The question resounded throughout company XYZ corridors: “If TQM is
supposed to help us be better managers, then why do we hate it so much?!?!”
XYZ was entering its fifth year of Total Quality Management and had even
won a State Senate TQM award. But the worth of their TQM program was
questioned by lower and middle management. Everyone felt the program had
stagnated, and upper management struggled to understand why TQM had become
a bad word.
Upper management had demonstrated their commitment to TQM by requiring
mandatory TQM training. Most groups were near 100% compliance, except
upper management. Upper management always had pressing priorities, which
made the time commitment to such training difficult. They were already
“TQM literate” – they had read various literatures on TQM, such as Deming’s
“Out of the Crisis,” and could easily cite the 14 principles for TQM,
especially “driving out fear.” Indeed, the driving out fear retreats were
an upper management initiative. In these retreats the consultant had
coached upper management to listen and other managers to speak frankly and
openly as a technique for driving out fear. Many managers were encouraged
and thought the retreats signaled change. But in the ensuing months, some
of those who had been most vocal were passed over or transferred to
obscurity, while the quietest and most cautious were promoted. When
confronted with this trend, upper management replied they had carefully
made each personnel decision based on “all the facts.”
Upper management believed the TQM principle of putting everyone in the
company to work in accomplishing the transformation. They often said the
workers were closest to their products and were in the best position to
make many decisions. To this end many quality circles had been assembled
to study different aspects of the business and implement change. Upper
management attempted to appoint the “best people” for each issue. Others
noticed these “best people” often reflected upper management’s biases. Yet
quality circles were as likely to surprise upper management as not.
Resources were seldom available to implement these surprises. Upper
management always explained such failure to implement in terms of competing
priorities. For some surprises a new quality circle would be appointed to
restudy the issue. Upper management explained that some decisions would
have far reaching consequences and deserved a second look. Others noticed
the new personnel were very carefully selected, and the new findings
seldom presented “surprises.”
WALK-TALK GAPS
XYZ’s faltering TQM program was not a victim of bad faith. To use the
terms borrowed from Chris Argyris and Donald Schon in their seminal 1978
work, “Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective,” XYZ’s TQM
program was more a victim of its “espoused theory” coming up against their
“theory-in-use.” Any newly “espoused” strategy, however explicit and
sensible, competes with an implicitly “enacted” strategy. Implicitly
“enacted” strategies arise from all the processes, assumptions, rules, and
behaviors woven into the organization at all levels through a history of
systematic choices and actions. This enacted strategy is learned by doing,
much like riding a bicycle. If asked exactly what we do in riding a
bicycle, we would be hard pressed to explain it. Such experiential
knowledge is tacit. It requires a great deal of reflection to make it
explicit. When a newly espoused strategy comes up against an enacted
strategy, such as in company XYZ’s TQM program, it is reasonable to expect
gaps between the two. Further, because the enacted strategy is normally
implicit, there is usually a lack of awareness of the gaps between our
talk and our walk.
A SOURCE OF DYSFUNCTION OR A SOURCE OF CREATIVITY
Gaps between what we say and what we do can be either a source of
dysfunction or a source of creative tension. In the case of XYZ there was
a strong history of authoritarian management: the boss said what was
wanted, and you did what the boss said. When this came up against the
explicit strategy of “empowering” workers to make decisions, upper
management continued to act in their normal way. They wanted the benefits
of TQM, so they told everyone to embrace it. They did not notice that
through their actions they did not embrace it themselves. They skipped the
training, instituted fear, and continued to make the decisions through
manipulating quality circles. None of this was a conscious strategy.
Rather it was a tacitly enacted strategy arising out of a system of actions
that were consistent with their traditional processes, assumptions, rules,
and behaviors. When the driving out fear retreats resulted in instituting
fear, the walk-talk gaps became both large and dysfunctional. They were
disguised and not talked about. This stagnated XYZ’s TQM program and froze
their ability to change the situation. Chris Argyris has written about
such dynamics. He calls it “organizational defensive routines.” Such
routines are undertaken by individuals in companies to preserve their
status and sense of security (“Teaching smart people how to learn,”
Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991).
Walk-talk gaps need not be dysfunctional. They can instead be a great
source of creativity. This creativity can occur naturally in the absence
of organizational defensive routines. However, less is left to chance if
the hard work of reflection and dialogue is engaged. The process not only
helps avoid falling into organizational defensive routines, it also engages
the collective creativity of the company in a positive way. In this
process walk-talk gaps are made explicit through reflection so individuals
are able to talk about such differences and make conscious choices.
Argyris and Schon refer to this process in terms of “organizational
dialectic.” In this process organizational inquiry is engaged when
inconsistencies in “espoused theory” and “theory-in-use” come into play.
Senge (The Fifth Discipline, 1990) refers to it as “dialogue.” Here,
members of a team temporarily put aside their tendency to advocate
particular policies and enter into a genuine “thinking together.” Specific
strategies can be designed to facilitate the spirit of “organizational
dialectic” and “dialogue.”
It is not at all unusual for a company to let its “choices” occur through
implicitly enacted strategies. These implicit “choices” will almost always
have unintended consequences. But if choices are made consciously, the
results will be much more predictable. This entails understanding their
current system of actions and choosing future actions consistent with what
they espouse. When companies undertake the hard work of reflection they
are able to discover their walk-talk gaps. These gaps will represent what
the company wants to become. For example, “We want to become a TQM
company, but by our actions we aren’t there yet.” By engaging in the
discipline of dialogue, companies are then able to use their walk-talk gaps
as a source of creativity. They will be able choose the actions that are
necessary to become what they want to become. For example, “These are the
actions and behaviors we will work to change to become a TQM company.”
Walk-talk gaps can then become what the company is working to become,
instead of what the company is working to hide.
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Originally published as Volume 1.7, October 2, 1998, of The Corporate Forum
Engineering Management Department, Old Dominion University