You can take the chemist out of the laboratory but then the laboratory becomes the world to the chemist.

You didn’t expect this, but you touched a nerve. By the way, it was Mardi Gras time at that last AQP Conference. After that dismal outing, and after dinner with the publisher of the AQP journal, I walked her back to her hotel. I then went through a dark street to my car, blocks away.

That was necessary because the streets were roped off for the parade. In that dark passage, a guy as big as I am robbed me at knifepoint. For some reason, and I have no idea why I did this, I said before I could think, “This is your day. I have $20 and I never carry any money,” and ripped out the twenty from my billfold and gave it to him. He was so dumbfounded that he hesitated and then asked weakly, “Don’t you have anymore money?” I answered, “No!”

So, he left me. I was weak in the knees but practically ran to my car, where BB was waiting for me. “Go, go, go!” I yelled. She could see I was hysterical, so took off.

Later, when the two of us had regained some composure, she said, “I wonder why he didn’t take your Rolex.” I think my flippant response did him in was all I could think. In any case, God was with me, but I know I’ll never go back to New Orleans again, not in this lifetime.

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Dr. Fisher’s books listed here are available on his website: www.fisherofideas.com.