I remember being required to do a course on Deming and and read Townsend in the late 1980's, by the company I worked for, on their theories on on Business management. Both were advocates that quality and staff motivation had to come first, ahead of the bean counters requirements. I remember Townsend stated, "Never let the bean counters gain control, or progress slows or stops". I put this into practice we I was given control of the production facilities of the branch that I worked for, that the company was closing in 7 months. My instructions were. You now how to keep this plant running, just get us through to the closing date. As the branch manager was taking over another branch and spent 4 days a week there I had a free hand. In that 7 months my team changed a substantial production negative variance into a positive variance of almost 3 times the negative by using these principles. We went from 28th on the companies monthly matrix, to 3rd for the last 3 months, the only what was termed a smaller branch (less than tons an hour) in the top 15 and the top bean counter management didn't want to know how we did it. They did ask but when we started to explain they lost interest, as it did not fit the bean counter model. Due to the cancelation of the supply contracts the closure still went ahead , though I learnt later that heads rolled at board level. I have always taken the Deming approach since then and remembered Townsends caution about bean counters.
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