Profit Beyond Measure : Extraordinary Results Through Attention to Work and People

by H. Thomas Johnson; Anders Broms; Peter M. Senge

• ISBN13: 9780684836676
• ISBN10: 068483667X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-06
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

9784906224616 Introduction to Quality Control Introduction to Quality Control is highly recommended reading for people of all levels already working in quality control as well as those about to enter the field. It may be the best introduction to this vitally important topic you will ever find.

Author Biography

H. Thomas Johnson is the Retzlaff Professor of Quality Management at Portland State University. He co-authored Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, which is considered one of the most influential management books of the twentieth century by the Harvard Business Review, and authored its controversial sequel, Relevance Regained: From Top-Down Control to Bottom-Up Empowerment.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Peter M. Senge
Introduction: Toward a New System of Thought	1	(10)
Lessons from the Rouge	11	(32)
Relationships (MBM) versus Quantity (MBR)	43	(32)
Produce to Order	75	(40)
Design to Order	115	(26)
Assess to Order	141	(30)
Results Are in the Details	171	(22)
What's Natural Comes Hard	193	(18)
Afterword by Leif Ostling, President and CEO of Scania AB	211	(6)
Appendixes	217	(12)
Acknowledgments	229	(2)
Notes	231	(16)
Index	247

Excerpts

Chapter 1: Lessons from the Rouge It is clear that the primordial intention of the universe is to produce variety in all things... -- Thomas Berry He who would do good...must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer. -- William Blake Managers of business organizations will find as a result of reading this book that they can no longer accept without question the conventional wisdom that says an organization will reach its bottom-line goals best if it drives its employees and suppliers to achieve financial targets in their work. Given this belief, a manager's primary task is to motivate people to reach and exceed quantitative targets defined by financial measures. If you are a manager who takes pride in your ability to cause people to reach quantitative targets, read on. This chapter and the next show that your success actually creates unseen and unnecessary inefficiency and instability. The new management thinking that will help you avoid such inefficiencies and instabilities is then discussed in succeeding chapters, where you learn how to lead your organization to profit beyond measure.Managers who adopt the new thinking offered here will accept as second nature the idea that what decides an organization's long-term profitability is the way it organizes its work, not how well its members achieve financial targets. This chapter compares the long-term records of Toyota and the American "Big Three" automakers to demonstrate the truth of this proposition. It posits Toyota's principles as an example of new management thinking called "management by means." Managing by means is the antithesis of "managing by results," practices identified in this chapter with Toyota's American competitors. Those who manage by results focus on the bottom-line target and consider that achieving financial goals justifies inherently destructive practices. Those who manage by means consider that a desirable end will emerge naturally as a consequence of nurturing the activities of all employees and suppliers in a humane manner. Managing by means requires a profound change in thinking that is a bold alternative to conventional management thinking and practice.The alternative to managing by results which this chapter advocates requires disciplined practices, sustained attention to how work is done, and nurturing every step of the work at every moment. Managing by means requires all managers in an organization to focus, as does nature, on minute particulars. Such attention to detail involves encouraging employees to cultivate their creative talents so they may best serve a customer's specific needs. This management behavior manifests the belief, not that the ends justify any means, as conventional twentieth-century management practice holds, but rather thatthe means are ends in the making.The job of managers who manage by means is to cultivate and nurture conditions that bond company talents and customer needs in a profitable union, not to drive work with destructive financial targets. Instead of a quest for relentless growth of quantitative targets that burns out companies before their time, managing by means, as this book shows, can enable a company to profit beyond measure for generation after generation.To demonstrate what this change in thinking can mean for companies today, this opening chapter tells how differences in the way people think about work actually caused a significant difference in the long-term economic performance of real companies in recent decades. The story contrasts the consequences of acting on the belief that order must be externally imposed with the consequences of acting on the belief that order self-emerges from within. Specifically, the story tells how certain automobile manufacturers between the end of World War II and the 1980s responded differently to the pro