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26 The PCB Magazine • March 2016 the efforts of people. How many leaders and managers know or understand this fact? Not many. Legacy leadership and management training tends to focus on people and behavior and specifically how to get people to behave the way management wants them to. This is like constantly asking your people to bale faster in- stead of fixing the hole in the boat. Leadership or management unconsciously think, Oh, the hole in the boat has gotten bigger? I have to get the people to bail more, or bail better, or bail differently. Instead of learning to optimize our sys- tems at work to get the results (profitability) we want, most leaders and managers focus on trying to get people to behave differently to get those results. While occasionally our prob- lems are people related, the great majority of the time those problems are systems related. You will only get what the system will deliver within a range. Look at the huge resources expended to re- solve problems by attempting to get workers to behave differently in some way. Team building events, retreats, meetings upon more meetings, cracking the whip, firing bad workers, hiring good workers, training and more training—al- ways to the old systems. The list goes on as we may or may not become better at baling out the boat. Most of this well-intentioned effort is sim- ply a waste of time unless the right systems op- timization work is part of the equation. 3. New Tools and Methodology for Doing Systems Optimization Work Many of you reading this article will be at least somewhat familiar with systems optimiza- tion programs in vogue today such as Six Sigma, Lean and Lean Sigma. These types of programs are being implemented in many companies in attempts to create systems-based cultures that significantly increase quality, lower cost and, of course, increase profitability. The methodolo- gies and tools used in these programs are well known and we have an abundance of quali- fied experts and black belts to help companies through the process. Why then are the vast ma- jority of these programs underperforming or failing in most western companies? the four new agreements to explode profitability Figure 5: The power of systems thinking in leadership and management.