Management system (open source)


Management System is a socio-technical system that leverages the cumulative knowledge of management practitioners and evidenced based research from the past 130 years. The system was developed by DoD components in partnership with industry experts and academic researchers and builds off of the US Department of Wars version 1.0 open source management system - Training Within Industry.
The system integrates the four organizational components of Product, Structure, Process and People. In addition, the system is based on the 4 capabilities of rapid problem solving underlying the Toyota Production System:
  1. Design and Operate Work to See Problems.
  2. Solve Problems Close in Person, Place & Time.
  3. Capture and Share Knowledge from solving those problems.
  4. Managers Coach their Team in capabilities 1-3.
Derived from the original research of Steven J. Spear, the system balances the two dimensions of high performing organizations: integrate the whole ; and increase the rate of problem solving to manage the whole.
Fundamentally, the system sets the standards of management by outlining a doctrine of rules, tactics, techniques, procedures & terms. The standards are intended to motivate change by creating a tension between the organization's "current condition" and the "ideal condition".
The objective of the system is to deliver more value, in less time, at less cost relative to the competition. For the DoD, competition is defined by the threats posed by current and potential adversaries.

Management Matters

"When we take stock of the productivity gains that drive our prosperity, technology gets all the credit. In fact, management is doing a lot of the heavy lifting". A growing body of evidence based research is showing the correlation and causation of management's impact on organizational performance.
The Management System is based on this body of research and managerial practice. The research findings is best captured by Clayton Christensen, former Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School : "Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team."
As a result, the system establishes the "practice routines" for the management profession. Evidenced based research in the field of practice shows that "practice makes permanent, so practice perfect". This is echoed in Vince Lombardi's admonishment - "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect". Therefore, the Management System outlines the practice routines that enable the profession to engage in daily and "deliberate practice" To be successful in the profession of management, the daily and deliberate practice routines require a manager to commit to three fundamental values: Respect for People, Continuous Improvement, and Customer First.

Doctrine of Management

The Management System is a doctrine that outlines the fundamental rules, with supporting tactics, techniques, procedures and terms used for the conduct of managerial work in support of the DoD component's objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgment in application. Each organizational element of Product, Structure, Process and People outline the standards of management using the following construct:

Product (Rule Statement, TTPs, Ideal Condition)

Rule Statement: Prioritize and develop products that solve the customer's “job to be done” with no “cost of delay”.
Ideal Condition:
Products designed and delivered that generate:
100% Value Creation
100% Value Capture
Rule Statement: Structure the role relationships to solve problems that deliver products of value.
Ideal Condition:
Roles aligned and structured for:
Rule Statement: Develop the process to deliver “just in time”.
Ideal Condition:
Process that produce and deliver the product:
Rule Statement: Develop and deliver capable people “just in time”.
Ideal Condition:
Process that develops and delivers people capable for the role:
"All models are wrong, but some are useful", George E. P. Box. Business research has the potential of falling victim to what Phil Rosenzweig outlines in his book "The Halo Effect". The Management System states that it leverages evidenced based research, but in reality, all research can fall victim to some of the below effects.
  1. The Halo Effect: the cognitive bias in which the perception of one quality is contaminated by a more readily available quality.In the context of business, observers think they are making judgements of a company's customer-focus, quality of leadership or other virtues, but their judgement is contaminated by indicators of company performance such as share price or profitability. Correlations of, for example, customer-focus with business success then become meaningless, because success was the basis for the measure of customer focus.
  2. The Delusion of Correlation and Causality: mistakenly thinking that correlation is causation.
  3. The Delusion of Single Explanations: arguments that factor X improves performance by 40% and factor Y improves by another 40%, so both at once will result in an 80% improvement. The fallacy is that X and Y might be very strongly correlated. E.g. X might improve performance by causing Y.
  4. The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots: looking only at successful companies and finding their common features, without comparing them against unsuccessful companies.
  5. The Delusion of Rigorous Research: Some authors boast of the amount of data that they have collected, as though that in itself made the conclusions of the research valid.
  6. The Delusion of Lasting Success: the "secrets of success" books imply that lasting success is achievable, if only managers will follow their recommended approach. Rosenzweig argues that truly lasting success never happens in business.
  7. The Delusion of Absolute Performance: market performance is down to what competitors do as well as what the company itself does. A company can do everything right and yet still fall behind.
  8. The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick: getting cause the wrong way round. E.g. successful companies have a Corporate Social Responsibility policy. Should we infer that CSR contributes to success, or that profitable companies have money to spend on CSR?
  9. The Delusion of Organisational Physics: the idea that business performance is non-chaotically determined by discoverable factors, so that there are rules for success out there if only we can find them.