Lepore Domenico - Quality, involvement, flow: the systemic organization

Quality Involvement Flow

The Systemic Organization

Quality Involvement Flow

The Systemic Organization

Domenico Lepore

Angela Montgomery

Giovanni Siepe

CRC Press

Taylor & Francis Group

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2017 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

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Version Date: 20160322

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4987-5588-7 (Paperback)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lepore, Domenico, 1959- author. | Montgomery, Angela, author. | Siepe, Giovanni, author.

Title: Quality, involvement, flow : the systemic organization / Domenico Lepore, Angela Montgomery, and Giovanni Siepe.

Description: Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016005362 | ISBN 9781498755887 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Management. | System analysis. | Organizational behavior. | Organizational change. | Quality control.

Classification: LCC HD31 .L3834 2016 | DDC 658--dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005362

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This could have been a world where the nature of each thing would be deduced from its parts. A predictable, orderly world. A world devoid of wonder. And then we would say, Things are this way because they must be this way.

Instead, at each step a whole new world emerges, one we could never have predicted from anything we knew before. Until we must conclude that our finite work somehow contains infinite possibilities, that both nothing and everything are possible.

This book is dedicated to all those who refuse to accept things as they are, knowing we have a precise task: to unveil the infinite possibilities with courage and make sure that potential emerges into reality.

edited by Tzvi Freeman, based on Sefer Ha-Maamarim 5715, pp. 3847, a talk given by Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Contents

We wrote this book to present the elements of science and method that should inform the leadership of organizations in the twenty-first century. Our effort has been to outline a cohesive and comprehensive approach to this systemic understanding and to use these elements to provide a unified vision for succeeding in our age of complexity.

The thought process and the professional practice that inspired these pages have been profoundly influenced by the monumental work of W. Edwards Deming and Eliyahu M. Goldratt and they are informed by their scientific and epistemological paradigm.

The first seed for this approach was developed by Domenico Lepore and Oded Cohen almost 20 years ago and it was named The Decalogue, first published as Deming-and-Goldratt: The Decalogue (North River Press, 1999). Since then, further work on The Decalogue methodology has been carried out internationally in a wide range of organizations to refine its usefulness and applicability; in particular, the authors of Quality, Involvement, Flow derived great inspiration and insights from Network Theory and the light it casts on our understanding of the nonlinear dynamics that takes place in the highly interconnected world we now live in.

Such an unprecedented level of interconnectedness, the fast growing socioeconomic environment shaped by networks and the role that the web plays in our lives call for a major overhaul of the content and the pattern of our learning. Particularly, academic institutions responsible for educating the business leaders of tomorrow must awaken to the sheer inadequacy of existing programs and take action accordingly.

Quality, Involvement, Flow is not about business improvement, reengineering or any of the techniques aimed at generating some economic result. It draws heavily on the teachings of Dr. Deming and Dr. Goldratt and, as such, its goal is the transformation of the present style of leadership (and management) into one of whole system optimization. The transformation that we advocate cannot be undertaken without understanding and embracing a basic set of values, and it is mandatory to realize that the achievement of economic results must be connected with a precise ecology of the mind. In this way, the legitimate pursuit of personal monetary wealth will not be disjointed from the quest for purposefulness that should be the prime motivator for any human endeavor. This is the transition that leads to long-term, sustainable results.

This book aims at being both a cognitive challenge and an operational guide; it should be a positive stimulus for acting in accordance with the emerging, network-shaped reality of our world. It contains little redundancy and requires from the reader a nonnegligible amount of focus and intellectual openness. It will not provide suggestions, tips, and quick fixes and it will, at times, feel uncomfortable.

In a world that is drowning in a chaotic swirl of shallow information, instant pudding, and evocative feel-good calls to systems thinking, Quality, Involvement, Flow strives to offer an orderly and rigorous knowledge-based reference point for the new leaders of the millennium.

This book would never have existed without the fundamental work on management developed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt. They have informed and shaped our views on economics and management and we are forever indebted to them.

We are ever grateful to our friend and mentor Oded Cohen for his painstaking and selfless teaching. He is one of the foremost experts in the world in the Theory of Constraints and we have enjoyed the great good fortune of his input, guidance, and friendship over the years.