| I don't mean to overly shill for "In Search of Excellence". (And yeah, I remember when it came out.) But I just happened to catch the bulk of an hour long interview with its author, Tom Peters, today. https://the1a.org/shows/2018-04-02/excellence-explained And the parent comment reminds me of what he had to say about MBWA -- Management By Wandering Around. It doesn't exactly fit what it appears Musk is currently doing. But as for the experience gained and benefit of being down on the floor, on the front line. Well, Peters' enthusiasm and description of same, seemed on point, to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_wandering_around If there are problems, at least Musk is not sitting in his office, learning of them and trying to deal with them through layers of reports (both people and paper/electrons/photons). P.S. As a possible counter-balance to this, I'll mention the complaints that have been reported about worker welfare on those same production lines. To the extent those are true, they would be in opposition to the practices Peters espouses. |
Also liked from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba#Gemba_walk
If I had to pick two tools from Lean production methods that everyone at every level of any company should use, it would be Go and See (Genchi Genbutsu) and Ask Why 5 Times.