My guest for episode #349 is John Dyer, president of his consulting firm, John Dyer & Associates, Inc., and author of the new book, The Façade of Excellence: Defining a New Normal of Leadership, which will be released on October 1, 2019.
John has been a guest previously in episodes #229 and #280, talking about Dr. W. Edwards Deming, “The Red Bead Experiment,” and more.
Today, we talk about the book, how to find out of there is a “facade” of excellence, and why “fear makes good people do stupid things,” as John says. What's a façade? “A false appearance that makes someone or something seem more pleasant or better than they really are.”
For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/349.
For earlier episodes of my podcast, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS, through Android apps, or via Apple Podcasts. You can also subscribe and listen via Stitcher or Spotify.
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Questions, Topics, and Links:
- Can you remind the listeners a little bit about your background if they haven't heard the previous episodes?
- Let's get right to your book… why write it? What's the story behind the book and what led to it? Can we avoid some of the mistakes others have made before?
- Do you think the title might scare away some readers who really need to read this most?
- How do you peel back to see if it's just a facade?
- How often do you see a “façade of improvement?” Examples?
“Fear causes good people to do stupid things.”
John Dyer
- This book explores four different styles of leadership that includes “The Crisis Leader,” “The Idea Gathering Leader,” “The Team Forming Leader,” and “The Empowerment Leader.”
- Which leadership style is best?
- What should leaders aspire to?
- You ask in the book, “Why consider starting down the path of achieving excellence if failure causes so much pain and damage?” — When an organization is transformed (through Lean or other high-engagement approaches), what's the risk of new leaders coming in? Can this culture really be undone?`
Transcript Highlights
Mark Graban: Hi, this is Mark Graban. Welcome to episode 349 of the podcast. It is September 23rd, 2019, and my guest today is John Dyer. He is the president of his consulting firm, John Dyer and Associates Inc., and he is the author of the new book, The Facade of Excellence: Defining a New Normal of Leadership.
John has been a guest previously in episodes 229 and 280, talking about Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the Red Bead Experiment, and more. Today we talk about John's new book, how to find out if there is a facade of excellence in an organization, and why fear makes good people do stupid things.
John Dyer: Thanks for having me.
Mark Graban: Can you tell the audience a little bit about you and your background?
John Dyer: I started with General Electric and was there for 10 years. During that time, I got interested in continuous improvement activities. I had the opportunity to go around and collect best practices for GE on a two-year special assignment. During that time, I got a chance to meet and interact with Dr. Deming and actually attended a couple of his classes.
Mark, I wanted to let you know that I have a special gift for you. I was looking through some old notebooks from those classes with Dr. Deming, and I found the first page of a notebook that Dr. Deming signed for me. I had forgotten all about it, and it has been sitting on my bookshelf for 25 years. When I send you a copy of the book, I will send you this cover page with Dr. Deming's signature.
Mark Graban: Thank you. I appreciate that.
John Dyer: After GE, I joined a company called Ingersoll Rand and worked for them for 10 years. The last four years, I was a corporate Vice President of our Lean and Six Sigma implementations on a global scale. When I left Ingersoll Rand, I decided to start my own consulting company.
Interestingly, the clients that have asked for the most help in the last couple of years have been non-manufacturing entities like government groups, universities, and non-profits. Just yesterday, I was with a group of church leaders doing the Red Bead Experiment. They have their own set of cultural issues and desire to figure out how to get people to work together.
Mark Graban: You mentioned the church and the Red Bead Experiment. About a week ago, someone I've been coaching in a health system sent me a chart where a church had applied Process Behavior Charts to two key metrics: the number of people attending each week and the amount of donations. It was all just fluctuating around an average. As the Red Bead Experiment would teach us, there is no root cause for why attendance was down last week if it's just fluctuating in the realm of routine variation.
John Dyer: Exactly. It is amazing how these same tools and principles apply to any metric.
Mark Graban: You mentioned GE sending you on a search for best practices. What would Dr. Deming have said about searching for best practices?
John Dyer: He talked about how important it is to get what he called “profound knowledge”. You didn't want to just go and copy someone; you had to really study the theory behind what they did and then figure out how to implement that theory in your own situation.
One of the stories I relay in the book involves one of my GE mentors who went to Japan. He was talking to a CEO in Japan who was being super open with him. Finally, my mentor asked him why he had been so open. The CEO said the reason was that they had been doing continuous improvement and lifting up their employees for over 30 years. He told my mentor, “You are just getting started. And you have over a century of bad management practices that you will have to overcome”. By the time the U.S. companies got to where the Japanese companies were, the Japanese companies would be decades further down the road.
Mark Graban: I think the challenge with any of these new methodologies is not that the methodology is complicated; there is a challenge in unlearning what we know.
John Dyer: Exactly. As I was writing the book, I had one of my old bosses proofread it. He told me that halfway through reading the chapter on the need to get away from “Management by Objectives,” he had to put it down and walk around his house to cool down because it was so foreign to everything he had been taught as a manager. Management by Objectives is basically using fear to drive a behavior towards an artificial goal.
Mark Graban: Let's talk about the book, The Facade of Excellence. Why did you write this?
John Dyer: I have had the opportunity to work with organizations outside of manufacturing that are just now learning these concepts. My hope is that these new organizations can learn from our past trials in the manufacturing world and accelerate their improvement efforts by not falling into the same traps.
Mark Graban: What goes into the concept of the “Facade of Excellence”?
John Dyer: I've run into many situations where organizations tell me they are already doing these things, but it doesn't take long to peel back the onion and realize it's all a facade. The book uses a narrative with two main characters to illustrate this:
- Frank Smith: Represents old-style managers. He goes down the path of faking excellence. For example, to reduce inventory numbers, he quarantines two-thirds of the inventory as failing inspection, so he gets credit for reducing inventory when nothing actually changed .
- Jim Brown: Represents the new leader trying to do the right thing. He inherits a staff used to old-style management who become blockers to change. He has to figure out how to overcome resistance and get employees on board who have years of lack of trust.
Mark Graban: Regarding the facade, I am reminded of Peter Scholtes saying that when you challenge people to hit a target, they can distort the system, distort the numbers, or improve the system . We've all seen distortions.
John Dyer: Dr. Deming talked a lot about the need to drive out fear. Fear causes good people to do stupid things, sometimes to protect themselves or their teams.
I relay a story in the book where we thought a team was doing a great job trying to improve product quality. However, the repair guys, who had the highest-paid jobs, were so angry about the group trying to improve quality that they basically started a riot in our factory because they feared job loss. Management had to step in and commit that even if repair people had to be reassigned, their pay rate would remain the same.
Mark Graban: The book outlines four styles of leadership: the crisis leader, the idea gathering leader, the team forming leader, and the empowerment leader. Can you compare these?
John Dyer: It is a progression. An old-style manager uses fear, needs to be in complete control, puts out fires, and makes all the decisions . Historically, those were the people who got promoted.
A good leader forms teams, trains and coaches employees, provides a vision, and gives the team the tools and data they need. They allow the team to make mistakes and learn. A collaborative leader eventually plays a behind-the-scenes role. The risk is that a CEO might not see that leader “doing anything” because the organization is running smoothly, and they might promote someone else.
Mark Graban: You also touch on the dynamic of a new leader coming in and undoing the progress.
John Dyer: If a progressive leader leaves and is replaced by an old-style manager, it is amazing to watch how quickly that group falls apart. If the new leader reinstates fear and individual goals, employees who had bought into the new culture will either stay and become extraordinarily bitter or they will leave. Both are extraordinarily damaging to the organization.
Mark Graban: Before we wrap up, you have a section on why we should strive for 100%.
John Dyer: I have been told many times that there are diminishing returns and it isn't worth getting from 95% to 100%. If you are not constantly striving for 100%, you have basically told the organization that it is okay to fail or do poorly. Some of the best improvement ideas I have seen cost almost nothing. If we don't strive for perfection, we will never achieve it.
Mark Graban: John, where can people learn more about the book?
John Dyer: It is called The Facade of Excellence: Defining a New Normal of Leadership. It is available for pre-sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and will be out in early October.
One last point, Mark. There is a quote in the book I wrote thinking of you: “Leaders do not believe in good or bad luck, only good or bad processes”.
Mark Graban: I do like that. John, thank you so much for being a guest again on the podcast.
John Dyer: Thank you, Mark. I appreciate it.
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