Background
In the frame of his tenth point, that implies “eliminating exhortations,” Dr. Deming suggests that companies should avoid advancing slogans and goals that encourage employees to increase productivity and performance quality. He offers two strong arguments to explain the inefficacy of such methods. First and foremost, Dr. Deming believes that these exhortations commonly imply some quantitative goals that employees feel obliged to accomplish. As such, they adopt a misleading focus working to improve the figure-based indicators of their performance instead of concentrating on the quality aspect.
Second, Dr. Deming assumes that setting such goals is initially incorrect since employees are not capable of fulfilling them. In other words, the things they are encouraged to eliminate such as low productivity and low quality do not essentially depend on employees. Instead, they are the result of a poorly structured organizational system. From this perspective, the slogans that urge employees to eliminate low productivity illustrate the professional incompetence of their managers who have allowed for the implementation of poor methods and practices. As such, employees strive to correct the mistakes for which they are not responsible.
The alternative solution that Dr. Deming suggests resides in improving the system functioning from within. Otherwise stated, it is managers who are primarily supposed to eliminate the flaws in the organization functioning. Thus, employees should see the practical effort their managers make to improve the outcomes. The personal example is more likely to encourage employees to show effective performance than vague goals and catchy slogans.
Current Condition
Upon analyzing Costco’s managerial practices, it might be concluded that the discussed principle has not been implemented in the organization. As such, managers tend to offer various slogans and exhortations to the employees to be adopted as a finite goal. The slogans are commonly proclaimed at the monthly meetings. It is essential to note, that during the meetings, employees seem to agree with the suggested slogans and share their message eagerly. In the meantime, when the meeting is over, it turns out that employees have little idea on how to comply with the slogan’s appeal.
Otherwise stated, they agree that the situation needs to be improved though they do not actually have a concise vision of how to perform the required improvements. As such, they finish up by trying to compensate for the potential failure to reorganize the ineffective structure by improving their quantitative results. As a result, the level of quality naturally remains the same, and the next meeting is accompanied by the introduction of a new slogan that repeats the one previously proclaimed.
Target Condition
It is assumed that Costco can improve its managerial practices through the implementation of the discussed principle significantly. Thus, the elimination of exhortations and catchy slogans is likely to prompt its managers to focus on practical improvements rather than on the development of creative slogans that have little practical value. Additionally, managers will become more concerned about fulfilling their responsibilities without trying to shuffle them off to the workforce.
Likewise, the elimination of exhortations is likely to raise the morale of the employees since they will no longer take the entire blame for all the system flaws. From a long-term perspective, the adoption of this principle will help Costco to eliminate the weaknesses in the managerial practices promptly and ensure continual outcome and productivity improvement.