When and Why Does Total Quality Management Work, and Why Isn’t It Still Prevalent?

Total Quality Management, or TQM, was prevalent in business thinking in the 1980s, and improved the work lives and productivity of many people as well as the fortunes of some major corporations in that era.  I won’t try to describe how to implement Total Quality Management here, as there are a great many publications on the topic. I will instead describe the most important and fundamental elements I believe an organization needs to achieve the full benefits of TQM, and discuss why I think it fell into disuse.

How Do You Know a Process/Database/Document is Not Needed?

It seems to be endemic to bureaucracies that they create a lot of worthless, wheel-spinning work.  This can be extremely frustrating if you are a normal person who cares about doing a good job and making a positive difference in whatever you do.  I often find myself digging deeply into a database or document trying to get that last bit of data correct, or to improve it in some way, when suddenly I realize that I am probably the only person who will ever look at that data, and that my work will end up in a file somewhere, probably backed up in umpteen different corporate storage vaultsand servers as well, and will come to a complete zero as far as providing anyone with anything of value.  This leads to my subject: How do you know?