DE Oracle @ UMUC

Understanding the Problem

Edwin Sapp

Collegiate Professor

School of Undergraduate Studies

Published: September-October 2007

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Classroom-communication

Key to Effective Managerial Proposals in the Lean Organization 

Of all the seven steps of the writing process (task definition, understanding the problem, organizing, drafting, revising, publishing, and receiving feedback), the hardest for managerial writers to grasp is understanding the problem.

In the business environment, there are at least two types of significant, "modern" managerial problems that present themselves in much the same way, but require significantly different approaches to solve.  Application of the wrong approach can lead to corporate disaster.  Those who engage in managerial writing should be able to recognize both issues.  In fact, the managerial writer should know enough about the corporate process to permit him or her to understand the problem and write to get positive feedback, including the sort of action that will cure the ill, rather than spread it.

The two areas of management focus are (1) lean manufacturing applications, or "trimming the fat" to make the delivery of goods or services more efficient and less costly, and (2) dealing with "surge" issues that upset the equilibrium in an otherwise stable organization. Managerial writers can consider these two areas as "lean management" and "surge management" and consider the fundamental definitions and impacts examined in this article to see that understanding the problem is crucial to the creation of effective managerial writing in both situations.

LEAN MANAGEMENT

We live in an era of lean manufacturing, just-in-time delivery of goods, and management efficiencies. The consummate goal of lean management is to reduce all aspects of production to the bare minimum in time and effort –– and then obtain and maintain a homeostasis. Modern corporations have discovered that the work flow that produces a product or service can be defined as a system. Every sub-process then can be examined in terms of efficiency and timeliness. Through such streamlining, the number of employees can be trimmed, the time to produce the object or service greatly reduced, and the overhead shrunk to manageable levels. In an economy where the cost of goods and services is escalating, most companies find the principles of lean manufacturing increasingly more critical to salvaging the "bottom line." Hence, most senior managers focus on that overarching approach to corporate existence.

Consequently, managerial writing associated with problems in the workplace frequently focuses on the resolution of issues associated with the need to fine-tune the process to achieve a more lean operation. Managerial writers should be aware of the bundle of concepts and strategies associated with this type of management, because this is the mind-set of the decision makers who will review and act upon their proposals. However, our focus in this article is WRITING, not MANAGEMENT, so you will have to research the full ramifications of lean manufacturing and surge response elsewhere.

SURGE MANAGEMENT

Despite its impressive success in cutting costs and time-on-task, lean management has been less successful in dealing with surges in demand, depletion of raw ingredients, or other anomalies that would rock the homeostasis boat. When such crises associated with this efficient style of management do occur, managers tend to address the new issues with the same bag of tools that set them up for the crisis in the first place, and the result, gentle reader, is never pretty. They ignore Einstein's observation (as reported in Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, 1989), "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

Thus, when an organization takes on a new division or product, managers make adjustments to restore production efficiencies; however, if the corporation has DOUBLED in size or diversified to take on a new and totally separate process, "trimming the fat" simply will NOT work. The managerial writer needs to understand the principles at work before committing to publication any piece of writing that will accelerate disaster instead of restoring the balance.

We have only to examine the aftermath of Hurricanes Hugo and Katrina to see the ugly side of lean management dealing with a surge management issue. The failure to apply surge concepts to surge problems invariably leads to system failure, finger-pointing, scapegoat-labeling, firings, reorganizations, and the importation of "hatchet" or "hit men" to get rid of the incompetent deadwood. Five of the seven core recommendations by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (2006), in a 732-page assessment of response to Hurricane Katrina, addressed these varieties of actions and reactions. Only the last two core recommendations addressed the implementation of a surge strategy as a preparation for future emergencies –– the first five addressed management failure when it was caught in the limitations of lean management approaches.

In short, replacement and rebuilding strategies assume that the core social structure is still in place.  In Louisiana and in parts of Mississippi, this was simply not the case. The costly and time-consuming replacement of dwellings, water, electricity, and road systems does residents no good if there are no businesses, no jobs, and no cycle of food and services replenishment. The same approach, however, worked well in providing tsunami relief, because the population's reliance on an elaborate social structure was not a factor –– thus status quo could be achieved (with stockpiled goods –– a surge concept) and life could go on.

This synopsis is enough of an over-simplification to make the serious student of management strategy cringe, but the key point is that the managerial writer in ANY corporate environment needs to understand that environment rather thoroughly so he or she can recommend effective strategies in proposals that will actually help solve the knotty and potentially fatal issues facing managers in his/her corporate environment.

RECOGNIZING THE PROBLEM 

The typical large organization in America today is struggling with a myriad of issues, from the spiraling cost of labor and supplies, to meeting ever-increasing demands of a growing population for its goods and services.  Efficiency and maximum cost-savings are realized by concentrating on policies that permit the organization to do more with less.  Hence, companies are now process-oriented, time-on-task focused, determined to reduce overhead expenses, and take whatever other steps are necessary to pursue an ever-decreasing margin of profit from the production of goods or services (yes, Virginia, services provided by a not-for-profit company ARE measured in terms of cost-efficiencies).  Such lean manufacturing principles help modern businesses turn a profit and maintain a steady course.

Surge management is a must-do for crisis situations such as natural and man-caused disasters, but it also is required to control the sudden expansion of a business.  Many large companies find themselves foundering when they acquire other companies or suddenly double their size.  Corporate leaders who do not understand the problem often will apply the "more is better" concept by giving good managers twice as many functions and people to supervise.  That direct violation of Jethro's First Law invariably results in failure, frustration, firings, and fiasco.  Large organizations require different management strategies than small ones (another factor affecting the Katrina recovery).  As a consequence, those who write about such issues need to understand the difference and be able to express it clearly.

JETHRO'S FIRST LAW 

Somewhere around 1200 B.C.E., Moses was born in Egypt.  He spent his childhood and early adulthood as a prince in the court of Pharaoh (most likely Ramses II), learning and practicing the Egyptian equivalent of lean manufacturing to maintain stability in a stable empire.  The Egypt Moses knew never recovered from the removal of over one million slaves.  The national organizational structure changed so significantly that the government ultimately collapsed and a permanent change in the world status of the country ensued.  Instead of restructuring the kingdom, leaders struggled for years trying to make a slave-dependent society function without slaves.

Before he led the Israelites to freedom, Moses had fled to Midian to live with his father-in-law, Jethro, who taught him the principle of span-of-control.  Basically, there is a finite limit to the number of people or tasks a manager can control –– that limit commonly is considered to be around ten.  So when the Israelites left Egypt, Moses organized them into groups ("tribes") led by descendants of the original twelve sons of Israel and had each tribe's leader organize the tribe with "captains" over tens, fifties, and hundreds –– the same management structure that helped the Roman Empire achieve world dominance 1,000 years later.

Span-of-control permitted Moses to create order in a HUGE organization –– a new organization that exemplified corporate (national) "surge" expansion in capital letters.   His management of a surge situation remains a model today.

STOCKPILING AND REDUNDANCY –– A SECOND SURGE STRATEGY

One business that was not crippled by the terrorist destruction of New York's twin towers was the financial industry, which had built in redundant operations centers as a fail-safe feature.  Such redundancy is anathema to lean manufacturing principles, but the stock market lost only a single day and recovered nearly all critical data within the second twenty-four hour period because back-up information was stored in a secondary operations center outside New York City.

As noted above, tsunami relief was accelerated by the existence of pre-positioned stockpiled items and the existence of an efficient delivery and distribution system to aid in reconstruction of the prior social environment.

In addition, the corporation that is experiencing significant growth or re-direction of effort needs to redefine its mission and vision to adapt to the new situation.

In summary: two factors temper the stressful results of sudden expansion: adhering to span-of-control principles and stockpiling or building in redundancy of systems.  When crisis comes, some managers fall back on the tried and true approaches to solve the new problems.  The tried and true approach in the early twenty-first century is what we have labeled "lean management."  The prepared managerial writer should examine the situation deeply enough to determine that alternatives should be considered –– and be prepared to express the alternatives, including surge management approaches, clearly and with the credibility that comes from more than a superficial knowledge of the strategies available to the particular corporate body.

VOICE OF WARNING     

Basically, this article is a voice of warning to managerial writers.  Remember that the failure to apply surge management principles to proposals addressing surge demands could result in a myriad of symptoms almost universally perceived as problems to be addressed with lean management tools.  Until the real problem is recognized, the band-aid actions of a determined management structure trying to re-establish equilibrium invariably will lead to worse issues, accusations, firings, fault-finding, and reduce the once healthy organization to an unrecoverable liability. 

Anyone see a pattern with Daimler-Chrysler, the demise of Plymouth and Oldsmobile, the migration of IBM from a successful producer of hardware to a significant developer of applications software?  Growth causes CHANGE and change often does not restore the ORIGINAL equilibrium. 

The writer who does not understand the problem will become the problem.