John Constantine

[Richard Danjin <102104.1751@compuserve.com>]

  "What fools these mortals be."
  Thank you for the response.
  My experence with top management is that they will hire the Tom Peters,
Steven Coveys, Edward Deming, Joe Juran or whoever is bearing the current
popular philosophy's  flag - TQM, Lean, SPC etc. and etc. to come to their
executive off site.  They will say, ok let's do it, hire a consultant to
"cascade" (GM and its UAW-GM Quality Network circa 1985) it down through
the organization and then collectively retreat back to "mahogany row" to
wait for it to happen.  Of course, there are a couple of caveats to
"letting it happen."
  A.) It can never impact them or their power.
  B.) It cannot impact on the business plan.
  Then of course, after about 6 months, they will say this stuff doesn't
work.
  John, people spend their lives in organizations acquiring power, both
formal and informal.  In order to acquire this power that person gives up
more and more of who and what they were when they hired in, becoming a
narcissistic reflection of the organization and they are in.  Then past a
certain point in their career the organization's appraisal system
determines that a given individual has forsaken enough of what that person
was when they hired in and having replaced itself with the "image" of the
oganization to allow for an allocation of more organizational power and
promotion (Faustan).  Of course, one of these individuals will attain, by
this process, the top of the organization.  Pity that one, for there is no
organizational image to reflect and it is now time to do work (lead).  All
one has to do is look at the top of U.S. corporations to see the FAILURE of
this process (Ford, GM, Chrysler).
Dick Danjin
Making Things Run Well