The Art of Inquiry

The Art of Inquiry is my collection of (often contrarian) thoughts on project management and performance improvement efforts in business and education. I’m a process guy, (some would say process Evangelist) and specifically a disciple of Lean and Agile methods.

AND, I’m a contrarian. I’m a contrarian because the so called best practices, particularly those which focus on seven-step programs, will fail (60% or more, depending on who you read).

We may like to think of our organizations as big cruel ogres, and blame the failure as simply the uncaring nature of the beast. In some cases that may indeed be true, but as our friendly neighborhood ogre, Shrek, points out in the dialog to the right, “there’s a lot more to ogres than most people think.”

The distinguished organizational development scholar, Edgar Schein once got in my face and said, “There is no best practice!” I have come to understand the wisdom of those words, that as Schein continued, “all practice occurs within a context.”

Most projects fail because they do not consider the cultural context of the organization or how proposed changes will interact with the adaptive function of the organization.

The theme that runs through this blog is the importance of cultural context and intentionality of all practice. If you are implementing A3 sheets, but cannot explain the value to the customer, you will probably fail. The idea behind standardized testing as a means of improving student learning is valid if it guides curriculum development and instruction, but often it just leads to last minute cram sessions. The New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. plant, (NUMMI) in Fremont, California, a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota was remarkably successful at adopting the Toyota Way. But applying those practices at other GM plants turned out to be remarkably difficult.

The principles and practices I talk about here have been proven to be very valuable at improving organizational performance. But blindly following a recipe in project management or organizational change is kind of like trying to bake Italian Ciabatta bread by following a recipe but without knowing anything about the properties of flour and yeast. Maybe it will work, more likely (for me anyway) it will turn out tasting like a brick.

It is more important to ask why Toyota does what they do than to assume something is good just because Toyota does it.

Effective change occurs because practice effects specific leverage points in the organization, and those leverage points are different in each organization. To find those leverage points you have to understand the system. To understand the system, you have to peal back the metaphorical onion which is its culture.

And peeling the onion is what The Art of Inquiry is all about.