A quality control guru turns his attention to improving the quality of managers in the 21st century.
4/26/2004
Armand Feigenbaum's Total Quality Control lit a fire under the quality movement. Now he and his brother Donald turn to what they see as the basic business challenge of the twenty-first century: creating continuous and systematic innovation. To the brothers Feigenbaum, proper recognition and deployment of "management capital" is what leads to higher performance, growth, and profit in this fast-changing landscape: "When management capital is properly understood, structured, led throughout a company, and relentlessly emphasized, it is the key to accelerating and sustaining profitable business results." That management talent not only has to be fostered, but (of course) measured. Not surprisingly, the authors view information technology as a key for success, but they also teach the crucial lesson that IT must be tightly integrated with business processes to be truly effective. Another problem in today's corporation is that many managers are trapped in the past. The book lists ten management doctrines that are still popular but no longer apply in the modern world.