Unconstrained Thinking
-- Jumbo Shrimp at Work
Oxymoron: "A rhetorical figure in which an epigrammatic effect is created by the conjunction of incongruous or contradictory terms.” For example: jumbo shrimp, acting naturally, non-working mother, and sanitary landfill.
I’ve come across a few oxymorons that may be of interest to those interested in organizational effectiveness. The first is a title I heard someone use to introduce them self – Demand Manager. This might have made sense if the role of the person were one of strategic marketing, carefully crafting market offers that would result in predictable changes in demand, but this was a logistics person who probably does a lot more reacting than managing.
That reaction is probably related to another of my favorite mind-benders – the Accurate Forecast (in logistics) or Accurate Estimate (in projects and budgets). So much time and energy is spent striving for unachievable accuracy, one wonders why we spend so much more time and energy explaining variances. Wouldn’t it be more productive to design robust management systems that can live with a reasonable expectation of uncertainty?
Now these would only be amusing rhetorical ramblings if it weren’t for the fact that someone is usually held accountable for “managing demand” or for estimating or forecasting “accurately,” which brings me to my third example – Individual Performance.
John Donne wrote, “No man is an island.” An American Express ad of a few years ago said, “You can do anything you set your mind to do. You just can’t do it alone.” People in organizations are individuals, but can they truly perform as such? Performance has to be defined in terms of the organization’s goal. No one person (or function) in an interdependent system like an organization can deliver performance. They can contribute, they can deliver task outputs, and they can help others do the same, but “it takes a system” do deliver performance.
Think about it.
©2001, Frank Patrick |
| Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of. - Douglas Adams, through his character Arthur Dent in "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" |
This is one of a series of columns on improvement, TOC, constraint management, change management, systems thinking, uncommon sense, and whatever else comes into my mind. Suggestions for topics are welcome. - FP, 908-874-8664 or via the contact page of this site.
If you are interested in using these 1/2-page columns for your APICS, ASQ, PMI, or IIE newsletter, let me know through the same channels, and I'll send you the more easily usable MS Word versions.
-- Frank Patrick
Related links:
Unconstrained Thinking Index |
