From Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s 14 Points: Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
By definition, in order to improve something, a change has to occur. I have benchmarked several companies and it seems that those that do the best with their improvement efforts have a workforce that embraces change. If, on the other hand, there is a culture of fear and the workers are terrified to try something different, nothing will improve.
A company leader once told me, “Fear is good. Every employee should be fearful for their job every day.” Let that sink in for a moment. Imagine muddling through the work day, afraid to take any risk and hoping you didn’t do something that would get you fired. In this type of environment, the fear of change can be significant, which means there is little chance for lean and Six Sigma (or any other improvement effort) to take hold.
Another leader said, “Fear is a good motivator, especially fear of the competition.”
It is good to keep an eye on the competition and to have a desire to do better than them, but to fear them? Can you picture a coach motivating a sports team with this speech? “Ok folks. I am afraid of the team we are playing tonight, and they will probably wipe the floor with us. Just do your best and try not to get hurt.” Not a very inspiring speech.
Several years ago, after coming back from a benchmarking trip to Japan, an improvement leader at GE once shared with me how he had asked a Japanese CEO all types of questions, and the CEO answered every one of them. Finally, the GE improvement leader asked, “Why are you being so open with me? We actually compete with you in certain product lines.” The CEO said, “We don’t fear you. You see, we have been improving our processes for a while now, and you are just getting started. By the time you get to our level of productivity, we will be far better that we are now. So your company will never catch up with us.”
Dr. Deming spoke often about the role fear plays in damaging a company’s effort to improve. The example that follows may help shed some light on why this point may be hampering your improvement efforts.
By all accounts, Doug was having a bad day. He had been yelled at by his boss, had a grievance written against him and had a cup of ice water thrown in his face. All of this was a result of a simple change he made to the manufacturing plant layout. Doug was in charge of installing a new piece of equipment, and in order to clear out some space, he had the maintenance guys move a work station 10 feet the previous night.
“What was the big deal?” thought Doug as he reflected on what happened that morning. Well, apparently it was a big deal for Mary. She had been working at that station for over 15 years, doing the same task, the same way, over and over. When Mary arrived that morning and noticed that the station had been moved, she had a meltdown. Doug was immediately called out to the shop floor to talk to Mary and try and calm her down. As he approached Mary’s work station, she threw a glass of water in his face and stormed off to find her union representative.
“What was that all about?” said Doug to Mary’s supervisor.
“Some jerk moved Mary’s work station last night. She had no idea what was going on when she clocked in this morning. It really hit her hard.”
“Nothing was changed but the location. Why do you think she is so upset?”
To read more please visit here.
By John Dyer, from: http://www.industryweek.com/lean-six-sigma/why-do-we-fear-improvement
Leave a Reply