The Way
They Saw It
When we decided to
focus on the future for this issue of News for a
Change, we thought it might be worthwhile to take a
look at previous predictions that had been made.
Here’s a short walk down memory lane, where Miles
Maguire summarizes information from 10 previously
published looks at the past and the future of quality and
teams.
Economist Edgar R.
Fiedler once wrote, “He who lives by the crystal
ball soon learns to eat ground glass.” Indeed,
researchers who study the accuracy of business and
technological predictions say that 60% to 80% of them
miss their mark.
And yet, looking to
the future and trying to figure it out is an irresistible
urge—and can be useful even if your crystal ball
rolls off your desk and shatters into pieces. A flawed
forecast can provide intellectual stimulation, and
predictions do have power. Sometimes—particularly
when they are premonitions of impending doom—they
don’t come true simply because they were
made.
Forecasts about the
future of quality and participation have been tossed
around since at least the mid-1980s, when the early surge
of corporate interest in quality circles and employee
involvement began to wane, and we began to wonder what
would happen next.
At that point,
quality and teams had made their impact on the business
scene, but uneven implementation was a worry. It looked
like the future of employee involvement could take many
different shapes—self-managed teams, quality of
work-life programs, labor-management cooperative
committees, or employee stock ownership
programs.
“After 13 years
of quality circles experience—after the stages of
euphoria, after the negative reactions, after the
over-expectations—it is time for a calm assessment.
We must examine our activities to see what we are doing
right and wrong,” said Wayne S. Rieker, of Rieker
Management Systems, in an address to the IAQC Ninth
Annual Conference and Resource Mart in April
1987.
He predicted that the
next stage of employee involvement would be a broad-based
approach that made teams and participation central to
quality improvement programs implemented in a systematic
way.
A Boost From Baldrige
This vision received
a major boost a few months later when President Reagan
signed the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement
Act of 1987. From the beginning, the Baldrige system
called on companies to improve by recognizing the
importance of “worker involvement in quality”
while making better use of strategic planning and
statistical techniques. This type of through-going
approach is sometimes called total quality management or
more often just TQM.
By the close of the
decade, many observers saw TQM as the dominant paradigm
for teams and quality, but they also recognized that
there were numerous challenges to address. While some
companies were scoring major quality victories—such
as Florida Power and Light’s Deming Prize in
1989—the overall picture wasn’t so glorious.
Faddishness, impatience for results, and fighting among
quality professionals led to a new round of introspection
in the early 1990s.
When quality gurus
were asked to make some predictions for the last decade
of the 20th century, they offered a range of
ideas:
- Globalization would
lead to a growing interest in quality among industrial
buyers around the world.
- Teams would become
focused on specific goals.
- More senior
managers would embrace quality and learn to love
it.
- Accounting systems
would accurately reflect the value of quality
improvements and the cost of quality
failures.
- Union leaders would
become more involved in implementing employee
involvement.
- The structure of
teams would evolve from the basic quality circle into a
variety of forms.
Unexpected
Developments
Several developments
were not fully anticipated by these
prognosticators—notably the recession of the early
1990s that helped make reengineering and restructuring so
popular, or the long bull market that made many companies
and workers focus on short-term results, or the explosion
in information sharing facilitated by the Internet. But
to some extent, many of their predictions came
true.
ISO 9000 and its
sector-specific variants have brought quality systems and
standards to organizations throughout the supply chain
and around the world. Six Sigma has helped quality teams
focus on specific results while making at least some
CEOs, such as former GE Chairman Jack Welch, into
veritable cheerleaders for quality. Companies like Dell
Computer have proven the power of sharing information and
ideas in a wide circle that includes both customers and
suppliers.
On the other hand,
other predictions are still playing out, like the one
about quality accounting. It’s possible that
post-Enron, accountants will take another look at what
and how they are measuring. But “I am mighty
worried about the uninspired way the enormous benefits of
team activities remain unaccounted for,” AQP
co-founder Don Dewar remarked in
1999.
Dewar’s
comments came as part of a panel discussion on the new
millennium. One of the panel’s key predictions was
that teams, employee involvement, and participative
management would only grow in significance. Employee
demands for control over their work lives, the need for
knowledgeable workers, and the explosive growth of small
businesses were some of the reasons
given.
At the beginning of
the 21st century there can be no question but that
quality and teams have improved our world dramatically.
But ironically enough, their very success has diminished
their stature. Ideas that were once considered cutting
edge have become commonplace and may be taken for
granted.
Fast and
Flexible
In this highly
ambiguous environment—made more so by the events of
September 11 and the shadowy war on
terrorism—it’s hard to know what to expect.
When a recent study of the future of quality was
conducted in 1999, it didn’t even try to project
specific events but rather examined a range of
alternative scenarios, from optimistic to pessimistic to
status quo.
Gregory H. Watson,
former ASQ chairman, said at the time that whatever
specific variables may come into play, there were some
constants that need to be considered no matter
what.
“The pursuit of
quality must change,” he said, “becoming more
innovative, flexible, and faster at implementation of
effective solutions.” In addition, “quality
professionals cannot afford to be passive but must
establish personal plans for development that help them
to grow both a broader understanding of business and
the required technical and
statistical skills that will serve them in the next
millennium.”
MILES MAGUIRE, a former editor of Quality
Progress, writes frequently on business and
management issues in the publishing industry. He is an
assistant professor of journalism at the University of
Wisconsin-Oshkosh and holds an MBA from Baltimore’s
Loyola College.
REFERENCES
- Donovan, Michael,
“The Future of Excellence and Quality,”
The Journal for Quality and Participation, March
1988.
- Gibbons, Steve,
“Business Experts Ponder the Past, Present, and
Future,” The Journal for Quality and
Participation, November/December
1999.
- Gibson, Price,
“The Future of Union Involvement,” The
Journal for Quality and Participation, March
1988.
- Karabatsos, Nancy,
“Quality in Transition, Part 1: Account of the
‘80s,” Quality Progress, December
1989.
- Karabatsos,
Nancy,”Quality in Transition, Part 2: A Narrative
for the ‘90s,” Quality Progress,
January 1990.
- National Institute
of Standards and Technology, “History of the
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award,”
available at http://www.quality.nist.gov/History.htm
.
- Rieker, Wayne,
“Where Are We Headed?” The Journal for
Quality and Participation, December
1987.
- Schnaars, Steven
P., Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myth of Rapid
Technological Change (New York: The Free Press,
1989).
- Stephenson, D.B.,
“Famous Forecasting Quotes,” available at
http://www.lsp.ups-tlse.fr/Stephen/STATS/quotes.html
.
- Watson, Gregory H.,
“Back to the Future,” Quality
Progress, December 1999.
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