>Oh my.
>
>Sears CEO got his education somewhere, like most other CEO's with MBA
>degrees (I am assuming he has one). But it may not have done much for his
>foresight, his creativity, or his organization. He is still stuck in the
>drying cement of being blinded by the numbers, by a system (accounting)
>which has been around since the sixteenth century.
(snip)
>
>Think of such a situation where you or your unit has been asked "why don't
>your numbers look as good as A's, or B's or C's or D's. What is wrong
>with you that you can't produce?? Maybe we should find someone (another
>manager?) to replace you. Maybe A's manager would be better, since he/she
>doubled your "results". And in our company we pay for RESULTS, remember?"
>Does anybody out there remember the Beer Game, or the Red Bead experiment?
>I would submit that Sears' CEO seems in a bit of a fog, and perhaps not
>much of a good example for a "Chief Learning Officer". I don't see the
>learning here, but more of a "retrograde" organization.
I think John has missed the point because his basic assumption is that
this kind of measurement is wrong (a la Deming). I for one was really
impressed with Sears attempt to identify and use meaningful measures to
guage its success in changing its culture.
They appear to be treating the entire organization as a system and looking
at both the input and results measures that are important.
No, Sears hasn't become my favorite store, but it does seem to be
improving.
Perhaps the best idea is to see if this process of measurement and
feedback has a positive effect at Sears, rather than critize it because it
doesn't fit the mold of what Deming and others felt was right.
-- Jack Zigon President Zigon Performance Group PO Box 520 Wallingford, PA 19086-0520Specializing in Performance Management for teams and hard-to-measure jobs
Email: jack@zigonperf.com URL: www.zigonperf.com
Voice: 610-891-9599 Fax: 610-891-9055 Orders: 800-244-2892 Fax-on-demand: 800-299-3022
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>