Why Did John Smithers Need To Lie?

John Smithers was battling against a white water flow of ego. The absence of top level leadership and the active presence of two equal level managers with diametrically opposed personalities and management styles breed an environment of conflict that is counterproductive when an attempt to cultivate total quality programs like Six Sigma is being made. In the process copious amounts of time, money, and credibility are wasted in an attempt to make process changes without changing hearts and minds.
The first flaw in the process that struck me was early on when Smithers was selected for the training job. What we see in the document was Smithers first reaction to the job was to worry about being thrust into a position where he would need to lie. “’When I first started, I said to him, ‘I will do it if I don’t have to lie.’’” (1) Now Smithers does talk about how the culture of Sigtek was not all that great from the beginning of the piece, but was it so bad that his first response when given a new task is to resist the idea of lying for management. In an environment like that, the rigors of total quality will have a lot of difficulty taking hold, surviving, and having any meaningful effect to a company’s culture.
There is some speculation as to why or who was the factor moving things faster than they should have been, but regardless of the motivation a hasty start to a race usually leads to a bad run. Deadlines are important and meeting them is valuable to an organization, but when a self-imposed deadline takes precedence over careful and detailed preparation then the deadline stops being a valuable tool and becomes a milestone, hindering progress and defeating the purpose.