Spiritual Control

When it comes to management by objectives and management by policy, there is concern that top management will treat them too lightly, simply setting objectives and policies, and will fall into the trap of spiritual control, telling employees to “work hard, work hard,” rather than adopting scientific management.

むしろ目標管理、方針管理というと、トップは安易に考えて目標や方針だけ示してあとは頑張れ頑張れという精神的管理に陥り、科学的管理になってこない心配がある

- Kaoru Ishikawa

How often do we see this “spiritual control” when telling an employee to work harder to get results?

The word for ‘spiritual control’ can be translated as willpower or a grit-based mentality. A similar discussion of ‘spiritual control’ appears in reflections on cultures. There are many uses of the word “culture,” but they do not necessarily share the same underlying ideas. Some treat it as if having the culture meant the manager could relax at the office while operational excellence was achieved. Such a fantasy is the same as ‘spiritual control.’

The trap of ‘spiritual control’ is that, as long as they use numbers, they believe it is scientific management. This is not true. It is like any sport. Set a high target and then play hard. If your coach approaches you in such a manner, you most likely won’t succeed. You need strategic, tactical, technical, and mental advice. The same can be said about business. If there are only sales, profit, efficiency, and productivity targets, with no other discussions, that is the same as ‘spiritual control.’

It is a fact that many Japanese managers believe in “spiritual control,” meaning working harder. They think this is the essence of management. They didn’t evaluate based on performance but rather focused on hours worked. If you work longer, you are evaluated as a good employee. This thinking has persisted and been promoted. For example, there is the notion of “challenge.” We can interpret what a challenge means in many ways. A typical understanding is that the manager will speak in the meeting room, state, “We need to reduce the cost by XX%,” and then walk away. The challenged middle managers just pass the challenge to the lower level. (Ishikawa calls this ‘tunnel management.’) As a result, the front line just gets puzzled.

A company struggled with quality. So what did the quality team do? They ran a campaign. They posted posters everywhere that said, “Quality is everyone’s responsibility,” “Quality is important,” etc. What was the impact? Nothing.

A factory started 5S. First, posters. Then, the 5S audit with scores. When things were not in place, they got angry with the people and blamed the culture. Many 5S efforts are like this. I have never seen 5S function properly with only posters and scores. But I have learned that the most important ’S’ is the manager’s discipline in asking the right questions. “What is the standardized work?” “Why did this material go out of the standard?” “Why was this scrap or defect made?” 5S is a trigger for a manager to ask questions.

A similar mistake occurs in Kaizen. A manager tells the team to do Kaizen, then goes back to his office. This message filters down to the operators. Every layer of management and staff blames the operators for not doing Kaizen. But such thinking ignores standardized work and takt time. Takt time is calculated by dividing the total available time by the daily demand. If the total available time is allocated for production, when do operators have time to do Kaizen? We should involve operators by having them think, comment, or exchange ideas with the team leader. Or they do Kaizen as overtime. Or rotate with the reserves. Either way, during production hours, the operators’ primary responsibility is standardized work. Management must create opportunities for people to participate in Kaizen.

So, what should we do?

The paragraph above by Ishikawa continues, “This is the reason why I developed the characteristics and factors chart.” As I posted earlier, Ishikawa's original intent in designing the fishbone diagram was not to use it for problem-solving but to design the management system. From this diagram, Japanese TQM evolved, creating tools to support scientific management. But as tools proliferate, have we forgotten the original philosophies and reverted to the original mistake of just adding pressure?

Reference:

石川馨、1989、品質管理入門第3版、日科技連出版社