The Management Study That Was Too Good to Be True

Years ago, I came across a study I loved.

It perfectly supported one of the core concepts I teach in CEO and manager training: Leaders are often blind to a great deal that goes on in their own organization, especially the problems.

The nature of high-level leadership is that people become less willing to give you the straight story. They want your approval, or they don’t want to seem like complainers, or they just don’t want the blame. So they tend NOT to tell you about the problems they’re seeing on the ground. That includes the nasty, intractable ones that will eventually swell to a size where they do get your attention... usually too late.

Enter Sidney Yoshida, a quality control expert whose paper “Quality Improvement and TQC Management at Calsonic in Japan and Overseas” actually delved into this phenomenon.

Yoshida presented his paper in 1989 at the 2nd International Quality Symposium in Mexico, and its findings were so striking that they are still cited widely by management gurus. Yo…