Background
The point under discussion is Dr. Deming’s concept of “breaking down barriers.” This point puts a particular emphasis on the important role of the coordinated cooperation of all the corporate departments. Thus, it is assumed that the key barrier to successful performance is the lack of a shared vision of the company’s goals and values. As a result, each department acts as a separate team the interests of which are often irrelevant to those that other departments pursue. Dr. Deming proposes eliminating the described barrier and promoting the harmonious collaboration of all the groups.
The finite goal, therefore, resides in establishing such a working environment that implies a consistent operation flow carried out by a united team that comprises employees from different departments such as production, sales, and research to name but a few. Dr. Deming assumes that such collaboration helps to perform an accurate evaluation of the outcomes and foresee potential problems in the production process. From a long-term perspective, the realization of the described principles is likely to lead to a significant change in the corporate culture, as well as to optimize the organizational structure.
Current Condition
It should be admitted that the “break down concept” is not fully applied to the operation flow in Costco. Even though the company has implemented the practice of multifunctional teams that comprise employees of different specializations, the collaboration between the departments is still inconsistent. Hence, it mainly exists among team leaders.
The latter participate in common seminars and training. They also attend shared meetings regularly. The extent of other employees’ inclusion is, meanwhile, low. Thus, for instance, the decision-making process in the production department is carried out without involving professionals from sales or research division. The top-down managerial approach applied to all the levels of the company’s functioning excludes the possibility of consistent interactions.
Project managers in the production department sometimes try to involve specialists from the research division, though they fail to offer powerful motivation drivers so that the employees’ participation is rather perfunctory than task-focused. Likewise, the achievements of one team are never assigned to the shared effort of other specialists. Therefore, it might be concluded that the managerial approach to task management should be revised to eliminate the existing barriers to the effective collaboration of the entire workforce aligned with the company’s goals and values.
Target Condition
It is proposed that a new goal is set by Costco’s management to apply Dr. Deming’s principle and improve the corporate culture from a long-term perspective. Thus, the management should focus on eliminating barriers to effective collaboration between departments and establish an environment within which each employee will feel like a significant part of a large mechanism. Adopting this principle implies numerous advantages for Costco. First and foremost, it will help to improve the quality of the decision-making process as more professionals will be involved to offer different visions of the issue.
Second, the establishment of consensus among the employees will help to perform consistent planning – each department will make its contribution to foreseeing problems and designing preventative strategies. Additionally, employees will feel more responsible for their activity when they realize they are a part of a common process – as a consequence, they will make more efforts to succeed. Hence, the adoption of this point will help to strengthen the divisional interaction and improve the company’s performance.