Big ideas come from tackling — 13— problems. When one is confronted with an overwhelming task, it’s
pieces. Business jargon is full of phrases about that, like “pilot projects” and “low-hanging fruit.” They have
their place, but in the repertory of management —14—, they should share their place with bold approaches
to big challenges. Much of today’s most valuable management knowledge came from wrestling with such
issues. The most complicated workplace in the middle of the last century was the automobile assembly
plant. Drawn to its complexity where Peter F. Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, and Taiichi Ohno, among
others. The work they and their disciples did, applied in industry after industry, is the basis of the best that
we know about operations, managing people, innovation, organizational design, and much more.
The most complex workplaces are tertiary care hospitals. These vast —15— employ tens of th ousands of
people who, under one roof, do everything from neurosurgery to laundry. Each patient - that is to say, each
“job” — calls on a different set of people with a different constellation of —-16— ; even when the two
patients have the same diagnosis, success may be —17-differently. This is complexity of an order of
magnitude greater than automobile assembly, and anyone who -18— hospitalized knows that management
has thus far been unequal to the scope of task. The workers, managers, consultants, and scholars —19—
crack this nut will reshape industries and institutions just as —20— as Drucker, Deming, and Ohno did.
Small
Select one of the following: