This book should be read by everyone who wants to learn how to better manage an enterprise of any size. It describes methods that can be replicated by anyone to expand their effectiveness and reach, by expanding those of their staff. These methods harken back beyond Dr. W. Edwards Deming, to whom many of them are ascribed, to Mary Parker Follett.
The author of The Elegant Solution, Matthew May, is a consultant who was invited into Toyota for a specific assignment which grew into a multi-year exploration of the entire management system. This book is his report of what he found and how and why it works. He describes numerous ways of looking at organizational design and management that are proven and that yet remain sadly overlooked in the very country of their origin.
Moreover, he presents this material in a manner intended to facilitate its direct application by the reader, and he does so largely with success. From the concept of small, continuous improvement which accumulates to ultimately leave the competition irretrievably behind, to tested and effective methods for conceptualizing and framing issues and formulating plans, the author presents a substantial amount of material for managers to consider and adapt for employment in their own circumstances.
You will recall, for example, that Mary Parker Follett argued that organizational conflict should be viewed wherever possible as a constructive asset which – far from being removed through domination or compromise – should be exploited to generate integrative, innovative results. She even assessed management teams on how well they generated and used conflict in their organizations.
May describes how this concept is expressed inside Toyota. He calls it “Dynamic Tension.” It is the purposeful assignment to a team of goals with elements that, while clearly highly desirable, also appear to be plainly incompatible; one can only be accomplished at the cost of another. But when team members confront and explore the conflicting demands, they know that neither domination nor compromise will be allowed; they are to find an integrative solution.
May stresses that reducing the burden on the team only enables them to surmount it by working harder. This approach neither produces winning results, nor can it be sustained indefinitely. But by maintaining the full demands of the original goals, they are forced to surmount them by thinking smarter. And that produces the “elegant solution.”
It must be said, however, that while there is much more of real value in this book, there is a price to pay. The presentation is simultaneously ingratiating and overweening. It is riddled with (among some pertinent ones) irrelevant and falsely profound quotes from trivial sources (such as rock stars). It ineptly and inexplicably attempts to render “regular guy” vernacular, and even cringingly out-of-touch efforts to appear in touch with the attitudes of younger generations. There is the always annoying habit of adopting (in this case) Japanese terminology on the incorrect assumption that it conveys – or somehow imparts – deeper meaning than its American English counterparts (he even uses “dojo” in place of “training room”).
There is too much of the insufferable “awful/perfect” contrasting of the supposedly single-minded incompetence of much current managerial practice with the methods promoted in the book, combined with irritating and simplistic imputations of these failures to Western or American culture. And a cultish “way of” this or “path of” that manner appears all-too-often, together with the frequently unavoidable suspicion that the book is really just a propaganda tool for Toyota.
But it is clearly more than that. You may find it, as I did, a daunting reading experience, one which I came close to abandoning early on. But I’m glad I didn’t, and I hope you will read the book through, also. This is a case of the media most assuredly not being the message. Work your way through to the latter, and you will find eminently practical and important ways to improve your effectiveness as a manager.
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Today’s tip: Speaking of essential reading – and excellent writing, into the bargain – you really ought to visit Wally Bock‘s Three Star Leadership and subscribe so that you can benefit from his superior book recommendations, together with his weekly selections of and comments regarding the best articles from the business press and blogs; please see this recent one for a sample.
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