By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com.
Doug Hall,CEO and founder of Innovation Engineering, participated in a previous podcast on Using Systems Thinking to Power Strategy, Innovation and Growth.
He returns to the Deming Institute podcast again (download) and he shares his approach for using innovation or leadership to improve management practices.
Doug talks about command and control management being too slow for businesses given the competitive markets today. Which is exactly what people have been saying since, at least the 1980s.
The challenge is how to get organizations to adopt better management practices. Doug proposes getting “wins” and building momentum for change. Doug states that finding “new markets” for products and services are probably the biggest example of “wins” his company helps their clients with.
Doug finds the attitude of executives that prevents adopting a better management system is that of focusing on cost cutting. He finds that mindset common and almost impossible to turn around.
Some of the methods that have worked for Doug in convincing those who are looking to improvement management:
- Reframing what managers should focus on from controlling to enabling.
- Running experiments.
- Asking “what is the thing you are most worried about?” Lets try to work on that.
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Related: How to Start Applying Deming’s Ideas on Management – Using Deming’s Ideas When Your Organization Doesn’t – How To Create a Continual Improvement Culture – Jobs to be Done (customer focus) – Change Management: Create a Culture Seeking Continual Improvement or Use Band-Aids?