A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

156 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
INTERNAL JOB-RELATED ACTIVITIES
There are many job-related activities that cut across organizational lines and
for which you do not need a permanent organization. I was not a fan of the
Total Quality Management (TQM) movement, which was very popular several
years ago, because of the way it was practiced in many organizations. I
certainly agreed that quality was central and that ownership was important
and that continuous improvement was an eminently worthy goal. The problem,
as I saw it, was in the way TQM was applied, or rather misapplied,
which actually caused more problems than it solved in some organizations.
Still, there were various concepts promoted as integral parts of “TQM”
which were quite good. One was the process action team, sometimes
referred to as a PAT team. The idea of the PAT team was that the team,
made up of members from a number of relevant organizations, would
study a problem or opportunity originally focused on a process rather than
an objective, and then present a solution that would be implemented. This
is where the concept, as practiced, sometimes ran into trouble.
The team was “empowered,” and its solution wasn’t merely a recommendation.
Management was supposed to commit to implementation of
whatever the team came up <strong>with</strong>, like it or not. That was the problem. Not
only did the team operate <strong>with</strong>out the benefit of an overall management
perspective, but the situation might have changed by the time they completed
their analysis. However, this doesn’t mean that the idea of cross-discipline
problem-solving teams wasn’t a good idea. Emphasis on teamwork
is here to stay, and problem-solving teams of this type present an excellent
opportunity to see the leadership of participants at all levels of experience,
profession, and management <strong>with</strong>in an organization.
INTERNAL SOCIETAL-BENEFIT ACTIVITIES
Many companies take on tasks which are primarily for the benefit of
organizations outside of the company, but are done on the company’s
premises and usually on company time. Community fund drives and savings-bond
drives are a couple of examples. Some companies simply give
these tasks to a secretary or to the most junior member of the organization.
To me, that is a waste of an excellent opportunity to get to know and
give leadership experience to some of your younger managers.
I once met a young man who had advanced very rapidly in his company
as an engineer. I learned that his “breakthrough” assignment came
shortly after his hiring, but had little to do <strong>with</strong> his regularly assigned