DO YOU TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS?

Do you? I do. Not just anybody can launch and sustain a small business, especially in this difficult climate. Not just anybody can launch and sustain a successful career.
No doubt you’ve occasionally gotten into some trouble by trusting your gut, but it’s the net effect that counts. The results are there to see, evident by the life you’ve built.
And even where our decisions have fallen flat, were flawed instincts to blame? To my experience a flawed assumption is the more likely culprit; or maybe some rankled emotions had us a little off kilter that day.
Our instincts allow us to see solutions, but we can trust these solutions only when we’ve first clearly seen the lay of the land. When armed with an accurate perspective, decisions often become so obvious that we don’t even realize we’ve made them.
So how do you come to see things as they really are? Simply by seeking and embracing the truth.
Seeing the truth takes a prerequisite willingness to see it, meaning you might—as most of us do—have to check your ego at the door. Beyond the willingness, two things are required:
1) to seek and embrace deep truths. These are the timeless, fundamental principles that govern organizations (and life): the ones we cannot break but will only break ourselves against when our egos tell us we can fight them; the ones that, when honored, fulfill our lives in ways we could not have imagined.
2) to see our systems for what they are. This is the unvarnished truth of here and now. No whitewashing! Realize that you’ve set your processes up to give you exactly what they currently give you. Also, avail yourself of the insights given by the people who work these processes.
Sound instincts are guided by truth, not by ego or shiny objects. [1]
[1] A universal example of ego-driven instincts is, when something goes wrong, we (a) look for somebody to blame, and (b) think we can swoop in on-the-fly with an immediate solution. We’ve all been guilty of it! Or we might look to technology (a shiny object) as a solution to a problem before we even understand the problem!
Besides revealing the truths that govern how businesses operate and teaching you how to harness them for sustained improvements, the basics of The Floworks approach are simply:
  • Enhance workflow.
  • Market the new capabilities that result from this enhanced workflow (there will be many).
  • Repeat. It's not complicated but it does require the willingness and discipline to embrace a new way of thinking and then act accordingly. [2]
The discipline required is not trivial, but it does come with significant pay-off. Meetings will be fewer; the ones that remain will be shorter. Decisions will flow in a way you never thought possible. There is little doubt that your instincts are telling you right now to spend more time working on the business, instead of just in it. These pay-offs are just two of the many ways where we will find that time for you.
You will learn how to sustain these results yourself and watch your culture transform into one that strives to continually improve. The Floworks brings organizational development through operations development with a proven framework for leadership in a customer-centric approach. This world-class approach is now readily available to you.
  • [2] Some of the disciplines that will reveal the truths necessary to properly leverage instincts and manage our organizations include:
  • capturing good data.
  • recognizing and dismissing irrelevant data (which is most of it).
  • practicing good analysis of good data.
  • applying sound logic.
  • recognizing and optimizing within the principles that govern our organization and its systems.
  • never losing sight of what is important in each situation (e.g. the aim of the system—more on this below).
  • making an honest appraisal of processes and the limitations they exhibit.
  • not making employees into scapegoats when the culprit is almost always the system we have given them to work in.
We have redefined MBA to mean Masters in Better Action and offer it to everyone in your organization with the “tuition” refunded many times over in the form of returns to your bottom line. In fact, you will delight when calculating the multiple by which, as owner, your personal hourly earnings have increased. [3] And the only admissions test is an expressed willingness and desire to learn the best of what there is to know about management!
Never again will you have to swing like a pendulum from one management approach to another. We start where you are with your business as the classroom and lab. The Floworks learn-by-doing approach will center on the operation—the system you’ve set up to produce and deliver to your customers—and what needs to happen with it in order to delight them.
The truth is, it’s undisputedly world-class. It has the unique distinction of being revolutionary and proven at the same time. We start where you are—no matter where that is—building on what is good and stable. It’s inspiring. It’s fulfilling. It’s freeing. It’s fun (okay, maybe not in the way an amusement park is, but fun in the way that building a log cabin would be).
I was exposed to it just as I was launching my career and was drawn to it instinctively, knowing I had stumbled upon the truth. I’ve spent the entirety of my career wrapping my head around it. You will benefit from my three decades of hard-won knowledge when I present all these truths to you in the form of sustained results for your business plus your own newly fortified knowledge base, propelling your company, and your life, toward the vision you hold for them. Read on to learn more about this transformative approach to managing an organization while I justify my claims of its excellence.
[3] i.e. as profits increase while you work fewer hours by trusting the systems we set up to do the work for you.

MANAGEMENT IS AN INVENTION

Have you ever stopped to realize that management is an invention? And then further realized the good news that that means we can reinvent it? Here’s even better news for you: it’s already been reinvented and the new version works. It’s tried and true: far superior to the prevailing style of management.
Here’s the gist of it:
  • Think for the long-haul: take a long-term view of the market, and the system designed to serve it.
  • Evaluate and set actions based on an understanding of the system as a whole.
  • People are an integral part of the system: respect them, train them, give them everything they need to wholeheartedly serve the customer.
  • Take the organization’s capabilities beyond what the customer expects— beyond what he even knows to ask for.
  • Enlighten the market: develop it to receive the benefits of these enhanced capabilities and innovations.
That’s it! That’s what we’ve got to do. Pretty simple, huh? Easy to see the simple logic in it anyway. Admittedly, it does take considerable discipline to practice, but all five become second nature by learning and practicing the right thinking (more on this right thinking later). And here are another two pieces of good news for you:
  • 1) You don’t have to wait until you’re not busy to begin the transformation. This is learn-by-doing; and with the doing come the returns.

  • 2) As mentioned earlier, we start where you are, building upon what you are already doing right. And if you’re a small-to-medium size business that has survived recent challenges: mandates, lockdowns, lack of staff, supply chain issues, lockdown-induced recession, etc., etc., there is plenty that you’re already doing right. Indeed, businesses that come out of these far-reaching crises tend to find themselves in a stronger position just for having survived them.
So, with all of the good news, why isn’t every company managed this way? It’s a good question. Two contributing factors are: (1) as mentioned, it takes discipline; and (2) the long-term perspective central to this philosophy runs counter to the wide-spread tendency to navigate through the heat of the moment using whatever seems most expedient. Old habits die hard, especially when the heat is on.
In fact, one of the reasons The Floworks caters to privately held enterprises is because publicly-traded companies are forced to press for numbers every reporting period. When faced with the pressures brought by such a short-term focus, management often resorts to decisions and tactics that are detrimental to the company and seem bizarre when considered from a rational perspective. All the while the impetus prompting such harm is purely contrived; you could even say it's self-inflicted! Conducting business according to an arbitrary and unnecessarily short time-frame flies in the face of what you will learn from The Floworks and, in fact, hinders this entire system of management (after all, it does appear at #1 on the above list of what we’ve got to do!). [4]
Instead, when armed with the deep-truths and sound principles constituting the world’s foremost management framework, your focus will be on what is most important to your company, while you confidently ignore the arbitrary urgencies that continually win the attention of yet-to-be enlightened managers. [5]
[4] Note that cash flow problems are obviously a legitimate urgency and must be the priority. [5] Ignoring these arbitrary urgencies is yet a third way that we find the time for you to finally work on the business. There are more.

Our Obligations as Managers... ...and the Thinking That Allows Us to Fulfill Them

...first, OUR OBLIGATIONS AS MANAGERS...

  • The five-item list presented earlier forms the essential structure of the management system you will learn from The Floworks. In more practical terms, consider them to be the Five Obligations of Management. Here they are again for easy reference:

  • Management must:

  • Think for the long-haul: take a long-term view of the market, and the system designed to serve it.
  • Evaluate and set actions based on an understanding of the system as a whole.
  • People are an integral part of the system: respect them, train them, give them everything they need to whole-heartedly serve the customer.
  • Take the organization’s capabilities beyond what the customer expects—beyond what he even knows to ask for.
  • Enlighten the market: develop it to realize the benefits of these enhanced capabilities and innovations.
When pursued diligently—and guided by right thinking—these Obligations form a complete system of management that has endured where you’ve seen countless management fads come and go. Its influence has been around for decades. For instance, it’s what Toyota has long been built on (for those of you who may be familiar with the Lean approach associated with Toyota, notice that I have made no mention of it).
Why then call it ‘new’? Because it is not practiced or taught to the extent warranted. It gets mention in all business school curricula but, sadly, usually not much more than a mention. It will be new to the majority of you who are reading this.
These five Obligations are actually a condensed version of the best-known contribution of a gentleman named Dr. W. Edwards Deming: his 14 Points for the Transformation of Management. This five-item condensed form makes it easier to take in at first glance, and subsequently easier to consider Dr. Deming’s 14 Points as a whole.
Let’s take a look into the 14 Points; later we will explore more about the great man himself. Over the years I have tweaked their wording in a way that I find my clients readily relate to. That version appears here followed by my thoughts (shown in Figure 1) on how matters in the two lists relate.
DEMING'S 14 POINTS
Deming often spoke of the responsibility of management to “improve quality, productivity, and competitive position.” He summarized this responsibility for improvement under these action-items: his 14 Points for the Transformation of Management:
  • Create a constancy of purpose to serve that will sustain the organization for the long-term. Create the purpose. Create the constancy.
  • Adopt this new philosophy of management as way of accepting the responsibility to improve quality, productivity, and competitive position. Adopt: understand, embrace, practice.
  • Quality cannot be inspected into a product or service. Build it in in the first place.
  • Go from a cost-mentality to systems thinking. Quit basing decisions on upfront costs. Expand the perspective of the system to include the supplier.
  • Understand and exploit the relationship between quality, productivity and cost. Continually improve the system. Customer loyalty will result.
  • Your people are part of the system: train them accordingly.
  • Your people are part of the system: give them everything they need to serve the customer. Servant leadership.
  • Drive out fear. Build trust.
  • Break down barriers. Optimize the system as a whole. Enlist the people in the system in its optimization.
  • Eliminate slogans and exhortations. They are a cheap deferment of good management and insult the intelligence and character of employees.
  • Go from lazy management based on targets and results to right thinking focused upstream where changes will bring real improvements.
  • Permit pride in workmanship.
  • Promote education and personal growth. Teach people how to think: everybody benefits.
  • Take action to accomplish the transformation: transform individuals in leadership; align the organization for the flow of improvements; see and nurture the culture that results.
Before we go any further, I want to be very clear that I fully embrace Dr. Deming’s 14 Points and develop my clients within each: I am not trying to replace them with the five Obligations and offer them only as a way of thinking about the 14 Points as a whole, and to help bring you along in the knowledge that Dr. Deming developed for us. Perhaps you will reject the notion that Dr. Deming’s 14 Points fit neatly into the five Obligations I offer, but you cannot reject the 14 Points; at least not if you care about the long-term prospects of your business and all of the people who rely on it to survive and succeed.

...and THE THINKING THAT ALLOWS US TO FULFILL OUR OBLIGATIONS AS MANAGERS

Deming called this way of thinking profound knowledge (in contrast to subject-matter knowledge. Together they make a helluva good pair.). There are four parts to it:
  • An appreciation for systems
  • An understanding of variation
  • Knowledge about building knowledge
  • Some understanding of psychology
These four parts and the interplay between each and all of them form The System of Profound Knowledge (SPK). It will take your learning, understanding of, and ability to manage your company beyond what you ever thought possible.
A quick elaboration on the SPK is presented here in a simple format appearing as several bullet points under each of its four parts. It will give you an idea of what goes into developing your thinking within each of the four, and around the system as a whole.
  • AN APPRECIATION FOR SYSTEMS
  • The definition of a system: a collection of components that are aligned to provide a certain value to a customer. A vacuum cleaner, paired with someone willing to use it, is a simple example.
  • The aim of the system of interest (e.g., delight its customer in providing a reliable, convenient, affordable way to have a tidy floor). Trying to manage a system without maintaining focus on its aim is frustrating at best and likely futile; and I see this happening every day.
  • Knowing that the strength of the systems approach lies in seeing the linkages.
  • Understanding the role of cooperation in the improvement of a system.
  • The Floworks provides a unique and enlightening perspective on different types of systems of production (manufacturing, project-based, knowledge work, services, etc.).
AN UNDERSTANDING OF VARIATION
  • Reducing variation in a system will facilitate prediction regarding its behavior and output, making it easier to manage. It will also enhance proficiency in achieving its aim of delighting the customer.
  • There are two vitally different types to consider: (1) variation which arises from the normal, day-to-day operation of the system (due to common causes) and (2) variation which is assignable to a cause shifting the system away from its normal operation (an assignable cause). [6]
  • To reduce variation we need to distinguish between the two types and then act accordingly (take note: this is central to all of our efforts to improve systems).
  • Logic dictates that two types of mistakes can occur when trying to reduce variation: as expected, they both increase variation, causing us to throw our systems even further out of whack.
  • The Floworks provides a way to reduce variation in flow through a system, not by tackling it directly, but by aggregating its effects it to a single point.
KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BUILDING KNOWLEDGE
  • Learn about your systems in order to improve them.
  • Theory is the basis of all learning. Its purpose is to guide better practice.
  • Use a scientific approach.
  • Management is action based on prediction.
  • The importance of the interaction between theory and experience when trying to improve a system (profound knowledge + subject matter knowledge: still a helluva good pair!).
  • Operational Definitions: where the rubber meets the road.
SOME KNOWLEDGE OF PSYCHOLOGY
  • Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation.
  • Understanding the role of the system in determining the performance of the individual.
  • Trust vs. fear.
  • The importance of joy in work.
  • Understanding resistance to change.
  • The power of the engaged employee.
  • The transcendent power of engaged employees who cooperate.
[6] the term 'special' cause is frequently used instead of 'assignable' cause. I use 'assignable' because I consider it to be more descriptive.
Whew! There is a lot there. But don’t be overwhelmed. If you prefer for now, just look at it as 5 things and 4 things, all related, as you've seen in this diagram:
While reading through the 14 Points and the SPK you will have begun to appreciate the nature of the Deming management philosophy. It is not difficult but it is different. This is the platform from which The Floworks operates and teaches. All of our methods, all of what we show you, all of what we offer have a connection to this framework. In fact, anything you have ever learned about management that is worth a darn has a connection to this framework.
For an introductory yet comprehensive deep dive into the Deming framework there is no better handling of it than the active-learning course 12 Days to Deming developed over the last ten-plus years by my friend, Dr. Henry Neave (pictured right with Dr. Deming). As a close colleague of Dr. Deming, Henry helped host Deming’s famous four-day seminars and, with Deming’s encouragement, authored a book entitled The Deming Dimension. It’s an excellent companion to Deming’s seminal books Out of the Crisis and The New Economics and also serves as the accompanying text to 12 Days to Deming. The impact that Henry’s work has had on my own journey to knowledge is immense. With his book and his course, he opened a new world to me by making Dr. Deming’s teaching so much more accessible. Did I say so much more? It’s difficult for me to put into words just how much, but I will at least share with you my written endorsement of the 12 Days to Deming course:
“Dr Deming’s teaching has influenced my career since I first heard him speak in 1990. With his book, The Deming Dimension, Henry Neave then opened my eyes to Deming on a whole new level (don’t ask me why I didn’t discover the book until 2012!). In the summer of 2017, Professor Neave was gracious enough to send me an early version of 12 Days to Deming—I jumped right in. While the book had opened my eyes, his course has enabled me to integrate the Deming philosophy into my everyday thinking beyond what I had imagined possible. Intuitively, I knew that I had happened upon the truth when I discovered Deming all those years ago, but the comprehensive understanding I craved and some of the finer points remained stubbornly elusive. Professor Neave has helped me to now see Deming’s leadership philosophy as a whole, and with that an understanding of how each of its components relates to the others. He makes Deming accessible. Throw yourself into 12 Days to Deming, and be ready to be transformed!”
I am privileged to have had a hand in reviewing 12 Days as he was finishing it. Download it here free of charge; it's Henry's gift to us. It will knock your socks off and accelerate you along the road to knowledge at the same time! In fact, I estimate that Henry's writing has accelerated progress along my own road to knowledge by 7-10 years (though I probably do an injustice by trying to put a number to it). And it’s not just the taking of the course and the reading of the book. It’s that the Deming framework is now a part of how my mind works. When your mind internalizes this framework, and it begins to shape your thinking, the learning–the natural accumulation of knowledge–really begins. Also expect, in your newly enlightened mind, a spark of creativity and the insight required to turn the page on stubborn problems by developing solutions that last. Before we wrap, read on to learn a bit more about Dr. Deming and The Floworks… ...but first we have a few more entries for the good news tally...
Deming’s Impact on Japan... and Three-Martini Lunches in America
W. Edwards Deming was an American physicist and statistician appointed by General MacArthur to help rebuild Japan after it was devastated in WWII. While there, the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) asked him to help with problems specific to industry. The rest is history. [7] Japan used what he taught them and rose from the ashes—the literal ashes of war—to become the best manufacturers in the world. They listened to Dr. Deming; they had no choice. Toyota and companies like it are the result. U.S. industry, however, did not give Deming an ear after the war. Why would we? As the only suppliers to a bombed-out world, the market was there for the taking and we took it. We also took a lot of three-martini lunches. Why not? Productive afternoons are optional when success comes without really trying. This is the world in which Western management developed. We have inherited the shortsighted, short-cut practices that arose during this era and took shape in the decades that followed (and also took root in our business schools): they simply aren’t viable in today’s competitive world.
This sad history is the opposite of Dr Deming's guidance in the 11th of his 14 Points–its dubious logic could be stated as, "The results are there so we must be doing all right, no need to develop the operation upstream." Well, the Japanese were developing upstream, and just as Deming predicted in 1950: they ate our lunch (forgoing the martinis no doubt).
“Deming told Japanese business leaders, despite their nation having been much destroyed by the war, if they followed the theories and practices he was teaching, they would be exporting quality products—and have manufacturers the world over screaming for protection—in five years. As it turned out he was wrong about one thing. It only took about four years for the screaming to begin.” [8]
But, not until 1980 did U.S. industry begin to ask about Deming. By then it was broadly known—painfully known—that Japan was exporting products superior to those made anywhere else in the world: They continue to eat our lunch to this day. Do you realize that Ford is the only one of the big three auto makers that remains? GM failed and was bailed out by U.S. taxpayers. Chrysler has passed through too many hands to remember. Have you noticed that the marketing team for the reasonably-well-regarded Dodge Ram pick-up has dropped the name 'Dodge' because of its association with poor quality?! If not, its absence will be conspicuous the next time you see one of its commercials.
[7] And what a fascinating history it is. See it unfold in this timeline. [8] The New Economics (Third Ed) p. 159 citing a 1980 article in Quality magazine.
It’s now quite obvious that we had needed to develop our systems of production and service, and our management practices, just as the Japanese had been doing; but, with our vision obscured by all of the cash rolling in—fat, dumb and happy we were—we just didn’t see it.
And now, we have no choice but to listen. We seem to have awakened to this fact but most still don’t get it right. Companies in the West have long tried to copy what Toyota does as though it were as easy as monkey see, monkey do, borrowing this tool and that tool, this technique and that technique, expecting results. The Lean movement that you may have heard about sprang from what Toyota calls the “Toyota Production System” (TPS). The principles of Lean are sound but its name is tainted by superficial efforts to adopt it: companies look to it as a quick fix, or merely give it lip service as a way to land business (again, foiled by a short-term perspective). Consultants promote it without understanding what it is they have a hold of (hacks doing damage). That’s why Lean horror stories abound and why I avoid the word 'Lean' in association with The Floworks approach, though we do borrow from the TPS—but not without understanding the thinking that developed Toyota’s storied management system. While companies try in vain to copy what Toyota does, The Floworks brings you what Toyota knows as it applies to your own business.
Remember, it’s not about the tools and techniques; it’s about the thinking behind the tools and techniques. The Floworks goes upstream to the source of the knowledge: Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the man who made it available to us in the form of a comprehensive leadership framework. Thanks to his lifelong dedication, the knowledge necessary to transform your business and yourself is there for the taking.
And The Floworks’ purpose is to help you take it, and help you apply it as your own. This is your chance to listen—and learn—whether you are in a service-based business (as are most of our clients), or in manufacturing. It readily applies in either arena.
THE THEORY BEHIND THE FLOWORKS
But where to begin the listening and learning? I have a suggestion that I feel so strongly about it serves as the preface for the theory behind The Floworks: inspired by the source himself in a 1991 interview. It’s hardly a novel idea and surely echoed—if we are being honest—by most who have ever tried their hand at management:
“Knowing how to manage people is the single most important part of management—and the part that management knows least about.” [9]
Using the first half of Deming's comment, the theory flows like this:
That’s it. That’s how we get started, and that’s how the other pieces of this greatest of all management frameworks begin to fall into place: the entire system of management, and all of the learning that goes with it. Here are another couple of key pieces to the philosophy behind The Floworks that you will like:
  • 1) When work flows, a lot of other problems that plague your efforts to serve the customer, and afflict employee morale, just go away.

  • 2) By enhancing workflow, more work moves across the same resources, across the same fixed costs. Profits soar!
That’s right! With flow comes results—right to your bottom line. The effort pays for itself many times over. And these changes rarely (almost never, actually) require capital outlays (or the delays that come with such projects). Like I said earlier, we start where you are.
In short, you get a production system that works, a comprehensive management framework that is proven, and you learn to operate both of them on your own.
In addition to a powerful framework that will transform your business, we bring a comprehensive skill set consistent with what you’d expect a small business consultant to offer. Click here for more details about workflow, The Floworks approach, and what all of this looks like. But first see the four new entries on the Good News Tally...
[9] Orsini, The Essential Deming, p. 168

Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held highWhere knowledge is freeWhere the world has not been broken up into fragmentsBy narrow domestic wallsWhere the words come out from the depth of truthWhere tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfectionWhere the clear stream of reason has not lost its wayInto the dreary desert sand of dead habitWhere the mind is lead forward by theeInto ever-widening thought and actionInto that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. -Tagore
© Copyright 2024 The Floworks, LLC