OUT OF THE CRISIS

Introduction
The title of this article was adopted from Deming's- book. Out of The Crisis is a book written by Deming in 1982. A seminal book that ignited worldwide revolution in quality. The book contains more than thoughts on quality. It contains transformational ideas to lead and manage people, processes and resources. In the book, Deming introduced 14 Points for Management. The 14 points are suggestions by Deming for transformation of organizations. This article will touch on 1st Point of transformation idea.
Constancy of Purpose
Constancy of purpose is the first point from the 14 transformation ideas. Organization shall establish a constancy of purpose towards improvement of products and services, with the aim of being competitive, stay in business and to provide employment.
In order to stay in business and provide employments, businesses has to face and manage two problems.
" There are two problems: (1) Problem of today & (2) Problem of tomorrow for a company to survive and stay in the business"
Edward Deming- Out of the Crisis 2004.
​I have elaborated in detail on the two types of problem in my blog posting.
​The main theme here is on the need for organizations to continually improve products and services.

Emerging Paradigm Theme
A decade after Out of The Crisis was published, another book with almost similar theme was published. The book titled Beyond Total Quality Management, Towards Emerging Paradigm was published in 1994. The book did not get much prominence despite written with high and relevant quality contents. This could be due to the authors were academy members of universities and the book was targeted primarily at college students.
The first chapter discusses about global competition and emerging paradigm. At the time this book was written, the Japanese was the main competitor for American businesses. The book describes how global competitors are eating into market shares of American businesses and how the businesses should response in order to be competitive and stay in business,
Today, businesses world over continue to face competitions be it locally or globally. At the global level emergence of China brings along different kind of competition. They are aggressive, fast and quick adoption of technology and ideas.
Despite changes in competitive landscape the ideas from the book is still applicable today. The book suggest that in order to compete organizations need to work around three interwoven themes.
The themes are:-

• Customer Value Strategy
• Cross Functional Systems
• Continuous Improvement

"Leaders must think and act differently than in the past to continuously improve its organizational systems to provide superior customer value"

Different Books, Similar Themes
Different books, but similar themes and still applicable today. And very much needed in today's operating environment.
Can both themes or ideas be combined together to arrive at a common framework? I believe it is possible.
The image below depicts how both theme can be merged together and also how various initiatives to improve may fall into a framework

Adopting the framework, brings the entire organizations into an alignment. Any actions that is taken by the organization shall be for the main purpose of providing superior customer value. Today we may have some initiatives that is done in silo. But, with this framework, any initiatives will have greater purpose. Hence, many different improvement programs such as Kaizen, Lean , Six Sigma, 5S, ISO 9001, Leadership Development and others are aligned with the purpose of providing superior customer value.

SUMMARY
Organizations face multiple internal and external challenges. A constancy of purpose brings a meaning to all these challenges and chaotic situations can be brought under control by having clarity of the purpose of the organization.