Teach. Coach. A job of Managers.

“A manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aims of the system. He teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims.”
W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, and Health Care.

We’ve grown accustomed to managing by breaking things down — dissecting the whole into component parts to make it “easier” to control. But this reductionist view blinds us to what really matters: how those parts interact. It's not just 'Another Brick in the Wall.'

The price of specialisation

In medicine, for instance, specialisation is often prized above all else. Yet, no single specialty can treat a patient in isolation — every patient’s outcome depends on how well the system of care works together.

Just as no two bricks are perfectly alike, no two people, processes, or conditions are identical. There’s always variation. The strength of a wall doesn’t come from the perfection of individual bricks but from how they are joined — the mortar, the alignment, the shared purpose.

So, how do we build a wall — or rather, a system?

We begin by helping every member of the team see that they are part of something larger, that their work connects to others’, and that their combined effort determines the strength of the whole.

How the wall is built depends on the aim of that wall. Does the wall support other structures or is it a partition only?

Managers don’t command; they teach and coach. They build understanding — brick by brick.

References

Deming WE. The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education. 3rd ed. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press; 2018.

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