Books from the Intelligent Management team
Deming and Goldratt: The Decalogue
Authors: Domenico Lepore, Oded Cohen
Review by Dr. Domenico Lepore
Dr. Deming (1900 - 1993) and Dr. Goldratt (1947 - 2011) had similar academic backgrounds but lived in different eras, in different countries, had different faiths, belonged to different communities and had entirely different professional developments as well as personal temperaments. Moreover, their books are written in a profoundly different style and are, frankly, aimed at largely different audiences.
What joins them at the hip is their never shaken trust in the human ability (and desire) to learn and progress. Theirs was a never ending quest for the betterment of the human condition and, especially, the meaningfulness of work-related pursuits.
In the mid-nineties, as in awe as I was of their monumental body of work, something that was enriching my life and informing my professional development, I felt I could add something that could bring these teachings together in a cohesive and comprehensive fashion. As cognizant as I was of the intellectual peril to change even an iota of their superb teachings, I sought the advice of my mentor, Oded Cohen, first and lifetime partner of Dr. Goldratt.
Following 4 years of intense collaborative work and encouraged by Larry Gadd at North River Press, Oded and I released 'Deming and Goldratt - The Decalogue' in 1999. After 25 years and several official and unofficial translations, I can happily stand behind every single page of it and claim its validity.
What I am most proud of is that 'Deming & Goldratt' has formed the bedrock for some relevant conceptual developments, illustrated in later books, that my team and I developed and tested in numerous in-the-field implementations.
In a world where the complexity of Supply Chains keeps increasing (triggering the fantasies of inflation conscious economists as well as spurring a wealth of useless technology) I could not help feeling some solace in reading what Robert A. Kemp, Ph.D., C.P.M., Professor Emeritus-Management, concluded in his review of the book 'Deming & Goldratt' for the National Association of Purchasing Management:
"This is another of those books that belongs in every manager’s briefcase as urgent reading. Similarly, it belongs on the desk of every supply management professional as a “must use” reference to develop organizational control and predictability. It should be part of a trilogy on your desk. You should also have a good book about Dr. Deming and right beside it should be The Goal by Dr. Goldratt. You and your organization will be better for having studied them seriously."
Quality, Involvement, Flow
Authors: Domenico Lepore, Angela Montgomery, Giovanni Siepe
In our almost thirty-year quest for more evolved management, Dr. Deming and Dr. Goldratt have been our beacon and constant reference point. They spent their lives in the continuous pursuit of the science and method underpinning such management.
At Intelligent Management, we feel we have inherited that drive and zest for continuous learning. Since 2010, after 15 years of relentless applications and tests, we started our own journey to make the ideas presented in the book ‘Deming and Goldratt - The Decalogue’ come to fruition in full.
The starting question was: What do people in organizations really do? What is the very fabric of their work?
First in ‘Sechel: Logic, Language and Tools to Manage Any Organizational as a Network’ (2011) and later in Springer volume on Complexity in a chapter called 'Managing Complexity in Organizations Through a Systemic Network of Projects' (2016) we lay the foundation for a conceptual transition “from Silo to System”. In ‘Quality Involvement Flow: The Systemic Organization' written by invitation from Michael Sinocchi at CRC Press (Taylor & Francis) we provide a comprehensive lowdown of what is needed to execute that transition.
While intended for practitioners and the general public interested in the themes of organizational development, ‘Quality, Involvement, Flow’ is, at its core, a textbook. It describes at length the “hows and whys” for a systemic organization; it reframes the conversation about the teachings of Dr. Deming and the Theory of Constraints in terms of organizational redesign and pulls no punches in defining a curriculum for a new kind of Business School, one that is cognizant of Complexity and the need for a new covenant with the way we interpret the management of people’s work.
True to our nature and our cultural beliefs, ‘Quality, Involvement, Flow’ strives to highlight the coherence that must exist between undisputed scientific principles and the way they should translate into the design of an organization that sincerely aspires to be labeled as “Systemic”.
‘Quality, Involvement, Flow’ brings to the fore the role that hashtag#competencies play in the building of a successful organization and aims at being a call to action for any decision maker interested in creating solid foundations for true, long-term success.
Moving the Chains
Authors: Domenico Lepore with Stefano Righetti
Thirty years after Nicholas Negroponte’s 'Being Digital', most conversations about digitization still revolve around technology, NOT the changes necessary to reap its arguable benefits.
Organizations still mired in an anachronistic silo structure (and mentality) will use digital tools to do the wrong things faster, proliferate functional roles (see no further than the ludicrousness of the “Chief Digital Officer”) and further demean the role of the CIO – see our white paper “Letter to a CIO”
Failure to understand the copernican revolution that digitization brings will foster at light speed the creation of an uncontrolled series of local fiefdoms, creating unnecessary fragmentation and stifling the attempt to accelerate the flow of information, material and money.
At Intelligent Management we believe digitization is not a primarily technological issue; it is, at its very core, an organizational one. Accordingly, when Scott Isenberg at Business Expert Press invited us to give our take on it, we took the opportunity.
'Moving the Chains' draws from our previous books to illustrate the path towards meaningful digitization, one that embraces the cognitive and organizational shift that needs to take place in a world that has moved from atoms to bits. It is graced by a chapter written by the CEO and founder of Hyphen-Group, Stefano Righetti, who was one of the very first technologists to embrace a Deming view of the organization and moulded his very successful software on that view.
It is a good read and hopefully a contribution to a broader conversation on the subject.
From Silos to Network: A New Kind of Science for Management
Authors: Domenico Lepore, Angela Montgomery, Giovanni Siepe, Francesco Siepe
The most distinguishing feature of both Dr. Deming and Dr. Goldratt is their unending quest for knowledge. Both of them strove relentlessly to share that knowledge for the betterment of any worthwhile human endeavour, especially in highly complex environments like Industry, Education, Healthcare, Government, etc.
Their teachings have inspired and informed the professional lives of all of us at Intelligent Management and prompted our efforts to develop new knowledge. In 2016, by invitation from Dr. Anthony J. Masys CD, PhD, editor of the Springer volume ‘Applications of Systems Thinking and Soft Operations research in Managing Complexity’, we wrote a long chapter called “Managing Complexity in Organizations through a Systemic Network of Projects.” In that chapter we lay the conceptual foundation for an organization design that is truly coherent with a Deming-Goldratt whole system optimization. This is something we expanded upon in 2017 in our book ‘Quality, Involvement, Flow: The Systemic Organization’ for CRC Press.
What we needed at this point was something that could illustrate (and support) practically how the transformation into an optimized system can happen. We thought that a good algorithm could do the trick. Luckily, we had a formidable mathematician at hand, Dr. Francesco Siepe Ph.D., and a young and talented team of computer scientists, lead by Nicola Vastola, who gladly accepted the challenge.
‘From Silo to Network: A New Kind of Science for Management’ was, again, written by invitation from Springer and we are grateful to our editor Dr. Hisako Niko, with whom we share a common academic background, for her patience, wisdom and intellectual courage to publish something somewhat “revolutionary”.
If you have the curiosity and the determination to wade through it, what you will find in this booklet is a well articulated evolution of Dr. Goldratt’s original CriticalChain algorithm that does not rely on gimmicks or workarounds. Far from a series of tips for managing flow, you will find a rigorous explanation of how to manage a multi-project environment and realize operationally a truly systemic organization, the way Dr. Deming and Dr. Goldratt had imagined.
We think of ourselves as “midgets on the shoulders of giants”. We like the view from there. Please, do join us.
The Human Constraint
Author: Angela Montgomery
Review by Dr. Domenico Lepore
In 2014, Angela Montgomery published on our website a “project” in the form of a business novel. Set in the years leading up to the 2007-2009 financial crisis and its aftermath, ‘The Human Constraint’ pays homage to Dr. Goldratt’s storytelling genre. By explicitly delving into the somewhat misunderstood part of Theory of Constraints (TOC) called Thinking Processes, through three “business cases”, Angela sheds new light on the thinking paradigm that underpins TOC and its transformative purpose.
The book was made available for download from our website and in the ensuing 10 years a few thousand copies were bought by people in 43 different countries.
Last year, Michael Sinocchi at Routledge Taylor & Francis Group took a liking to the novel and kindly offered to republish it, adding the subtitle ‘How Business Leaders Can Embed Continuous Innovation, Conflict Resolution and Problem Solving Into Daily Practice’. The book will be available at the end of August.
‘The Human Constraint’ is a cerebral yet fast-paced, real-events inspired novel. Camouflaged as a love story, it is an imperfect yet sincere search into the crevices of human emotions; it is, first and foremost, a departure from the far too limited approach to the Thinking Processes often labeled as “logical”.
Over the years we received very positive feedback. We feel that the readers of this new edition will not be disappointed.
