Perspective = |
Guest editorial
‘In Search of Excellence’
provides proper guidelines
own thing in relation to product innovation. It is often
THE DALLAS POST, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 1984
NO PROBLEM HERE — WE'RE
JUST MAKING SURE OUR
KIDS DON'T HIT THE HIGHWAYS
TONIGHT AFTER GRADUATION, .,
Only yesterday
50 YEARS AGO - JUNE 8, 1934
Kingston Township High School awarded diplomas
to 49 graduates. Rev. Rolland Crompton, pastor of
Trucksville M.E. Church, delivered the Baccalaureate
speech. :
Forty-eight men from 109th Field Artillery took part
in a mounted hike to Huntsville as part of their
bivouac training. :
~ One of the heaviest infestations of tent caterpillars
occurred with reddish brown webs appearing in irees
+ and under roofs in the area.
Married - Anne Czulegar and Joseph Collis.
You could get’- Evaporated milk 4 tall cans 23c¢;
tomatoes 2 1g. cans 25c; apple butter 2 lg, jars 25¢;
Chase and Sanborn coffee 30c Ib.; elbow macaroni 3
pkgs. 19¢; fruit salad 2 tall cans 25¢c; sugar 8c pkg.
40 YEARS AGO - JUNE 9, 1944
Lt. Keats Poad, Dallas Township navigator who
gave his life while serving in Java during the early
~ days of the Pacific conflict was awarded the Distin-
guished Flying Cross and Purple Heart posthumously.
Poad was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel H. Poad,
East Dallas. :
With a quota of $9,000, Dallas Senior Woman's Club
opened their Fifth War Stamp and Bond drive. In the
previous drive, the Dallas Woman's Club exceeded
their quota by $28,000.
Engaged - Louise Space to PFC James Lurba.
Married - Maralyn K. Colvin to Lieut. E.G. Bull.
Deaths - Steward Paul Ehret, Lehman; Shirley M.
Jones, Shavertown; Walter Besteder, Centermoreland.
You could get - Hams 35¢ 1b.; pork loin 29¢ Ib.; cod
fillets 33c 1b.; haddock fillets 36¢c 1b.; lettuce 10c hd.;
cabbage 5¢ 1b.; tomatoes 22c lb.; evaporated milk 3
tall cans 26¢; eggs 33c doz.; butter 1 1b. carton 48c.
30 YEARS AGO - JUNE 11, 1954
Lehman-Jackson-Ross High School had a tie for
valedictorian, Helen Skopic and Janice Barnes were
valedictorians while Joan DeRemer was salutatorian.
Westmoreland’s Honor students were David Clayton
Robertson, valedictorian and Elaine Saunders, saluta-
forian.
Dallas Borough-Kingston Township elected officers
for their school board jointure. James Hutchinson was
president; D.T. Scott, Jr. was vice president; Mitchell
Jenkins was solicitor while John Wardell was trea-
surer.
Anniversaries - Mr.
Idetown, 35 years.
and Mrs. Harvey Kitchen,
Deaths - Walter G. Shouldice, Jackson Twp.; Arthur
Morgan, Dallas; William Neimeyer, Davenport St.,
Dallas; Joseph Feist, Dallas; Lida McLuckie, Shaver-
town; Helen Niezgoda, Lehman.
You could get - Round steak 79c¢ lb.; fryers 45c 1b.;
veal roast 49c 1b.; large fresh shrimp 69c 1b.; scallops
7 oz. pkg. 49c; cantaloupes, jumbo size, 25c¢ ea.;
cabbage 3c 1b.; Parkay margarine 2 1b. 59¢; Star-Kist
tuna 6 oz. can 38c; frozen lemonade 2-6 oz. cans 35c;
doughnuts 19¢ doz.
20. YEARS AGO - JUNE 11, 1964
Presbyterians held ground breaking ceremonies for
Trinity United Presbyterian. Rev. Andrew Pillarella
turned the first clod of earth. Rev. George Andrews,
vice moderator of the Lackawanna Presbytery and
pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilkes-
Barre gave the greeting.
Louis B. Stevio who had been missing for 11 days,
was found by police near Stull. He survived by dieting
on milkweed shoots, dandelion, young skunk cabbate
and some sandwiches left by a group of scouts.
Anniversaries - Mr. and Mrs. Gus Shuleski, Dallas,
19 years; Mr. and Mrs. George Shaver, Sr., Trucks-
ville, 47 years; Chief and Mrs. Byron Kester,
Demunds, 50 years.
Deaths - George Casterline, Idetown; Charlotte
Hilbert, Lehman Avenue; F. Emory DeLong,
Lehman; Dr. C. Hayden Phillips, Upper Demunds
Road; Paul Cybulski, Carverton; Mary Anderes,
Dallas.
You could get - Hamburg 3 lbs. $1; pork butts 3 Ibs.
$1; kielbassa 69c 1b.; bing cherries 39c lb.; lemons 6-
19¢; 10 8-0z. cans Ideal corn $1; Scott toilet tissue llc
roll; cake mix 4 19-oz. pkgs. $1; 12 oz. pkg. white
cheese slices 39¢; Campbell’s pork and beans 4 cans
39c.
: 10 YEARS AGO - JUNE 13, 1974
The Pa. Fish Commission rapped Harveys Lake
Council for not enforcing their own ordinances, partic-
Flood Victims Action Council discussed plans for a
trip to Washington, D.C. to lobby for passage of the
National Catastrophic Insurance Bill. 3
Engaged - Kathy Luketic and Robert Joseph Saba.
Anniversaries - Mr. and Mrs. Cecil G. Poynton, 40
years; Mr. and Ms. Ted Wilson, 50 years; Mr. and
Mrs. Willard Durbin, 50 years; Mr. and Mrs. John
Dana, 40 years. hi
Birthdays - Stanley Culp, Huntsville, 90 years old. -
In a book which has changed the central foundation
of business management and has strained the tradi-
tional teachings of schools of business administration,
Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. have
provided guidelines for achieving excellence in not
only business, but other disciplines as well. “In Search
of Excellence’ provides principles in achieving a high
quality of business management with applications to
public service. Their viewpoint is that excellence is
achievable not through the traditional mechanism of
organization charts and other standard principles, but
through factors which are not found in the traditional
textbooks of business management schools.
They have adopted eight principles by which they
feel excellence can be secured in business. Many of
these same principles can be applied to the public
sector side as well as in carrying out the mandate for
a high quality of service. These eight principals
include the following:
1. A bias for action. Basically this means taking
action even in a risk setting and not going through the
normal long term committee structure which bogs
down in decision making and often results in much
paper flow, but little action.
2. Close to the customer. Quality, service and
reliability are hallmarks of what they mean by
closeness to a customer. In other words, while the
customer may not always be right, developing ways to
show that a business has strong ties to its customers in
many ways is what the definition of closeness is.
3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship. By this, the
authors encourage small groups within large compa-
nies ormedium sized companies to pursue innovation
and entrepreneurship encouraging creativity in the
process. In other words, small divisions, or small task
forces would have the autonomy to carry outnew ideas
outside the boxes of an organizational structure.
4. Productivity through people. The authors empha-
size techniques to encourage employees to be more
productive. In some cases, this is in the form of
money, but in many cases, it is through other levels of
encouragement.
5. Hands-on value driven. This means encouraging a
basic philosophy of a company within the context of
the total organizational structure. Examples they give
are of company presidents not spending much time in
their office but working and traveling to visit and talk
to officials and others at various plant locations.
6. Stick to the knitting. This means the company not
going as far outside of its traditional fields as to cause
difficulties in being able sto rcarry out new product
development or marketing. Thus, the authors seem to
say that conglomerates are not necessarily the current
order of the day.
7. Simple form, lean staff. The authors strongly urge
simplified organizational structures and a minimal
amount of staff versus on line functional activities.
8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties. The authors
advocate both centralized and decentralized
approaches for companies. This is in line with their
thought of experimentation and risk-taking and not to
go too far in any single direction.
The book identifies excellence in a new vocabulary.
Chunking means limited objectives in a sustained way
rather than a broad scale approach to marketing of
many types of products. Chunking is also instilled in
the concept of “Small is Beautiful’ which the authors
feel many times offers a better way of developing and
marketing a product. A champion is either a person
who is a product champion, an executive champion or
a godfather. In other words, it is someone who feels so
strongly about the development of a product that he or
she takes it upon themselves to carry out a strong and
vigorous commitment to new ideas to such an extent
that the person eventually takes over the operation of
that particular segment of the company’s product line.
Skunking is a form of entrepreneurial development
in which certain employees are allowed to do their
LETTERS
DEAR EDITOR:
Back Mountain Baseball Inc. its
President Frank Joyce, all coaches
outside the normal channels of the organizational
chart and while looked upon as being impractical to
the traditionalist, it often achieves a high degree of
success. ;
“Management by Wandering Around’ means often
sitting and learning what goes on in that business
organization and meeting outside the confiens of the
traditional reporting system which is often dictated by
an organizational chart.
The managing process is defined as a flow of three
variables: pathfinding, decision making, and imple-
mentation. A pathfinder charts a ocurse, the decision
making takes the action to allow a process to continue
and implementation carries out the process.
Positive reinforcement is encouraged through a
system of rewards and activities which instill excel-
lent performance. Very often they maintain this is
outside the system of financial rewards.
The authors encourage a great amount of informal
contacts within the organization in order to increase
the likelihood of discussions which will lead to positive
results for that particular business.
Ad hoc task forces are encouraged as techniques for
chunking. These are small groups of 8 or 10 persons
who meet constantly to develop a response to a
particular problem or to organize an approach to
product development. They also caution against over-
use of this technique since they can become as
committee.
In their concept of chunking, they suggest four
messages: :
1. Ideas about cost efficiency and economies of scale
are leading us into building big bureaucracies that
simply cannot act.
2. The excellent companies have found numerous
ways to break things up in order to make their
organizations fluid and to put the right resources
against problems.
3. All the chunking and other devices will not work
unless the context is right. Attitudes, climate and
culture must treat ad hoc behavior as mor normal
than bureaucratic behavior.
4. The free wheeling environments in which ad hoc
behavior flourished are only superficially unstruc-
tured. Underlining the absence of formality lies shared
purposes, as well as an internal tension, and a
competitiveness which makes these cultrues as tough
as nails. ;
In destroying the rigid organizational chart, the
authors state the following: “Excessive layering may
be the biggest problem of the slow-moving, rigid
bureaucracy. It- is. dene, primarily, if sometimes
seems, “to” Trmake place for ni6ec mahagers in an
organization. But the excellent company’s evidence
challenges the need for all those layers. If such layers
exist, a kind of Parkenson’s, law of, management
caesar fe ASL management mainly
create distracting Work for others to justify their own
existence. Everyone appears busy, but in reality it is
simple management featherbedding.
What does all of this have to do with Northeastern
Pennsylvania? Both large and small organizations and
those which may grow to be the powerhouses of the
future, as well as public sector and non-profit organi-
zations can benefit by In Search of Excellence. While
a formal prescription is not mandated in the book, the
guidance and principles offered may well be useful to
many Northeastern Pennsylvania organizations, both
public and private. The 360 page book is worth the
attention of all who seek to improve the means by
which products are delivered, services are offered,
communities are run, organizations are structured and
quality of excellence sought. Excellence has been
found and its application needs to be applied to all
public and private sector actions in Northeastern
Pennsylvania.
(Howard J. Grossman is executive director of the
Economic Development Council of Northeastern Penn-
sylvania.)
Again, we deeply thank you for
“THE
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and players would like to thank all
of the Back Mountain communities
greatly to the operating expenses of
our league which consists of 67
BACK MOUNTAIN BASEBALL
FRANK JOYCE, PRESIDENT
Here is a summary of important
events that occurred on Capitol Hill
120th Legislative District.
CHILD MOLESTERS in Pennsyl-
vania would risk a mandatory
prison term of at least three years if
a bill which passed the House
becomes law. Rep. Stephen Freind
(R-Delaware) proposed the manda-
tory sentencing measure, which was
sent to the Senate for consideration.
The amendment not only mandates
a minimum three-year sentence for
a convicted child molester, but also
makes child molestation a felony.
Freind said that parents of a victim-
ized child may be hesitant to report
the incident under existing law fear-
ing that the molester could be
FUNDING STATEWIDE political
campaigns with taxpayer’s money
was proposed on the House floor
this week and rejected after much
debate and parliamentary maneu-
vering, but the bill remains alive for
future consideration. In its original
form, the bill would have estab-
lished a system similar to the fed-
eral system for presidential cam-
paigns. Taxpayers would check a
box on their tax return authorizing
$2 from tax proceeds for use as
matching funds in statewide cam-
paigns. Various forms of the pro-
posal were considered before it was
finally rejected. Rep. Samuel E.
Hayes Jr. (R-Blair) called the pro-
posal a “legal way to mace the
taxpayers.”
TWO REPUBLICAN House mem-
bers denounced House Democratic
leaders for failing to bring judicial
reform legislation before the full
House this season. Reps. Jeffrey
Piccola (R-Dauphin) and Lois S.
Hagarty (R-Montgomery) said they
have repeatedly requested that the
Democratic leaders act on two bills
which would create a new judicial
merit selection system, but the leg-
islation lies inactive in committee.
“Rep. Hagarty and I are calling
upon concerned Pennsylvanians to
speak out,’ Piccola said. ‘“The
Democratic party leadership (which
controls the House) must receive a
message from the people: the time
for judicial reform of our courts has
come.” Both Piccola and Hagarty
are members of the House Judi-
ciary Committee.
0O-
A HOUSE RESOLUTION calling
for the information of a special task
force to investigate the probiem of
teenage drunk driving in Pennsyl-
vania unanimously passed the
House and was sent to the governor
for consideration. Offered by Rep.
George Saurman (R-Montgomery),
the resolution urges the panel to
focus on the 16 to 18-year-old driver.
By NANCY KOZEMCHAK
Staft Correspondent
When I looked out the window in
my office at the library this morn-
ing, all I saw was a large blue blur.
That blur was the blue Wyoming
Seminary van with its driver, Mrs.
Pitcavage and some tremendous
kids; namely, Carrie, Michelle,
Lisa, Kathy, Robin, Liane, Erin,
Heather and Laine. This van and
these kids and this woman were
here to help Marilyn Rudolph, our
children’s librarian, pack, carry,
load and unload books from the
children’s collection in the annex
and take them to the new library
building on Huntsville Road.
The Back Mountain Memorial
Library’s Children’s Annex is now
officially closed to the public and
plans to open on the second floor of
the new library in temporary quart-
ers around June 15. This is a sad
time for some of us who have
worked with the children in the
library annex; myself for about
eight years and Marilyn for the last
nine years. We will hope for a
bigger, brighter, more easily acces-
sible library in the near future. We
extend a great big thank you to
these 14 to 16 year old kids from
Wyoming Seminary who are a part
of a Community Service Organiza-
tion.
Have you ever studied a camel?
We have 12 camels in our display
Amy John of Dallas. Amy collects
camels because she likes them, she
thinks they are cute and interesting,
and also, her father is Lebanese.
There are two large ceramic ones,
Included are one made of pottery,
one hand carved adn two small
plastic ones. There is a brass camel
sitting on a saucer and a felt stuffed
one and a friendly stuffed one sit-
ting on a sand dune. Her favorite is
a real looking furry one, which she
received from her parents for
Christmas. Included in the display
is a camel souvenir tin and a camel
cigarette lighter. Amy is a junior at
Wyoming Seminary and has an
older sister, Connime. The display
will be at the library until June 27.
New books at the library: ‘Skills
and Tactics of Golf” by Alex Hay is
a thorough and expert analysis of
the golf game. p
“Cage Birds In Coler” by T.
Vriends is a recent memory hook in
pa pl
PETRA