[The following article appears in the February 1995 edition of _The_Public_Sector_Quality_Report_, pages 1 and 2.] BOOK REVIEW: CREECH'S TQM BOOK URGES DECENTRALIZATION, LEADERSHIP Don't be fooled by the title of former U.S. Air Force general Bill Creech's new book, The Five Pillars of TQM: How to Make Total Quality Management Work for You (Truman Talley Books/Dutton, ISBN 0-525-03725-0, $26.95). This is not a "how to" book in the traditional sense. Among its 530-odd pages you won't find detailed description on how to build a Pareto chart, how to facilitate a process improvement brainstorming session, or how to use survey techniques to gauge customer needs and satisfaction. In fact, this is less a book about "how to" and more a treatise on "who to," "what to" and "why to." It's a book you'll want to read more for the leadership inspiration and management insight it might render, and less for any nuts-and-bolts TQM instruction it might contain. Creech taps his extensive background as a public sector leader (more than 30 years in the Air Force, the last ones as a four-star general) and his expertise as a speaker, thinker and TQM/Leadership consultant to assess the shortcomings, outright failures and untapped opportunities for managers and leaders in U.S. organizations (both public and private sector). He also offers a broad vision for systemic change and improvement based on a metaphor he calls the "five pillars" of TQM, which are: * Product. "Product is the focal point for organization purpose and achievement," Creech writes. "One's job is self-centered; the product is group-centered. It is the 'we and our' mindset, not 'I and my' mindset that leaders must build..." To illustrate the difference, Creech cites the story of two workers pounding away with hammers inside a rock quarry. When asked what they were doing, the first answered, "Breaking rocks." The second? "Building a cathedral." * Process. He argues that "quality in the product is impossible without quality in the process." Creech cites process improvement methodologies from Florida Power & Light and Boeing as examples of how to fine-tune processes toward higher-quality output. * Organization. "Quality in the process is impossible without the right organization," Creech says. "Think big about what you can achieve; think small about how to achieve it." Creech borders on the fanatical in challenging organizational leaders to reject the evils of "centralism" and embrace decentralization, or what he calls "organizing small." To Creech "organizing small" is synonymous with teams. And not just temporary process improvement teams comprised of "volunteers." But instead a permanent, organic team-based organizational structure. (On this point Creech takes some issue with David Carr and Ian Littman, authors of Excellence in Government: Total Quality Management in the 1990s. Creech says they and many others overemphasize the process improvement aspects of TQM, and fail to adequately address the importance of leadership and organizational structure in effective TQM implementation.) * Leadership. "The right organization is meaningless without the proper leadership." Creech takes great pains to explain why much of what passes for leadership in today's organizations is mere "managership." You've heard the expression: "There are no bad people, only bad systems?" Creech insists: "There are no poor outfits, just poor leaders." * Commitment. Here again, Creech says America's traditional management and organizational approach is to blame for worker disaffection. He calls for free-flowing communication, measuring outputs in ways designed by the people doing the work, and sharing success with employees (both financially and through recognition/ reward systems) as ways to invite greater employee commitment. Creech also argues that pay for performance must be addressed in order to improve employee commitment, but he offers little in the way of detail on how best to design such a system. In fact, if PSQR was disappointed by anything in the book, it was the relative scarcity of concrete, how-to examples and advice for how others might accomplish the sweeping changes Creech recommends. Creech concedes in the book that "leaders are made, not born." At the same time, he often seems bent on hurrying past or briefly skimming specific, case study examples and anecdotes, the kind of details which would help a reader better grasp his points (and more important, take action based on his message). At times PSQR wanted desperately to raise a hand and say, "Excuse me, General, but could you offer suggestions on how I might apply what you're saying to my situation?" or "No, please continue. We really would like to learn more about that topic." One might presume Creech's book would be crammed almost entirely with dissertations on his years in the military, but it's not. In fact he reaches far and wide--the Air Force, commercial aviation, the auto industry, education, retailing--for the illustrations and case studies he does employ to flesh out his theories and arguments. Perhaps one of the most important contributions of Creech's book is that it challenges organizations and their leaders to shake up the status quo. To dismantle and decentralize "centocracies." To prune away rules and regulations. To spend quality time supporting and listening to the front line troops. After all, Creech and people he's led over the years have done all of those things and more, under demanding workplace conditions and performance expectations many of us only can imagine. Take Creech's experience at the Air Force's Tactical Air Command unit as one example: Before he arrived, TAC averaged one fighter crash every 13,000 flying hours. Yet Creech's book describes how he and his colleagues actually reduced the number of rules governing flight operations, including shaving the minimum altitude for low-level flying missions from 500 feet to 100 (this in jets moving at more than 600 miles per hour). They also took steps to increase realism in flight training exercises, including reintroducing practice dogfights. Creech explains: "This was to be a noble experiment: relying on greater leadership latitude and professionalism at the frontline level instead of the rule-mongering and stifling managership from above." When Creech left TAC, the accident rate had improved to one crash every 50,000 hours, a gain of 275 percent. The point, and one of the key messages to be taken from Creech's book, is this: If leaders and front-line workers can stretch for improvement when life, death and multi-million-dollar hardware are on the line each day, then who are the rest of us to be timid about strategically improving ourselves and our organizations? ______________________________________________________________ Another View "Bill Creech's management reforms formed the basis for America's astonishing success in Operation Desert Storm. When I was named (National Performance Review) project director, my first passion was to get the Vice President to Langley Air Force Base to see first hand what quality management could do in government. "And last September, when the Vice President wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times to describe his goal for NPR, he cited Bill Creech's experience at TAC as evidence of what government employees could accomplish. Five Pillars of TQM is the best book out on quality management. It should help anyone to carry out the reforms of the National Performance Review." Bob Stone Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, now NPR project director From Reinvention Roundtable, NPR's newsletter [For further information about PSQR or to subscribe, contact: Public Sector Quality Report 17733 Kingsway Path Lakeville, MN 55044-5209 Phone: (612) 898-5058 Fax: (612) 892-7710 e-mail: 74363.3644@compuserve.com]