by Bob Emiliani
People have been trying to convince top business leaders of the merits of progressive management for over 100 years. There is no data on the many different ways that have been tried. Nevertheless, one can easily imagine that the vast majority highlight features that would seem to be of greatest interest to CEOs such as reducing costs, increasing profits, improving quality, growing market share, improving employee engagement, etc. And there probably is a small minority of ways that are more creative or unique. But they all have something in common: a poor track record of success. Most top business leaders remain committed to archaic classical management.
Why is this so? I have written extensively on this topic from the perspectives of status, rights, and privileges; irrationality; secular spirituality; aesthetics’ preconceptions; and workmanship. In this blog post I will focus on secular spirituality, specifically superstition. This is an avenue for not only further understanding why leaders remain committed to archaic classical management, but also for providing new insights on how to get more leaders to accept progressive management.
Four thousand years ago, kings — ancient CEOs — had close relationships with priests because they did not understand many aspects of existence. Superstition ran deep because it helped them make sense of the world, and priests were the mediators between the supernatural and earthly worlds. Priests were the king’s trusted advisors. While the king has ultimate decision-making authority, they were highly attentive to priests. Under threatening conditions, the king precisely followed the priest’s advice.
When a celestial event such as a solar or lunar eclipse occurred, it was taken as a bad omen; a sign of impending doom, some form of harm or disaster that would affect the king and his reign — natural disasters, chaos, internal rebellion, wartime destruction and defeat, crop failures, disease, death, etc. So the priests performed various rituals (e.g., reading animal entrails) and prescribed different antidotes (e.g., sacrifice) to appease the gods and halt or limit the scope of the expected harm, and thus change the future to deliver continued good fortune to the king and perpetuate his reign. Priests’ divination controls the king’s thinking and behavior.
Fast forward to today, four thousand years later. People are still superstitious, including chief executive officers (CEOs). Though we now understand many aspects of our existence, there are many things we do not know or remain ignorant about. Superstitions conveniently fill gaps in our fact-based knowledge. The most common form of superstition is luck (good and bad), to which we ascribe all sorts of events. And we still have concerns about bad omens resulting from a broken mirror, walking under a ladder, a black cat crossing one’s path, Friday the 13th, and so on.
For a company to be successful — especially for start-ups and for established companies to thrive over the long run — a lot of things have to go right among many different dynamic elements that contribute to an enterprise’s existence: employees and departments, customers, suppliers, investors (keeping the faith), communities, and competitors. There are also many types of expected and unexpected intrusions that threaten CEOs and the company’s well-being that could end both their future.
Instead of looking at the sky for celestial events that foretell bad omens, chief financial officers (CFOs) — the modern-day priests — look at financial information, the entrails of the company. Based on this information, an advanced form of ancient mystical numerology, they advise CEOs on various rituals and antidotes needed to halt or limit the scope of the expected harm. In doing so they change the future to deliver continued good fortune to the CEO and perpetuate his reign. The CFO’s divination controls CEO’s thinking and behavior as they precisely follow the priestly advice.
Rituals include the CEO communicating the company’s difficulties to investors and employees, and explaining the antidotes that will stave off calamity or death. Of course, there will be sacrifices: budget cutting, getting rid of one or two senior executives, laying off many lower-level managers and large numbers of workers, pressuring suppliers to lower prices, offshore domestic work, and so on. While seemingly effective, these rituals and antidotes reflect an ancient approach to improvement that typically does more harm than good, thus foretelling future calamity. The priestly CFO will again soon advise the CEO of various rituals and antidotes to halt or limit the scope of the expected harm. Often, recovery is only achievable through the occult practice of mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs.
A more modern approach to improvement is to look at the actual entrails of the company: the genba. There, one will find large numbers of disruptions and tremendous asynchrony between supply and demand whose effect is to miss sales opportunities, increase costs, reduce productivity, generate quality problems, and increase the time for order fulfillment. Of course, neither the CEO nor the CFO can read the actual entrails of the company, and going to the genba violates numerous sacred traditions and would likely result in a prolonged curse from the gods (i.e., CEOs who are higher in status) that would doom them to misfortune. Consequently, an experienced priest, a sensei, is needed to read the entrails of the company.
From this we find a point of possible leverage for getting more leaders to accept progressive management. CEOs, being human, are superstitious and greatly interested in knowing how to improve their chances to be the recipient of good fortune both personally and for the company. Creative petitioners can connect progressive management to good fortune. Waste can be understood as negative energy that will bring bad luck to the CEO and the company. Conversely, eliminating waste will bring alignment with the universe and good luck to the CEO and the company.
Progressive management aligns with CEOs’ intuition, their spiritual being, regarding competition, winning, honor, order, and of meliorative trends. It would bring spiritual well-being to the CEO and the company. Eliminating the negative energies of waste, unevenness, and unreasonableness would smooth the flows of work and produce stable synchrony between supply and demand. Genba kaizen would function as a cleansing ritual, spiritual awakening, spiritual regeneration, and the primary method for developing people whose minds and work are in harmony with the company and customer’s needs. The U-shaped production cell is the shape of a horseshoe, a sign of good luck. Standardized work, 5S, visual management, PDSA, root cause analysis, etc., would be rituals that bring order and consistency, thus avoiding bad luck (chaos). The resulting balance puts the company in alignment with natural evolutionary forces.
Unfortunately, at the present time senseis are not perceived as priests whose status is equivalent, if not superior to CFOs. Therefore, perhaps the biggest challenge will be to find ways to elevate experienced senseis — people who can quickly and expertly read the entrails (genba) of the company and who expertly understand the relationship between the genba and money — into positions whose influence on CEOs is at least as strong as CFOs. Instead of doing the usual thing, which would be to create yet another VP or CXO position, or elevate the VP of operations (who likewise is probably unable to read entrails), the CEOs top priest should simply be an sensei imbued with great wisdom from experience whose time is split between facilitating improvement on the genba and advising the CEO and CFO on how to bring year-over-year good luck to the company.
Bob Emiliani studies areas of Lean leadership and Lean management that others ignore. My work covers both how to be successful with Lean and why leaders resist or reject Lean. I am known as a creative and innovative thinker and highly regarded for thought-provoking writing and speaking. My research and writing is deeply informed by my hands-on industry experience with Lean. Please visit bobemiliani.com.
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