I’ve written about W. Edwards Deming and the PDCA cycle in two prior installments of Strategy Essentials, but you should know that they were a reaction to ideas from a guy named Peter Drucker. Like last time, I’m going to start off with some quotes.

• Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
• The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
• If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

Now, here’s the weird part: Even though the philosophies from Drucker and Deming are often at odds with each other, they’ve both been adopted by companies that have gone on to success. Drucker’s philosophy was championed by HP and DuPont, Deming’s was embraced by Toyota and Amazon. There’s no one true way.

Drucker’s philosophy is called Management by Objectives or MBO.

From the Wikipedia page:

Management by objectives can be described as a process whereby the superior and subordinate jointly identify common goals, define each individual’s major areas of responsibility in terms of the results expected of him or her, and use these measures as guides for operating the unit and assessing the contribution of each of its members.

This could revolutionize the way STARFLEET operates because it places so much effort on teaming responsibility with results. In the MBO model, it’s all about agreeing on a goal, defining a task, developing a metric to make sure that the task is being completed and an assessment to follow.

About thirty years after Drucker’s philosophy was introduced as a system, George Doran used it to create the SMART criteria for goals and objectives.

• Specific: Target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable: Quantify an indicator of progress.
• Assignable: Specify who will do it.
• Realistic: State what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-bound: Specify when the results can be achieved.

In a truly transparent STARFLEET, this information would be available for every position. When it comes to determining whether someone is doing a good job or a bad job, we wouldn’t have to rely entirely on other people’s opinions. We could see it for ourselves.

For example:

Lt. Random volunteered to do a job. Lt. Random met with leadership and negotiated the specific tasks associated with that job, how the completion of those tasks would be measured, and how long it would take. Lt. Random got leadership to engage specific resources to complete the job.

The limited results: Lt. Random was able to do more than they promised. Lt. Random did exactly as they promised. Lt. Random wasn’t able to do what they promised. Leadership provided the resources they agreed to provide to Lt. Random or they didn’t.

This changes everything.

Instead of someone trying to convince you to vote for and/or appoint them with titles they’ve held or by telling you how long they’ve been in STARFLEET, they could produce a list of tasks they have completed or goals they have met or exceeded. On the flip side, they could tell you about what fell short, and how their ideas would modify the tasks or better define the objectives.

We could make better decisions because we would have better information.

Drucker ideas and the SMART criteria require leadership to be considerably more engaged, but I think they could split the difference. If someone had to come up with metrics for every single volunteer position at the international level, they would probably lose their mind. They could eliminate as many of those positions as possible, and then put their energy into the ones that are left. The same strategy can be employed at the departmental and regional level, too.

These ideas also raise the bar on volunteer effort. It won’t be enough to say that you’re interested in a thing and you want to be in charge of information regarding a thing for STARFLEET. You’re going to be expected to detail exactly what you’re willing to do, how long it’s going to take and how that effort will be measured.

Drucker’s ideas are worth considering. So are Deming’s. There are a lot of different ideas when it comes to responsible management and leadership, and many of them are valid. As I mentioned earlier in the series: If there was one true way that worked 100% of the time, everyone would use it and no one would ever go broke.

If I’m trying to convince you of anything, it’s this: We’ve lost so much ground. We need to move away from a leadership model that’s focused on personality and move toward a model that’s focused on the improvement of our product for current and potential customers. I’m not picking a particular side; I’m just presenting proven methods and ideas for doing just that.