All entries for Wednesday 13 October 2010

Deming vs Drucker

Follow-up to Inspiring from MKN Chronicles

So far in my reading it seems to be that every management theory i've come accross can trace its routes back to one of the two contrasting ideas belonging to either Deming or Drucker.

From Deming's work arose the EFQM model. This model which was developed from the Deming circle and the importance of continuous self improvement emphasises the importance of all the enablers of an organisation to achieve the desired results. With this model, success isn't solely based on performance and that for the proccesses which achieve results to work efficiently, cooperation is needed to effectively coordinate all the enablers.

The contrasting view of Drucker, who coined the term Management by Objectives, placed heavy emphasis on target setting to harmonize the efforts of the organisation towards a specific goal. As this theory developed, Performance Management was born. Despite seemingly integrating the workforce into the target setting process, this method still relies heavily on the idea of setting objectives and reviewing performance against them.

I have also come accross the balanced scorecard strategy. While my reading into this is more limited that the previous methods I have mentioned it seems to me that this strategy has similarities to Performance Management with its reliance on metric data to assess the business. And while it does try to include other factors into how it assesses performance by including aspects such as customer opinion, it does seem to be more heavily focussed on the financial aspects. I have to read further into this strategy to fully understand it, but at the moment my first impressions are that it has many parallels with the ideas of Performance Management, and in a loose way has some rootes in the ideas of Drucker.

Both the Deming view and Drucker view (as well as their derivatives) have certain benefits, both have certain drawbacks, but until I have gained a more thorough understanding of them I shall not be delving into the critiques just yet. For now, I have many unanswered questions, many books at my side in which I hope some answers, and a few days of extensive reading.

: 13 Oct 2010 17:02 |  Tags: Balanced Business Cbe Cycle Deming Drucker Excellence Mangement Mbe Objectives Pdca Scorecard |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Belated Reflection

Looks into my eyes... you are feeling sleeping... when I click my fingers you will read the date of this entry as the 10th October...

Ok, that won't work. But this entry is actually a look back at the mentally draining events of yesterday. Why didn't I actually write this last night, well, simply because I didn't actually know what to write. It took a good night sleep and a morning swim to put my thoughts together into a coherent structure. Yesterday was without a doubt a library day. With so many presentation and project deadlines looming already, getting to grips with or even getting a grip on the resources on offer was essential.

First off, the journals. So much access to a vast and rich source of information! Then the books, from my experiences doing my undergraduate studies finding books I was looking for on a shelf and where they were meant to be was an exciting new experience! With books in hand and journals loaded I started to read through the print. Carefully bearing in mind Paul's advice that reading must be with a purpose, with specific questions to be answered or points to be found. Even so, narrowing down all the available resources into a handfull of useful and practical ones is a time consuming and mentally draining process. By the end of the day I had a good idea of the background, arguments and ideas involved in our group task. Getting these down on paper (well, typed on screen really) was another matter. After a couple of paragraphs, compiling my interpretation of the arguments starting becoming more difficult and took longer and longer. This morning however, just discussing these ideas with my group made me realise how much of them actually registered. Sleep is a marvoulous thing. Detabing the ideas of Management by Objective, its implications and alternatives, I realised that between us we can quite easily come up with a coherant and full critique of any issue raised within our assignments. After abit of an organisational discussion as well we managed to give ourselves a direction and are now plodding along happily with our work. With many many questions left unanswered, and an eagerness to leave as few unknowns as possible I plan on spending the majority of the next few days tirelessly working away in the library.

: 13 Oct 2010 13:00 |  Tags: Books Business Cbe Creating Excellence Library Mangement Mbe Presentation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem