OK, here's a challenge: Deming didn't strike me as a particular fan of fun or silliness. Isn't it entirely your filter that you envelop Deming in, because, well, you are you?
What you have said about teams brought up a memory of working in small businesses (less than 50) and what always seems to happen there. Often some owner or manager will say "oh we're like one big family here". Except that one can't get fired from family. Now, I've worked for small businesses where family was a big part of the business and it was usually clear that the family was different and that employees were a special part of the business. Yet it seems that I've heard the "we're like a family" usually in businesses where no family worked. The idea of a business's employees can be a toxic thing in part because of the not firing real family thing but also it assumes a lot about the families of employees. It assumes that everyone comes from a more or less stable home environment. That is not always the case. I've had this play out in a couple of different ways and it was never good.
So, teaching business owners not to see their employees as extended family but as a team is, I think, something that should be emphasized for every business of any size. Team members sometimes are traded away and that can be a good thing for both the employer and employer. It is more honest and less psychologically manipulative than the "we're family" thing. I recall several friends emotionally devastated when fired from the work family....
I wonder what you think of things like group trips that are meant to build more
of a sense of teamwork, as well as mandatory team building events that leech into workers' private lives?
I've totally seen this. People want "family" and give you "the business".
I think that teams are made of people and that businesses (or other teams) require familiarity and what some companies I've worked with (that do this well) call active caring. This means they create systems together (collaboratively) that directly build an environment where people can have agency, responsibility, and the ability to act. This almost always comes with visual systems to keep everyone up to date, focused on work being done and the work evolving as you learn, and make sure that the individuals on the team are calm, focused, and able to deal with things.
That, in turn, requires that work is not impersonal or 'just business' because the humans on the team need to be human. They have stuff going on and the team needs to adjust to that. A death in the family or other life events do, legitimately, impact the team.
We don't have a word for this. "Team" is like we are gathered to play a game. "Work" is toil we are generally not keen to do. "Family" are people we share bloodlines with. But there simply isn't a good word for "Buncha people who care about each other collaborating to get stuff done of mutual importance with a focus on quality and reliability that's built in a way that doesn't destroy the people doing it."
So, when people are saying they want a family (which you and I have indeed seen people fired from their families), they are generally trying to say this and have nearly zero good patterns for how to value it, describe it, or do it.
In our Toxic Waste class, we call this "Inept Human Interaction."
Our language seems limited on many fronts. Perhaps we should think more in terms of German word-building and create compound words that describe a concept. It's exciting to think that there are new concepts and thinking around how we work!
I'm now also curious about your Toxic Waste class. Teaching how business environments can be both toxic and wasteful? I imagine so in many ways.
OK, here's a challenge: Deming didn't strike me as a particular fan of fun or silliness. Isn't it entirely your filter that you envelop Deming in, because, well, you are you?
I don't say you're not right.
I just say it's you, not Deming.
I would coerce Deming to accept silliness. But yes, the 15th point is all me.
Having said that, Deming did start each class he taught by saying "We are here to learn, to have fun, and to build a better world."
So .. there is some fun fandom there.
What you have said about teams brought up a memory of working in small businesses (less than 50) and what always seems to happen there. Often some owner or manager will say "oh we're like one big family here". Except that one can't get fired from family. Now, I've worked for small businesses where family was a big part of the business and it was usually clear that the family was different and that employees were a special part of the business. Yet it seems that I've heard the "we're like a family" usually in businesses where no family worked. The idea of a business's employees can be a toxic thing in part because of the not firing real family thing but also it assumes a lot about the families of employees. It assumes that everyone comes from a more or less stable home environment. That is not always the case. I've had this play out in a couple of different ways and it was never good.
So, teaching business owners not to see their employees as extended family but as a team is, I think, something that should be emphasized for every business of any size. Team members sometimes are traded away and that can be a good thing for both the employer and employer. It is more honest and less psychologically manipulative than the "we're family" thing. I recall several friends emotionally devastated when fired from the work family....
I wonder what you think of things like group trips that are meant to build more
of a sense of teamwork, as well as mandatory team building events that leech into workers' private lives?
I've totally seen this. People want "family" and give you "the business".
I think that teams are made of people and that businesses (or other teams) require familiarity and what some companies I've worked with (that do this well) call active caring. This means they create systems together (collaboratively) that directly build an environment where people can have agency, responsibility, and the ability to act. This almost always comes with visual systems to keep everyone up to date, focused on work being done and the work evolving as you learn, and make sure that the individuals on the team are calm, focused, and able to deal with things.
That, in turn, requires that work is not impersonal or 'just business' because the humans on the team need to be human. They have stuff going on and the team needs to adjust to that. A death in the family or other life events do, legitimately, impact the team.
We don't have a word for this. "Team" is like we are gathered to play a game. "Work" is toil we are generally not keen to do. "Family" are people we share bloodlines with. But there simply isn't a good word for "Buncha people who care about each other collaborating to get stuff done of mutual importance with a focus on quality and reliability that's built in a way that doesn't destroy the people doing it."
So, when people are saying they want a family (which you and I have indeed seen people fired from their families), they are generally trying to say this and have nearly zero good patterns for how to value it, describe it, or do it.
In our Toxic Waste class, we call this "Inept Human Interaction."
Our language seems limited on many fronts. Perhaps we should think more in terms of German word-building and create compound words that describe a concept. It's exciting to think that there are new concepts and thinking around how we work!
I'm now also curious about your Toxic Waste class. Teaching how business environments can be both toxic and wasteful? I imagine so in many ways.