🚀 go-pugleaf

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I think this has sufficient insight for cross-posting on TQM-L,
QUALITY, and BPR.  Feel free to flame me privately if you disagree.
++++++++

Kai Simon asks if others have had similar experiences to 'sudden' BPR
experts arising from consultancy firms:

Yes.  So what's your point?   Let me explain.

Consultants get paid for bringing new information and new
perspectives to firms.  I should emphasize 'new'.  WOuld you go to a
consultant for the latest in 'old' information?

So they're not experts?  So what, neither is anyone else in
application of a theoretical management model.  Hammer & Champy
aren't experts in implementation that's for sure, they are
theoreticians.  Neither was Deming in CQI.

Anyone you find that really is an expert in such model application is
probably too old to be of much use.  They are also transient types
who have done it a bunch of times at different corporations--hired
guns.  Hired guns rarely are up on the latest jee whiz management
model.  They instead use what has worked for them in the past--and
they do it damn well!

Perhaps I can illustrate this by quoting something from a text on
swordsmanship from 1643.

    "In China & Japan, practioners of this science have been referred
to as masters of the martial arts.  Warriors should not fail to learn
this science.
    People who make a living as martial artists these days only deal
with swordsmanship.  The priests of the Kashima & Kantori shrines in
Hitachi province have established such schools, claiming their
teachings have been transmitted by the gods, and travel around
from province to province passing them on to people; this is only a
recent phenomenon. .....  [Marshall Thurber are you listening?]
    As I see society, people make the arts into commercial products;
they think of themselves as commodities, and also make implements as
items of commerce.  Distinguishing the superficial and the
substantial, I find this attitude has less reality than decoration.
    Martial arts is particulary rife with flamboyant showmanship,
with commercial popularization, and profiteering on the part of both
those who teach the subject and those who study it.  The result is,
as someone once said, 'amateuristic martial arts are the cause of
serious wounds'."

I think, without too much of a stretch, you can apply this to
consultants of tqm, bpr, iso9000, cqi, ad nauseum.  It's only a
confusing if you don't know the Way.

Charles Barclay                         2404 Maile Way
Dept. of MIR                            Honolulu, HI 96822
U. of Hawaii                            Fax:  808 956-2774
                                        Phone:  808 956-8545
E-mail:    barclay@busadm1.cba.hawaii.edu

Bring Integrity, Valor, Loyalty, and Commitment back in Vogue: hire
Colin Powell in '96!