Fourth Generation Management: The New Business Consciousness

by Brian L. Joiner

Book Overview

Building upon the principles of W. Edwards Deming - the father of the quality movement - this book takes management practice and the next phase of the Quality Revolution into the 21st century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070327157
• ISBN13: 9780070327153
• Release Date: February 1994
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 289 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

I highly recommend this book

Brian Joiner really captures the key concepts leaders need to understand to lead their businesses today. His explanation of variation should open many eyes and help many businesses avoid over-correction and over-compensation for what is just occurring. And that is just one of the many useful concepts this book provides. This book is a classic and should be core to business school curricula.

All businesses have costs but waste is optional.

This is an excellent book, with many breakthrough ideas explained in a very compelling way. I recommend this book for practitioners working with Lean, Systems thinking or general operational improvement, however, if you are into six-sigma you will not understand the profound knowledge this book contains. There are a many reasons why I like this book, it has some memorable insights and phrases. Such as `don't work on costs, work on the causes of costs'. Joiner also highlights how most managers manage their business without any theory behind their actions.. `We should be thankful if the action of management is based on theory...' Joiner relentlessly pushes the notion that organisations must be `understood and managed as a `system', while developing process thinking, making decisions on customer data and understanding the theory of variation'. He then goes on to say that the typical management response to calls for improvement is to either 1) distort the system or 2) distort the figures instead of improving the system. Most people in the world of operational improvement will have come across the Deming PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) cycle, Joiner explains and supports this process very well but he adds a significant insight, what he says is, that when starting to make improvements you must start at CHECK, in fact he devotes a whole chapter to this important variation on Deming's PDCA theme. `Performing check is what most organisations fail to do. Check uncovers things we would just as soon not know, it forces us to look at the huge wastes in each of our activities and exposes it all, and the non productive or plain stupid things we have unknowingly been doing for years. It creates the gut level energy to do a better job of taking Action, of Planning and Doing'. Joiner states that `a fundamental tenant is that nothing happens in a predictable, sustainable way unless you build mechanisms that cause it to happen in a predictable sustained way' He talks about listening to management conversations for insights into the organisations real intent and focus he says ... `The way top management spends its time and the questions they ask of each other and the rest of the organisation is critical in determining the focus of the organisation.' The book goes on to explain how to reduce process variation, the sections about how managers respond to variation would be amusing if they were not real, i.e. how managers work on the people instead of working on the system and the injustice that results in addition to the loss in organisational performance. A good example of system variation resulting in perverse decisions and behaviour is illustrated by an example Joiner uses in telling a real story about a bank teller, who on several occasions got rewarded for her performance and at other times chastised....finally, she was unlucky enough to loose her job. Later, when talking to a friend she said that she never understood why she being praised because she hadn't don

A Good Read!

To survive in today's business environment, it's not enough to just keep improving - you have to do it faster than the other guy does. Brian L. Joiner provides valuable direction in how to get better faster. This approach transcends goal-based management by focusing on the needs of the customer. Only then do apparent contradictions between customer service and cost-cutting become manageable again. The author admits that the teachings of management guru W. Edwards Deming heavily influences his advice. We at getAbstract recommend this very helpful work to managers searching for a more enlightened, more effective approach. It will be particularly useful for those who need a strong rationale to do what they already think is right.

Practical and Realistic

Joiner, being Deming's former protégé, has not let the latter down by the technical content of this book. It is straightforward and realistic in its teachings and does not glorify the illustrious side of 'Quality' and its affiliated managerial principles. Most managers should find it relatively easy and practical enough to apply. A manual well written.

A wealth of knowledge

Dr. Joiner has made a significant contribution to the advancement of Deming theory with Fourth Generation Management. Elegant theory is shown in practice, providing examples that will stay on your mind as points of reference for years to come