Undercover Boss

[tweetmeme source=”leanisgood” service=”ow.ly” only_single=false]The other night after the Superbowl (congratulations to the Saints) CBS debuted a new reality show that has gotten minor play in the lean blogosphere (here, curious cat, and LeanBlog).

The premise of the show is bosses going undercover to do the actual work that happens in their companies. 

Advertisement

The Great Jackass Fallacy – Dan Pink and W. Edwards Deming

Image Remixed from abac077 @flickr.com under Creative Commons Attribution, Remix, Share Alike

[tweetmeme source="leanisgood" service="ow.ly"]

Special thanks to reader Dan Mott who left a link to a TED video on a post from last week called Performance Evals Are Bad – The Great Jackass Fallacy criticizing the “carrots and sticks” approach to performance evaluations and merit increases.  According to career analyst Dan Pink (you can read reviews of and or buy his new book – Drive:  The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us here), science has been confirming what Deming told us beginning in the first half of the last century — positive intent, an intrinsic desire to achieve  beats the extrinsic motivation model.  Dan summarizes the intrinsic motivators as: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Take the time to watch the 20 minute video from TED Global 2009:

It’s All About the Why, the Other Why

Photo by annnna. under Creative Commons Attribution

[tweetmeme source="leanisgood" service="ow.ly"]

The first thing that many lean practitioners think of when they hear the word ‘why’ is probably 5 why’s and getting to root cause of problems.  That is certainly a powerful tool and a good way to use ‘why’.  Those are the why’s that we don’t know.  As importantly we shouldn’t forget to teach the why’s that we do know.