The week carried on with Deming's 14 points, Total Quality Management and various other approaches to process improvement and customer service. Very soon I was reading Mary Walton's book on The Deming Management Method and  suddenly I had a new perspective on management that I would never have gained studying only finance, policy and people management. Indeed reading about Deming led me to the excellent course by Wilf Jarvis on Four Quadrant leadership, which in turn exposed me to different views on management and leadership, completely turning blowing away traditional views on management that I'd picked up to that point. I recall reading Victor Frank's book Man's Search For Meaning around that time as Wilf had referred to it in his course notes, such books of paradigm shifts made.

By this stage I guess I had already found out there was more to management and customer service than I had hitherto guessed, but next I picked up a book that is still sitting on my bookshelf today, and changed my view on the very core of what management was about. The book is Flight of the Buffalo by James Belasco and Ralph Stayer, and oddly enough given I live in a superb called Johnsonville, it deals with the Johnsonville Sausage Company and the learning of Ralph Stayer in running the company. There are a lot of great learning in the book but one that stuck with me was that all people come to work to do a good job, but barriers to doing that good job are created and the manager has to figure out what those barriers are and remove them. I think before that I had only ever been exposed to the commonly believed management wisdom that people come to work to slack off, the manager's job is to crack the whip and make sure they are motivated. Beatings should continue until morale improves said the wisdom.

I can't say management was always a breeze after that, but you find out that plenty of people don't see management like Ralph Stayer, you come across people who believe in ruling with an iron fist and bullying behaviour, and you find out if you don't own the company then you don't always get to make the rules. Generally speaking the prevailing management philosophy you see revolves around the cracking the whip mentality, management is apparently about getting tough and getting your way, and people who believe that get to the top and appoint other people who think the same way.