4th Generation Management - Brian L Joiner
In this easy-to-read (289 pages) book, Barry Joiner describes his "Joiner Triangle", a simple conceptual framework for a new organisational culture - one based on "finding our what is important to customers and spending resources wisely" resulting in customers getting better service, security for employees, increasing sales for businesses and increased profits for shareholders.
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This is his "4th Generation Management" model.
Joiner's approach leans heavily on the work of W Edwards Deming, making it more practical than Deming's lecturing style (although I do recommend that all mangers read Deming's books Out of the Crisis and The New Economics).
The M3 paradigm of "management by objectives/outcomes/results" - that managers presently learn on-the-job and in business schools - has led to sub-optimal profits and customer satisfaction through "distortion of the system" and "distortion of the figures". M4 is about "improving the system" for the benefit of all.
Joiner discusses the differences between M4 and M3, making their differences in their philosophical bases stark:
- Elimination of the causes of cost vs Cost cutting
- Customer primacy vs Shareholder primacy
- Respect for people vs Resources to be exploited
- Systems thinking vs Sequential thinking
- Understanding variation vs Meddling
- Managing inputs vs Managing results
- Motivating vs Incentivising
- Cooperation vs Competition
Examples from Joiner's consultancy practice are used to support the text and they work very well.
The benefits of progressive management (Deming, Lean, Toyota Production System, Ricardo Semler) have not been widely adopted and where they have the penetration has been limited to "operations". The "executive class" (see Bob Emigliani's The Triumph of Classical Management) has not changed it's ways. Joiner believes "every manager, indeed, every employee, needs to master" Management 4.0 for it - and thus Industry 4.0 and Service 4.0 - to be fully effective.
Highly recommended.