Page 391 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

378 M a n a g e m e n t o f H u m a n R e s o u r c e s M a n a g e m e n t S t y l e s 379

voice pitch, facial expressions, the heavy sigh—but humans have no
trouble understanding the meaning these convey in the context of a face-
to-face encounter. It may be that nature has hardwired us to receive and
understand these signals through eons of evo lution.
The techniques employed by managers who practice MBWA are as
varied as the people themselves. The important point is to establish direct
contact with the customer, employee, or supplier, up close and personal.
This may involve visiting customers at their place of business, or bringing
them to yours, manning the order desk or complaint line every month,
spontaneous ly sitting down with employees in the cafeteria, either one-
on-one or in groups, or inviting the supplier’s truck driver to your office
for coffee. Use your imagination. One tip: be sure to schedule regular
MBWA time. If it’s not on your calendar, you probably won’t do it.

Fourth Generation Management
In his book Fourth Generation Management, Brian Joiner develops four cat-
egories of management styles, which he calls “generations” (Joiner, 1994,
pp. 8–9):

• 1st Generation—management by doing. We simply do the task ourselves.
Assuming we possess the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, and
technology, this is an effective way of ensuring that tasks are done to
our personal requirements. Its main problem is, of course, limited
capac ity. As individuals we lack the needed prerequisites to do all
but a limit ed range of tasks, as well as the time to do more than a few
things. Of course, there will always be some tasks performed using
this approach.
• 2nd Generation—management by directing (micromanagement). People
found that they could expand their capacity by telling others
exactly what to do and how to do it: a master craftsman giving
detailed directions to apprentices. This approach allows experts to
leverage their time by getting others to do some of the work, and it
maintains strict compliance to the experts’ standards. Although
the capacity of this approach is better than 1st generation manage-
ment, micromanagement still has limited capacity.
• 3rd Generation—management by results. People get sick and tired of
your telling them every detail of how to do their jobs and say,
“Just tell me what you want by when, and leave it up to me to
figure out how to do it.” So you say, “OK. Reduce inventories by
20 percent this year. I’ll reward you or punish you based on how
well you do it. Good luck.” This is the current approach to
management practiced by most modern organizations, with all of
the problems of suboptimization discussed earlier. Suboptimizing

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