A shakeout

Tom Peters, a U.S. management guru and author of In Search of Excellence, was quoted recently in the daily press as saying, “dull, timid, middle managers will be the most endangered corporate species in the 90s.” I hope so. Dull, timid, middle managers should have been routinely sacked in the past.

But like never before, middle management is in the midst of a shakeout. Consider the noises out of the executive suite of Ontario Hydro — 12,000 positions are on the endangered list. Doubtless a deep swath will be cut through white collar ranks. CN Rail is another major outfit that will be slashing the middle management ranks. The big oil companies have already worked the axe. Mining companies aren’t exempt. Placer Dome, for example, has been “pancaking” its organization to flatten out the hierarchical structures built up during past prosperity. One has to hope that surgical techniques are used; otherwise, “dull, timid, middle managers” will be out the door, as will, unfortunately, the real talent.

If mining companies are serious about streamlining, about improving productivity and about simply making the workplace a better place for ordinary workers and line managers, they would do well, if they haven’t already, to study a concept called Total Quality Management (TQM), an idea that’s slowly working its way into the industry.

In a nutshell, TQM, as outlined in a “primer” published by the Mines Accident Prevention Association of Ontario, strives to achieve the following:

1. Satisfy internal and external customers. For a mining company, whoever buys its concentrates or metal is the external customer. Internally, the muckers are the blasters’ customers, the mill, the mine’s customer and so on.

2. Continuous improvement.

3. Integrated efforts. Flatten organizational structure and break down barriers between departments and job classes.

4. Management by fact, not gut instinct, tradition, or textbook solutions. TQM relies heavily on the gathering and analysis of statistical data.

5. Maximization of employee potential. TQM companies share information with employees freely, continuously seek employee input and decentralize decision-making to the lowest possible level.

On paper, it sounds rather idealistic and potentially bureaucratic. But according to its proponents (Lorne Ames, for one, who as president of Inco’s Manitoba operations introduced it there), its worth has been proven in many North American companies. The Japanese, by the way, were the first to recognize and realize the TQM potential.

My guess is, done right, TQM can transform the workplace into a responsive, quality-conscious, team-oriented endeavor where worker input and management control are equally focused on productivity, health and safety, process improvement and a raft of other key concerns. Done wrong, TQM will foster a nightmare of paperwork, confusion and labor/management tension.

According to a Coopers and Lybrand Consulting Group study, mining companies, with a few exceptions, haven’t yet embraced TQM. To me, the goals embodied in the concept are critical to success in the 1990s and beyond. But how to implement TQM, that is the real question.