Quality This and Quality That ... Does anyone here still believe in TQM??? Does Anybody Care??

[John-in-KC]

This is a rant. This is only a rant. If this had been a rave, there'd be smiley faces throughout...

 

Let's see, I'm 50 now. Since I went to college, I've been through Organizational Effectiveness, Management By Objectives, Management by Exception, Total Quality Management, Management by Wandering Around, Management by Delegation...

 

Does any Scouter here really believe the Quality systems imposed on us are anything other than a pro forma check-a-block? We've got the bloody kids thinking Quality metrics are what matter (see the root thread for this!!!)

 

Want to know something? I think we should be more concerned about:

 

- How good are the theatrics of the Thespians on a Lodge C-Team?

 

- How authentic is the dancing on the Dance Team?

 

- When we talk to young men at their Life, Eagle and Palm Boards of Review, how many of them understand how the Scout Oath and Law transpires in their daily lives?

 

- Can the Venturing Crews say "Gee, this sounds fun" and pull a HA (be it a band trip, a mission trip, or a Philmont trip) activity together with only some technical support from a Consultant?

 

- Does the Council have more than enough volunteers who give of time and labor to help maintain the properties beyond what the Ranger staff can do?

 

- Do the Cubs look at someone and beam a smile when they go through a participation ceremony on the B track at District Pinewood Derby?

 

- Are the Scouters, unit serving, District, and Council, believing in their heart of hearts they are making a difference?

 

If we take care of the program, the metrics will take care of themselves.

 

This was a rant. This was only a rant. If this had been a rave, there would have been smiley faces throughout...

 

PS: This is is in I&P malice aforethought; I wanted room for some more extreme language if need be.

[Gonzo1]

Aahhh, W. Edwards Deming, he's the man!

I love TQM.

[scoutldr]

You stole my rant from the WB thread! Here at work we are now into "Lean Six Sigma". The problem with these are they are never in place long enough to show results. When we get a new boss, we are off on another new fad. The other problem is that these are "methods" (like BSA)...not end products. Too often, I see these programs take on a life of their own, and people create jobs and think up things for you to do that take you away from doing your real job. Just like in the BSA, we need LESS admin overhead...not more. There is nothing wrong with having "key performance indicators" to show that what you are doing is successful. But they need to be measures of "outcomes", not "activity".

[packsaddle]

Incomprehensible gobbledeegook! Me, I'll stick with science.

John, here's a little something for you.

[Beavah]

 

Ah, a fellow Heathen.

 

 

The fact that an effective organization does certain things (like paint its bathrooms pink) does not mean that doing that thing will make another organization effective.

 

All those fads suffer from a causality problem. Especially when it becomes a checkbox thing (Got a mission statement? Check.)

 

Now, how much of our Advancement system copies from this silliness (as Kudu often points out)? Is bein' a First Class Scout just "pro forma check-a-block"?

 

Beavah

 

 

[Gunny2862]

One of my favorite quotes deals with the TQM methodology changing all of the time... note the date of the quote:

 

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we formed up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization." - Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.

 

I like quality management for the end result when it is in place long enough for everyone to understand whats going on - i.e you no longer hear "This is "John" our Lean Six guy" because everyone is actually involved in delivering whatever TQM methodology is being used. Otherwise the above quote is understated in its condemnation.

[ogghall]

Petronius lived in the time of the Roman Emperor Nero who named Petronius "Arbiter of Elegance." Nero was one of the emperors associated with the persecution of Christians, so he could not have lived more than two centuries before Christ.

 

As a Quality Guy myself I think the problem is there is no patience to let the system evolve and improve them in a unique way to your work environment. Regardless whether its Quality Circles, SDWT, TQM. 6 Sigma, Lean or whatever the next thing consultants will get rich on there is always some CEO who wants the results now because the businesses are managed by the quarter. And there is equally enough corporate ladder climbers who will facillitate this and leave their messes behind. The lack of patience also goes to the planning process to implement these things. Got to do it now so we can get payback. Only about 25 years experience talking

[FScouter]

Regarding the quote attributed to Petronius, it has been fairly thoroughly debunked. It apparently originated in Robert Townsend's book Up the Organization (1970) in support of his thesis.

See http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~reedsj/petronius.html

[frankj]

No, I don't care about TQM in the Scouting context, if you're talking about some new initiative because I think there already exists a quality standard, and that is simply "delivering the program." This is a phrase that has been used often in this forum.

 

Gonzo mentioned Deming. He revolutionized thinking about quality in manufacturing processes. Later on, the hucksters, consultants and hustlers took the concepts, packaged them for corporate USA and the rest is history. scoutldr's post is right on the money!

[Gonzo1]

And then's Hawthorne:

Dim the factory lighting, productivity goes up, turn up the radio, productivity goes up, raide the lighting, productivity goes up.

[Gunny2862]

F Scouter do you have a better rebuttal source than that?

 

Okay, I really love that quote and hope I can still use it but I'm willing to see it as a folk wisdom thing.

I am willing to see it as a colloquialism rather than an attributable statement but see that source as someone with an axe to grind rather than a good argument.

I'm going to go look at snopes.

 

[Gunny2862]

Oh garbage!, don't bother sending me another rebuttal source. I've Googled it enough now to know it's probably a false attribution.

I hate losing good quotes!

 

Thanks for pointing it out.

[OldGreyEagle]

TQM is a system that works, but it only works if the Top Level Executives embrace it and don't abandon it when a "crisis" hits. I worked in two hospitals and was part of the TQM implemetation process in both. Both times the employees were reluctant to beleive anyone in upper management cared about their ideas and both times the employees embraced the concepts after buying into the concepts based on upper administration claims.

 

Unfortunately, both times the upper administration lost interest/focus and in a few years it was business as usual, the only problem was the rank and file had been innoculated against such glitzy programs and had very much a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" attitude. Morale was worse because the employees felt they had been taken in when they were suspicious from the start