In another thread the issue of change came up in relation to ISO implementation.
A small discussion within a discussion started - but died - on the issue of whether change starts at the top - ie top management or if a lower ranked employee could initiate or develop a paradigm change.
The one arguement stands that as top management are the gaurdians (sic)? of the companies direction and cash flow, change starts with them. But in many cases they see the ISO QMS as a necessary evil.
The flip side of the coin is that a QA manager - for example - interacts with all departments and staff and so he is able to influence change the perception, adoption and acceptance of the QMS.
What thoughts??
The first thing to understand is what a "paradigm" is. My American Heritage Dictionary gives this definition, in the sense of the word we're concerned with:
A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.
My emphasis.
In business, there is no set of ideas and concepts that forms a universal paradigm. This is because the people who own or manage the business define the paradigm, either either deliberately or by default. Most of us have a fairly consistent idea of the way things
should be, but unfortunately our view is frequently at odds with the ones who are responsible for developing the paradigm. There's vivid evidence of this right now in the
"ISO is a Joke..." thread. The OP in that thread suffers from the cognitive dissonance that results from the violent collision of opposing paradigms. We have to be aware of the fact that in business,
reality isn't necessarily transferable. The top manager in any business gets to define reality, and if your view is substantively different and inflexible, nothing good will come of it.
The thing we need to understand about all of this is that below the top echelon, people are powerless to change the paradigm on their own. The change
must come from the top, and there are no exceptions. What we
can do, if it seems worthwhile, is provide impetus towards change--we can lead the proverbial horse to water. In my own experience, before the horse will actually drink it needs to understand both the nature of its dilemma and the dilemma of its nature. To get both of those things acting in consonance is no easy task for some people at the top. While a given CEO might realize that something needs to change, she might be loathe to accept someone else's ideas on how to go about it. These people often harbor deep-seated delusions of their own powers and greatness, which I think is part of the package sometimes for people who are very ambitious and the types who are likely to become entrepreneurs and CEOs.
If this type of narcissistic view of oneself is emphatic and unshakable, as it is in some extreme cases, the horse can die of thirst while standing knee-deep in fresh water. This is not to say that those types will never change, but they will never change so long as what needs to be done isn't their own idea. This means that the strategy of the change-seeker needs to be in the direction of showing the way, but making the manager
think that it's all
his idea.
For example, if you go to one of these people with charts and graphs and say "Here are the year-to-date scrap numbers and it's clear that we need to change [something specific] in order to get a handle on it," the manager will listen and forget. On the other hand, if you can engage him in conversation and say, "I've noticed that we're producing a lot of costly scrap and I'd like to pick your brain--what do you think we should do?" you're much more likely to get the answer(s) you're hoping for. Asking
Socratic questions is a time-honored method of getting a person to solve his own problems and works much better than trying to get a person out of a deep state of denial by making a big deal of his refusal to listen to reason.