Fourth Generation Management: The New Business Consciousness [Hardcover]

This is an excellent book, with many breakthrough ideas explained in a very compelling way.

I recommend this book for practitioners working with Lean, Systems thinking or general operational improvement, however, if you are into six-sigma you will not understand the profound knowledge this book contains.

There are a many reasons why I like this book, it has some memorable insights and phrases. Such as `don't work on costs, work on the causes of costs'.

Joiner also highlights how most managers manage their business without any theory behind their actions.. `We should be thankful if the action of management is based on theory...'

Joiner relentlessly pushes the notion that organisations must be `understood and managed as a `system', while developing process thinking, making decisions on customer data and understanding the theory of variation'.

He then goes on to say that the typical management response to calls for improvement is to either 1) distort the system or 2) distort the figures instead of improving the system.

Most people in the world of operational improvement will have come across the Deming PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) cycle, Joiner explains and supports this process very well but he adds a significant insight, what he says is, that when starting to make improvements you must start at CHECK, in fact he devotes a whole chapter to this important variation on Deming's PDCA theme. `Performing check is what most organisations fail to do. Check uncovers things we would just as soon not know, it forces us to look at the huge wastes in each of our activities and exposes it all, and the non productive or plain stupid things we have unknowingly been doing for years. It creates the gut level energy to do a better job of taking Action, of Planning and Doing'.

Joiner states that `a fundamental tenant is that nothing happens in a predictable, sustainable way unless you build mechanisms that cause it to happen in a predictable sustained way'

He talks about listening to management conversations for insights into the organisations real intent and focus he says ... `The way top management spends its time and the questions they ask of each other and the rest of the organisation is critical in determining the focus of the organisation.'

The book goes on to explain how to reduce process variation, the sections about how managers respond to variation would be amusing if they were not real, i.e. how managers work on the people instead of working on the system and the injustice that results in addition to the loss in organisational performance.

A good example of system variation resulting in perverse decisions and behaviour is illustrated by an example Joiner uses in telling a real story about a bank teller, who on several occasions got rewarded for her performance and at other times chastised....finally, she was unlucky enough to loose her job. Later, when talking to a friend she said that she never understood why she being praised because she hadn't done anything different and likewise the chastisement. Further conversation revealed that she had been a victim of system variation, the performance factors were attributed to her and not where they should have been that is to the system in which she worked. Essentially she had lost the Variation Lottery. He quotes Dr. Lloyd Nelson `failure to understand variation is the central problem of management'

Joiner also wallops the inappropriate use of standards (accreditation schemes like ISO and BSI) because they are a barrier to improvement and creativity. He argues that standards far from improving the organisation often result in a loss of performance. `They stifle creativity, deflect attention from customers, increase red tape and make work inflexible, while providing only the minimum acceptable outputs'

When it comes to people motivation he states that `to optimise the organisation as a whole, intrinsic motivation works better that rewards and punishment'

Finally he states that in order to get `better results you must have better methods' and he goes on to explain what those methods are.

This is a fine book, with excellent practical ideas as long as you see people as an asset capable of improving their own workplace and not as a cost to be `managed'.

This book which continues Dr Demmings theories is incredibly easy to read and the examples are so excellently communicated that it makes quite complex points seem simple. This is particularly true of the process variation re tweaking which is something I, and many other managers I know, have a habit of doing - not anymore, at least not without a great deal of thought! Brilliant I would recommend this to both experiences and novice managers.

I can't understand why "Fourth Generation Management" is out of print. It seems even more relevant to today's difficult economic climate than it did in 1994. In essence, the book gives us a window onto what W Edwards Deming's approach to management should mean in practice. After the introductory chapters, the book offers three main strands in this approach to management:

- understanding the purpose of the business system/ process from the point of view of the customer
- understanding process data and variation, with the most straightforward explanation of control charts I've seen
- working together as one team for improvement.

I struggled with the book at first - I found the writing style annoying: the book is absolutely stuffed with little vignettes and scenarios. Some of these are enlightening, but many feel like padding. However, the book is worth persisting with, and makes many really interesting points, for example, "Our ability to produce rapid, sustained improvement is tied directly to our ability to understand and interpret variation". The chapters on variation alone make it worth the (second hand) price.

Inspired by this book, I am going to read more on Deming's approach to management.