48 METHOD: USE A STRICT RIGOROUS
DEFINITION OF THE CORE OF BUSINESS apply total
quality theory to identify the essential core “line”
functions of your job and task and work hard with seniors
to reduce or eliminate anything else you do or are required
to do.
Main Point: Total quality theorists have produced the purest,
narrowest, most revolutionary definition of the core of
business—seeing businesses, in ideal form, as having no
management, no staffs, just pure line work that adds value
fully delivered to customers. This ideal helps us identify
functions to reduce, eliminate, avoid, and speed up. It
focuses us on what is vital and shows what is waste.
Communication and PR in business if distracted by sloppy or
casual definitions of what business is and needs, produce lots
of verbiage and messages without doing much—it is
distracted by lack of profound concept and the focus that
profound concept provides.
Step 1: Study the best of total quality theory and master the
rigorous lean Japanese definitions of what functions are
essential in any business and in any business process.
Step 2: Study the best of American views of business as
purely information handling mechanisms and see how those
views outperform in some functions and purposes Japanese
total quality views.
Step 3: Find the leanest, purest definition of the core of all
business you can find and direct all your PR, communication,
effort, learning on those functions alone—master the core,
avoid the waste and unfocus on the periphery.
Step 4: Spot all your efforts and activities devoted to noncore
activities and functions in business and gradually
eliminate them all.