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, as the name implies, is something very different from today's or
yesterday's management fad. It's a process that ought to be embedded deep in the bones of any practicing management team,
anywhere in the world. It's a process that, done right, involves and stimulates every single person in an organization. Unfortunately,
managers keep looking for the magic bullet that will change an organization overnight. As a result, wonderful concepts like
Continuous Improvement and Total Quality Management, which work so well for the best companies, get tried and then abandoned
(or worse, bureaucratized) by the rest.
The interesting question, then, is: Why haven't more organizations fully embraced the Continuous Improvement
ideal and had it fully implemented long ago? Most likely, it's because truly adopting Continuous Improvement means that every individual
in the organization must change old behaviors, and most managers I know, while great at making decisions, are awful as leaders of an
implementation process. They don't recognize the difference between the control they must exercise to make sure that an initiative
stays on track and the control they must give up to allow the people closest to the action to be creative, seize initiative, and take
ownership. And even if management does pass control on down the line, it usually doesn't invest in the training it takes to enable
down-line employees to use that power effectively.
Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
Coauthor, In Search of Excellence
Author, What America Does Right
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