While quality professionals and quality gurus keep trumpeting Innovation & Creativity, they still don’t leave their ivory tower of “rules”.
Six Sigma is an example, though excellent it might be: we live under ISO, Gemba, Muda, Kaizen, Kanban, 5S, 8D, Go-Lean, and so on ruling. It’s a fact.
Rules – and therefore procedures – can certainly be useful: they can – can ??? a very big question – create a common language.
Procedures have often very little to do with common sense, however common any sense can be.
In a World that becomes everyday more and more Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Controversial, Ambiguous, Flexibility or Adaptability are the really effective rules.
Wasn’t it so for Darwin, too, and his Theory of Evolution?
By the way, Biologists like Ed Ricketts developed a non teleological theory of evolution, opposite to Darwin’s: instead of Dawin’s “to or for”, Ricketts objects an “as is”. Not an easy change of scenario.
Rulers have made a job of themselves; whether they are professionals, it’s another big question.
I went really mad when a customer of mine obsessed me asking for forms: “what answer shall I cross?” was his monotonous questioning symphony.
To which I equally monotonously replied “you have a brain, use it !!!”
Which brings to me to questioning:
One: What’s the worth of closed against open questions.
Two: What’s the worth of artificial management schemes.
To question one: when at school, early 1950’s, we had to answer open ended questions only, to write reports or what came to our mind,we never had to use questionnaire-like documents. We had to put our brain – and will – at work.
To question two: following question one, I don’t object laziness, I’m a lazy guy myself. But I object instead that any living being be subject to any artificial rule.
An example: what does a central-Africa-born graduate know of Eskimo’s climate and food?
Globalization can be a good thing itself: but we have to be very careful in globalizing systems that are local, and centuries old, too.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is written on paper: but any orchestra leader plays it his own way. And if a “she”, probably very differently.
Conclusion: We spend too much time and resources in writing rules that are not profitable.
Let’s make a RULE out of this – all capitals.