The meeting was supposed to eliminate wasted work. Somehow, it became the busiest source of wasted work in the office.
I once worked on a quality circle project, a small team effort to improve how a workplace operates. The job sounded straightforward: identify a problem, investigate the cause, try a fix, and see whether it worked.
Instead, the most reliable output was a new version of the presentation. The manager already had a neat story about what went wrong and why. The supporting numbers? Not so much.
The evidence called in sick. The narrative had perfect attendance.
A polished explanation is not proof
The slides followed an elegant plot: here is the problem, here is the root cause, and here is the successful solution.
There was just one small detail missing. Nobody had properly checked whether that really was the cause.
Ask, "What data supports this?" and you risk getting a lecture about your attitude rather than an answer. A guess becomes a conclusion simply because someone higher up likes how it sounds.
That is backwards. Standard quality-improvement guidance includes understanding the current situation, analyzing possible causes, and checking the results afterward.[1] Starting with a hypothesis is fine. Refusing to test it is the problem.
The boss's correction fails the boss's boss
Next came the rewrites. A supervisor requested changes in wording. The new version did not seem clearer or more accurate, but it was what the supervisor wanted.
Then a more senior reviewer looked at it: "Doesn't this seem wrong?"
Well, yes. That was rather the point.
The document travelled down the hierarchy for corrections and back up for disapproval. Yet the person who had to do the next round of work was always the one preparing the slides.
If the managers disagreed, perhaps they could discuss it with each other instead of using an employee as the table for their managerial ping-pong match.
A deadline without a finish line
The acceptance criteria stayed fuzzy. "Make the insight clearer." "Tell the story better." Fine—but what exactly would count as finished?
The deadline, meanwhile, was very real. And short.
A major change could arrive after the work was nearly complete. The due date would stay where it was. If the project slipped, the blame would land on the person who followed the instructions.
Imagine a video game with a countdown clock but no visible win condition. Ask for the rules, and the game tells you to "show more initiative." It needs a patch, not a more motivated player.
"It helped you grow" is not a refund
The final defense was personal development: at least the employee learned something.
Maybe. But learning something does not prove the exercise was worth the hours it consumed. Those hours could have gone toward fixing a real problem.
Managers have skills to improve, too: define the outcome, explain the evidence behind a correction, resolve conflicting reviews, and adjust the schedule when they change the work.
Other people's time is not free practice paper.
The improvement project that needed improving
Here is an idea: measure the hours spent rewriting slides, the number of contradictory reviews, and whether each requested change actually improved the result.
This is one account of a badly run project, not a verdict on every quality circle. Real continuous improvement needs evidence. That is exactly why evidence-free management felt so absurd.
The next project title practically writes itself: "Reducing unnecessary rework in our continuous improvement program."
I suspect the first draft would be sent back for revisions.
Reference
[1] Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), QC Story and QC Methods. The workplace episode is an anonymized personal account, not an independently audited case.
