When adopting the New Philosophy and moving toward becoming a Deming Organization, one of the most difficult things we’ll have to do is identify and question our sacred dogmas. I’m not talking about a sacred dogma in the context of religion (although they share similar characteristics), I mean the sacred dogmas that are so embedded in our organizations that they’d be impossible to exorcize. Confronting sacred dogmas can be the number one barrier to change for companies (and indeed for individuals as well). Many companies will not get past this step because it can be uncomfortable or even painful, shake the foundation of your organization, and shatter people’s carefully constructed belief systems and identities.
I’ve seen a few videos of Dr. Deming’s 4-day sessions, and when people ask questions related to transforming their organizations, there’s one sacred dogma in particular that rears its ugly head over and over again. It’s really kind of funny… every time I hear this, I think “not THAT again”, because in the grand scheme of things, it seems somewhat trivial. What is this sacred dogma? Sales people must work on commission.
Now, I know one or two sales people, including my husband. When I’m brave enough to bring up this contentious topic, he looks at me like I’ve just suggested a deep betrayal. Of course sales people work on commission – try salaries and they’d all quit. No self-respecting sales person would EVER choose to work on a salary. It would take away their drive, their fire, their productivity, and their CASH. Businesses would flail, shareholders would suffer. It’s all fire and brimstone, doom and gloom. And so the commissions continue.
This is an example of a sacred dogma. Whereas people seem to be able to wrap their heads around the possibility of eliminating quotas, rankings, promotional incentives, contests and other common motivational techniques in sales organizations, commissions remain sacrosanct. When something is so accepted that any alternative is unthinkable, you’ve got yourself a sacred dogma.
After just over a year of studying with Dr. Deming and Dr. Baker, and eliminating many of the other supposed “sales motivators”, Jim McIngvale (Mattress Mack), CEO of Gallery Furniture, was still hemming and hawing over one thing – commissions. Gallery was about as sales-y an organization as it gets – more than half of their employees were salespeople and they did “whatever it takes” to close a deal. When he mentioned it to Deming and Baker, their response was “just do it!”. And that’s how Gallery Furniture eliminated commissions and moved their salespeople onto salaries.
I’m not going to go into exactly what happened at Gallery Furniture, because there’s plenty of information online on this particular case study. Suffice it to say, there was no fire and brimstone. The organization did not descend into chaos. There was no reckoning. Some salespeople did decide to part ways with the company; however, most did not. In the end, eliminating commissions actually exorcised some pretty toxic (albeit rational) behavior, and the organization benefited all around. They recognized they had a sacred dogma, questioned it, and in the end, took the leap to try something different.
Sales commissions are just one example of many sacred dogmas that are pervasive in business today. Others include:
- Engineers and/or developers don’t work well in groups
- Developers can’t test
- We’re successful because of the way we’ve always done things
- People are inherently lazy
If it’s uncomfortable (or even impossible) for you to challenge any of the above statements (or anything or imperative in your workplace), your organization may be sacrificing itself at the altar of a sacred dogma. The more uncomfortable it is, the more important it is to openly question it by asking:
- Can we absolutely know that it’s true?
- If so, how do we know that it’s true?
- What might be some of the effects of this dogma on the organization?
- What would our organization look like if we did the opposite?
- How could the dogma be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Next up, I’ll be taking a deeper dive into the exorcism of the sales commission dogma.
Shifting Lean 