Principles for Business Leaders

“Out of the Crisis”

Those of you who attended our recent seminars will have heard John refer to Kaizen – a Japanese word meaning change for the better. This management philosophy is defined as making “continuous improvement in your business” – slow, incremental but constant.

The Deming philosophy also focuses on continual improvements in product and service quality by reducing uncertainty and variability in design, manufacturing and service processes, driven by the leadership of owner managers/senior management. W. Edward Deming was a leader in the quality management revolution, widely recognised for his contributions to Japan’s industrial rebirth in the 1950’s.  He offered a number of key principles for management to transform business effectiveness. They were first presented in his book “Out of the Crisis” and are still used as a basis for those seeking to improve their business quality today.  We’ve taken the strongest and most relevant for today’s owner/managers and senior management – read them and let us know your thoughts?  Whether you agree with them or not, they certainly provide us all with food for thought!  These principles apply to every business, to small organisations as well as to large ones, to the service industry as well as to manufacturing.

1. Create a constant purpose toward improvement in your business – now commit to it.
2. Adopt the new philosophy and become a leader for change.
3. Stop depending on inspections to drive product quality- eliminates the need for massive inspection by building quality into your product or service from the beginning.
4. End business practices driven by price alone – minimise total cost instead. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Constantly improve your systems and processes – forever!
6. Institute training on the job – train for consistency to help reduce variation.
7. Don’t supervise – teach and institute leadership, provide support and resources so that each staff member can do his or her best.
8. Drive out fear in your business and create trust so that people are not afraid to express ideas or concerns.
9. Optimise team and individual efforts – break down barriers between departments, people must work as one team.
10. Eliminate management by objective – look at how the process is carried out, not just numerical targets.
11. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship – allow everyone to take pride in their work.
12. Implement education and self-improvement.
13. Take action to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job, not just the business leaders, but the transformation must start with you.