When college graduates first enter the workplace, they are wide eyed and eager to absorb everything they can learn about the business world. As their careers progress, they keep the wisdom they learn from their mentors with them, for later use. Unfortunately, successive generations end their quest for knowledge when they finally are the leaders, when they need a leadership development plan the most.
Once finally established in the executive suite, managers tend to conduct business the way things have always been done. This is the same recipe for disaster that found US businesses reeling from foreign competition beginning around 1972. Trying to replicate historical corporate success in the present simply does not work.
As an example, during the period following WWII the US corporate community felt they were doing everything perfectly, using their amazing global business success as proof. As several management analysts of the time pointed out, the manufacturing capacity of any global competitors had been destroyed. Nevertheless, corporate America stumbled blindly forward, until they were blindsided around 1972 by better products from across the world.
In one of the greatest ironies of the industrial era, it was American consultants who helped foreign powers reestablish a manufacturing base of considerable competitive strength. Focusing on the customer, the product and the employees, German and Japanese companies began producing a wide range of high quality items that began appearing on American streets and in their homes. Corporate America had to step back and discover what had gone wrong.
Doctor W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran were statisticians who believed management was not being conducted well in the US despite the successes. They were both invited by the JUSE to teach statistical process control to manufacturer and engineers. But beyond the mathematics helping companies strive for perfection, his greatest legacy was in his thoughts on leadership.
Many of the principles highlighted by Doctors Deming and Juran are now prominently displayed on posters in boardrooms everywhere, but following these edicts is harder than adopting pithy slogans. It is one thing to understand that the boss ought to understand the process by which the product or service they sell is made. Most CEOs and senior leaders still feel that that level of detail is unimportant information that takes too much time to learn.
In large businesses, it is easy for those at the top to lose touch with the product they represent and the employees that create it. They risk commission of many of what Doctor Deming described as the seven deadly sins of leadership, a death-knell for companies. All that is needed however, is the professional interest in learning how to actively lead the company.
One of the best ways to create a leadership development plan is to study some of the founding professors of business. Carefully looking at what they felt were the shortfalls of management during the time of great success is insightful and enlightening. In hindsight the failures some corporations experienced seems clear; current managers need to understand those lessons and work hard not to repeat them.
Once finally established in the executive suite, managers tend to conduct business the way things have always been done. This is the same recipe for disaster that found US businesses reeling from foreign competition beginning around 1972. Trying to replicate historical corporate success in the present simply does not work.
As an example, during the period following WWII the US corporate community felt they were doing everything perfectly, using their amazing global business success as proof. As several management analysts of the time pointed out, the manufacturing capacity of any global competitors had been destroyed. Nevertheless, corporate America stumbled blindly forward, until they were blindsided around 1972 by better products from across the world.
In one of the greatest ironies of the industrial era, it was American consultants who helped foreign powers reestablish a manufacturing base of considerable competitive strength. Focusing on the customer, the product and the employees, German and Japanese companies began producing a wide range of high quality items that began appearing on American streets and in their homes. Corporate America had to step back and discover what had gone wrong.
Doctor W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran were statisticians who believed management was not being conducted well in the US despite the successes. They were both invited by the JUSE to teach statistical process control to manufacturer and engineers. But beyond the mathematics helping companies strive for perfection, his greatest legacy was in his thoughts on leadership.
Many of the principles highlighted by Doctors Deming and Juran are now prominently displayed on posters in boardrooms everywhere, but following these edicts is harder than adopting pithy slogans. It is one thing to understand that the boss ought to understand the process by which the product or service they sell is made. Most CEOs and senior leaders still feel that that level of detail is unimportant information that takes too much time to learn.
In large businesses, it is easy for those at the top to lose touch with the product they represent and the employees that create it. They risk commission of many of what Doctor Deming described as the seven deadly sins of leadership, a death-knell for companies. All that is needed however, is the professional interest in learning how to actively lead the company.
One of the best ways to create a leadership development plan is to study some of the founding professors of business. Carefully looking at what they felt were the shortfalls of management during the time of great success is insightful and enlightening. In hindsight the failures some corporations experienced seems clear; current managers need to understand those lessons and work hard not to repeat them.
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