In the early 1980’s the United States was hit by a major wake-up call.  Three phenomena separated by thousands of miles totally shook the foundations of modern American business thought.  The first was airing of the documentary “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?” about the recovery of post-war Japan, W. E. Deming and quality.  The second was the writing of the book “The Goal” about the idea of process improvement by an Israeli professor named Eliyahu Goldratt.  The third was the writing of the book “Moments of Truth” about the famous turn-around success of SAS airlines by Jan Carlzon.

Though very low profile, each event was so powerful that three schools of thought soon emerged.  The Asian School of thought offered concepts that became Six Sigma. Lean and Just In Time.  The Eastern School of thought produced the Theory of Constraints.  The Nordic School of thought produced the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).  In the United States, the Asian School and the Eastern School of thought became very popular with the manufacturing sector; while the Nordic School became popular with computing and service sector.

Here we had what appeared to be three unrelated cultures giving birth to ideas that were international game changers all at the same time.  The Asian culture, oriented to discipline and honor developed a school of thought deeply rooted in competency and quality.  The Eastern culture, oriented to logical and independent thinking developed a school of thought deeply rooted in process and systems.  The Nordic culture, oriented to community and collaboration, developed a school of thought deeply rooted in relationships.

Though the schools of thought appear unique, many of the ideas found in these schools were from seeds planted in the post war recovery efforts led by the United States.  In an effort to help the world recover, we shared the secrets of our manufacturing success during the war.  The notion of practices moving between cultures and morphing is very common.  However, in this situation, this body of management secrets was developed in the United States between the end of slavery and the start of World War II by blending ideas from immigrants.

So imagine – during the latter half of the 1800’s and the first half of the 1900’s – the practices and ideas from around the world came together in one place, the United States.  Now add the pressure of a culture being transformed by the end of slavery, the end of child labor, the First World War, the great depression and the Second World War.  Then, take 80 years of refined management secrets and share them with the rest of the world, and at the same time abandoning each and every one of them.  Then, 60 years later, bring them back together into one body of management knowledge, three schools of thought, brought together to form an International School of thought.