In 1999, poor health forced Peter Scholtes to retire from conducting seminars and consulting. Peter asked Kelly L. Allan, Senior Associate of Kelly Allan Associates, to continue the seminars and consulting practice. Scholtes said, “There is much to appreciate about Kelly. His exceptional ability to combine theory with real-world implementations is perhaps what clients appreciate the most.”
Related Podcast and Transcription: The Work of Peter Scholtes
An excerpt from the podcast:
Kelly Allan: When Peter was writing The Leader’s Handbook, the phenomenon of “Lean” was in its infancy in the U.S., and it’s kind of a complicated issue in that Taiichi Ohno, who is the father of the Toyota Production System, which we would call “Lean” did not like labels, as Deming did not like labels. He didn’t care for TQM, for example. When Peter wrote The Leader’s Handbook, he was very careful about any of those kinds of words and phrases that tend to pigeonhole things and limit their effectiveness.
Joe Dager: Well, I think what’s interesting about The Handbook, is that it has always served as my bridge to applying Dr. Deming’s principles, and it’s untainted, as I mentioned, with Japanese terms and the Toyota validation that occurs in practically every “Lean” book anymore, that, it needs to be validated if Toyota did it or not, but if you really want true Deming, I open up Peter’s book.
Kelly Allan: You are not alone in that. Peter was an excellent student of Deming’s, certainly, and a thinker in his own right. The Leader’s Handbook is bigger in scope than “Lean” quality productivity. It links those elements into a management approach, so The Leader’s Handbook is about creating an organization that really has win-win-win for everyone involved rather than experiencing the unintended negative consequences of trying to lead an organization through silo thinking or by pitting departments against one another for budgets and recognition and rewards. Peter knew, as Deming knew, only at the visible numbers, where we look at the KPIs, and when we try to set targets without understanding ability of people, and processes, and teams, etc., what we are doing is creating tomorrow’s failures. We are creating unintended consequences that people try to optimize their own area, achieve their own goals within their own departments at the detriment of the entire organization. And that’s something that is still not well understood.
Joe Dager: Well, I think one of the things I noticed, because I play in the sales and marketing world a little bit, is it has been very difficult to take “Lean” into sales and marketing because it is centered on internal structure and the first thing they talk about is leveling sales and making it better for the production. Well, when I read Peter’s work and Deming’s work, it is systems thinking where we are trying to make both the supply and the demand-side work together, and just as you alluded to there in your description is that type of systems thinking is what Dr. Deming and Peter Scholtes and others were about.
Kelly Allan: You are absolutely correct, and I think it’s a good insight that you mentioned that one of the, and it’s true not just of “Lean, ” I mean “Lean” has really excellent things to offer, but when we try to apply anything without seeing the larger context, we typically get those unintended consequences. The example you gave about sales, trying to level set sales with production, it’s not that’s a bad thing, and it certainly can reduce some of the upsets that come from those two areas being out of balance, but that’s still kind of a black-and-white world, and with Dr. Deming’s work and with Peter Scholtes’ work, we are no longer in a black-and-white world, we are in a color, 3-D world instead of a two- dimensional, black-and-white world. We have to bring in other things, and it’s not just about, then, whether we are trying to look at the numbers of what production is, or service delivery is capable of providing, so that sales can sell that. We also want to have feedback loops that include market research, and include the customer, include new innovation, and we want to be using sales, not just as a sales function, but as in part a research function, to hear the voice of the customer, and to test things the customer might not have thought about It becomes multi-dimensional, and that’s where I think the example you gave was really excellent, because we see so many companies trying to force-fit “Lean” methodologies without seeing the larger ramifications of that. Things will get better in some ways if you force-fit “Lean” into sales, but they won’t necessarily stay there.
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