The Puritan Gift

By Pascal Dennis

Kenneth and William Hopper have done us a great service.

Their award-winning book, The Puritan Gift, offers a bracing diagnosis of what ails America.

The Hoppers argue that we've squandered the gift bequeathed on us by our Puritan forbears:

1. Commitment to creating a better society, indeed, a "shining city on the hill",
   
2. Putting the needs of the group ahead of individual needs,
   
3. A willingness, and pleasure in, getting our hands dirty,
   
4. Organizational genius, and
   
5. A respect for, and comfort with, technology
   

Since the end of WWII, management practice has been hijacked by the Cult of the (So-Called) Expert.

Business schools have flooded our organizations with MBA's who "should have a skull & crossbones tattooed across their foreheads."

The cult's mental models, they tell us, include:

1. "We can manage by the numbers, from a distance. We don't have to get our hands dirty."
   
2. Credentialism -- the more degrees, preferably business degrees, the better
   
3. "Every man, woman, thing for themselves!"
   
4. "The common good -- what's that?"
   
5. "Top-down control -- what can the front-line worker possibly teach us?"
   

Raw, passionate stuff!

The book has much to teach Lean thinkers. Their discussion of the meeting of East & West in post-war Japan is not to be missed.

Well done, Ken and Bill!

Best regards,

Pascal