Monthly Archives: November 2009

Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 9


This post picks up on Parts 1 to 8 and examines the eighth  of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

Fear and Social Networking

From my consulting experience (and, I regret to say, from some of my experience as an employee) fear can be a very real issue in organizations – inhibiting people’s willingness to try new things, to speak out when they see inefficient practices or broken processes, to challenge dumb decisions by management, and so on.  Fear also limits people’s engagement in their work (their willingness to give their discretionary effort).  And, in an age of emerging Enterprise 2.0 – with its dependence upon internal and external social networking, fear can be a major impediment to progress in learning and developing new ways of working, innovating products and services, and better connecting stakeholders.

Today’s climate of high unemployment and the threat of “downsizing” on the horizon, fear in many organizations is on the uptick.  Fear mobilizes the body’s “fight or flight” mechanism, leading to either defensive behavior (hiding, submissive, low engagement) or aggressive (even destructive) behavior.  I sometimes see the variant of passive-aggressive behavior, where, for example, people agree to a decision, then work the back channels to sabotage it!

So, to what degree is fear inhibiting your organization’s efficiency and effectiveness?  What is the source of that fear?  What can be done to eliminate or at least, reduce fear in the workplace?

Fear and Trust

Fear is the opposite of trust. Trust is important for high performing organizations because it leads to synergy and performance. As organizations begin to enter the Enterprise 2.0 realm, fear and trust become even more important.

Author and management consultant Charles Handy, notes that, “If we are to enjoy the efficiencies and other benefits of the virtual organization, we will have to rediscover how to run organizations based more on trust than on control. Virtuality requires trust to make it work: Technology on its own is not enough”.

Driving Out Fear

Corporate coach Jan Austin in her excellent blog post FEAR IN THE WORKPLACE: SYMPTOMS, SOURCES, SOLUTIONS, suggests that:

Eliminating fear begins with leaders acknowledging their own responsibility for creating and/or participating in a fear-driven organizational culture. By examining their assumptions and behaviors which have either triggered or perpetuated defensive, fearful responses in others, and consciously choosing to communicate in a more positive, proactive manner, they can interrupt the patterns of fear and the associated defensive routines in the organization. Leaders can take a number of steps to engage organizational constituents in more open, collaborative conversations and encourage greater positive participation in the work of the organization. Leaders can do this by employing simple but powerful facilitation skills.

Jan goes on to suggest techniques four key strategies for leaders, comprising:

  1. Establishing Rapport
  2. Improving Listening Skills
  3. Asking Questions Which Increase Trust and Reduce Fear
  4. Promoting Dialogue

Check out Jan’s post.  How many of these strategies and the techniques she suggests might help your organization become a less fearful and more collaborative place?

 

Image courtesy of The Vancouver Sun

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Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 8


leadershipThis post picks up on Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 and examines the seventh of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.”

Leadership – The Context for Improvement

In his seventh point, Deming connects the idea of leadership with the role of supervision to create a context for continuous improvement.  “Help people and machines and gadgets (dare we say, information technology?) to do a better job.”  This really represented a break from the thinking of Frederick Winslow Taylor who believed that management’s role (as the “educated ones”) was to define best practice, the supervisor’s role was to make sure the workers followed that process.  I guess Taylor’s thinking was appropriate during the early industrial revolution, but was clearly not the way to really empower those closest to the job to improve the ways that processes worked.

Note also that Deming distinguishes between “supervision of management” and “supervision of workers” with both needing “overhaul” as he says with characteristically understatement.

Here Comes Everybody – Improving Everything!

Translated into today’s Enterprise 2.0 world, with the words of Clay Shirky – “Here comes everybody” ringing in our collective web-enabled heads, we all have the opportunity (responsibility, even?) to figure out how “gadgets” as well as people and machines can continuously improve the way products and services are conceived, designed, created and brought to market.

Image courtesy of Women PR Wire

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Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 7


EmployeeTrainingThis post picks up on Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 and examines the sixth of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

Institute training on the job.”

This is a Deming classic, and one I’ve come to appreciate over my years in consulting and IT leadership development.  From the vantage point of 2009, one might take issue with the word “training” rather than “learning.”  As usually interpreted, the outcome, learning is a more important focal point than the approach of training.  You could train me for years on how to land a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier, but you know, I’m just not going to do that!  Also, training tends to be sporadic, whereas learning can be continuous.

Institutionalize the Practice!

Let’s take apart the simple five word sentence.  Dictionary.com tells us that “institute” means (among other things):

to bring into use or practice”

So Deming is emphasizing the “institutionalization” of the practice, not just an occasional burst.  This is consistent with his first Point about “constancy of purpose.”  I find in many (most?) IT organizations, there is way too little learning going on – especially considering how rapidly the field is changing.  Training budgets are typically among the first to be cut in a recession, and the last to be reinstated.

Outside of IT, I see way too many people in jobs for which they are not properly trained.  One impact of this is that they take much longer to complete a task, especially if it is slightly outside of routine (a return, for example, at a store, or using a store coupon), so either more staff are needed than would be the case if they were properly trained, and/or, the customer experience is degraded, leading to reduced revenues.  If you don’t believe this, you need only look into the recent histories of Best Buy versus Circuit City to appreciate the impact of properly trained and motivated staff, versus untrained low wage workers!

On the Job!

Deming then emphasizes “on the job” as a form of training.  This is crucial, and is one of the reasons I like to think beyond training per se, to the whole realm of coaching and mentoring, developmental assignments, performance support and the whole gestalt that leads to people growing their working competencies.

I’ve had to privilege to participate on the faculty of an IT Leadership Development program with Harvard Business School‘s Professor Jim Cash.  I’ve watched Jim skillfully facilitate a group of senior executives through an exercise about their most powerful learning moments.  A couple of points are notable:

  1. The most powerful leadership learnings are almost always “on the job.”
  2. The most powerful leadership learnings almost always came from a mistake made and learned from.

Towards Continuous Learning and Development

So, how can you establish a continuous learning and development capacity in your organization?  How many of these practices are institutionalized in your IT group?  If not, would they help if they were?  What would it take to make them common practice?

  • Do you have competency models for all the major IT roles?
  • Are people regularly assessed against these models?
  • Are competency gaps addressed through learning programs, including learning assignments, on-the-job coaching, and formal training programs?
  • Are people’s compensation and growth prospects tied to growth in competency footprints (i.e., either adding more competencies or deepening existing ones)?
  • Are performance support materials readily available on line and in the same context that people use to complete their jobs?

Cartoon courtesy of Management Plus.

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Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 6


deming-cycleThis post picks up on Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and examines the fifth of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs”

Continuous Improvement Takes Hold…

Deming’s fifth point was at the heart of his teachings – the whole idea of continuous improvement.  Again, we see the idea of “constantly” (from his first point, Constancy of purpose), this time augmented for emphasis with the “and forever.”  Note, he refers to the “system of production and service.”  Ever the engineer at heart, Deming saw things through the lens of systems thinking, with its loops of causes and effects.  “To improve quality and productivity”.  Deming always presented these two sides of the coin – quality leads to productivity.  And for emphasis, in case management missed the point, he calls out, “thus to constantly decrease costs.”

This continuous improvement concept was fully embraced by post-war Japan thanks to Deming’s lectures and teachings with remarkable results.  In fact, the impact on Japanese manufacturing and business success was so great, that the US and Europe began to take notice in the 80′s and 90′s.  In the US, the Malcolm Baldrige Award drove many companies to implement Total Quality Management programs to great effect as company names such as Corning, Motorola, Milliken became virtually synonymous with quality and business success.

Continuous Improvement Takes a Back Seat!

In the 1990′s, the late Michael Hammer, with Jim Champy, published Reengineering The Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution.  The ideas in this book caught the American leadership imagination.  It was more fun to tear down and start over, with the promise of quick, dramatic returns, than to go through the slower, more incremental improvement path.  Just as TQM was really taking hold, the reengineering consultants moved in.  Please don’t get me wrong – lots of great things came out of business process reengineering, but I regret that the disciplines associated with continuous improvement got brushed aside in the process.  The good news is that continuous improvement is gradually finding its way back into the lexicon of management methods, often in the guise of 6 Sigma and related quality improvement methods.

Do you have a culture of continuous quality improvement in your IT organization?  If not, why not?  What can you do to make a difference?

Graphic courtesy of EveryJoe.com

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Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 5


reg - our price tagThis post picks up on Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 and examines the fourth of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust”

Total Cost – Not Price

I think this is a key point that is understood by most IT professionals, but not is necessarily understood by their business partners.

Why can I pick up a laptop at Best Buy for $400 but our IT department, with all its corporate buying power pays $1200 for the same machine?”

The notion of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is rarely considered but is clearly an important factor for any IT asset.  And while IT professionals apply TCO to assets such as PC’s, they less frequently apply it to legacy applications and software licenses – rarely “pulling up the weeds” as Prof. Peter Weill at MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research likes to say.

Another aspect of Deming’s 4th point is the notion of a limited number of focused relationships based upon loyalty and trust.  The early days of the Total Quality movement really pursued this goal, and, I believe, mostly with a positive impact.The most successful supply chain optimization efforts incorporated customers and suppliers, and ensured that all parties shared in the benefits.  More recently, business competition has often taken on a more selfish and short sighted “every man for himself” tone, and I’m not sure that this has been helpful to the global economy.

Much has been written lately about the importance of trust – its fragility – and how difficult it can be to earn back trust once it has been lost.  This plays out in supplier-customer relationships, employer-employee relationships, and, of course, politician-citizen relationships.

What are you doing to preserve or rebuild trust?  Are you focused on a limited number of long term, mutually beneficial relationships, based on loyalty and trust?

 

Image courtesy of Retail Service Company

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Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 4


Web - Quality 1This post picks up on Parts 1, 2 and 3 and examines the third of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.”

This is one of the fundamental issues in quality management, with the quality movement shifting from quality control to quality assurance over the years, in part thanks to Edwards Deming and his peers during the latter part of the industrial revolution.

Testing – Value Add or Overhead?

This is a tough question I’ve had to address.  For example, I’ve facilitated IT groups where the issue of the value of testing, and how to manage it has been an important point of contention in organization and governance design.  I believe that ultimately, testing is overhead.  In that assertion, I distinguish between “inspection of final product (testing) from activities such as prototyping, modeling, running experiments – which to the contrary can be a real value add to IT discovery, solution delivery and support.  I also distinguish activities such as structured walkthrough‘s etc., which have more to do with building quality in than with inspection of final product.

Note that Deming does not suggest eliminating inspection – he urges eliminating the need for mass inspection, and “ceasing dependence” on inspection.  As such I acknowledge there’s such a thing as “necessary overhead,” but that need should be monitored and reduced over time, as built in quality improves.

The Genesis of “Design Thinking”

Today, the movement referred to as “Design  Thinking” must welcome Deming’s admonition to “build quality in!”   But I don’t see evidence of a lot of Design Thinking in most IT organizations.  It is also often lacking in vendor products.

Design Thinking and Enterprise Architecture

One key role that, as I’ve said in many posts, is woefully under-served in terms of its potential to make a real difference to return on IT investment and the whole user experience, is that of the Enterprise Architect.  A key to the junction between problem analysis and solution design, including solutions on a grand scale such as enterprise architectures, the Enterprise Architect should be a conduit to inject Design Thinking into IT products and services.  And, with a nod to Deming, “building quality into the product in the first place!”

Image courtesy of Nanophase Nanoengineering Products

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Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 3


change leadershipThis post picks up on Part 1 and Part 2, and examines the second of Deming’s 14 Management Points. As I said in the first post, I believe Deming’s 14 Points have great resonance in today’s economy, even if his original language seems a little stilted in today’s world of Tweets and sound bites.

Let’s take his second point:

Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.”

When Deming mentions the “new philosophy” he is covering a huge swath of leadership principles that he developed over the years – in some respects, the embodiment of total quality, with a strong dose of Zen and Buddhist teachings.  An electrical engineer by training, a statistician by vocation, and very much a humanist at heart, Deming believed that management (especially from his US-based perspective) had lost its way.  He saw workers on the one hand be berated for productivity failures that were more to do with the processes management handed them, and on the other hand, be exhorted to “do it right the first time” by posters and tee shirts, without getting the tools and training they needed.  In other respects, the “new philosophy” is embodied in the 14 Points.

But there’s a hidden meaning in Deming’s 2nd Point – unless management adopts the changes they want to see, they shouldn’t expect the workers to do so. Unless these changes are adopted and recognized at all levels, they’re unlikely to succeed. i.e., Practice what you preach.  When we ask our organization to be rigorous with time recording, or adhering to the project methodology, management has to model the behaviors they require from their workers.  People will follow the walk, as they say, not the talk.  And if the talk and the work are inconsistent, management has lost its ability to lead change!

Image courtesy of Cathy A Price Leadership Coaching.

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Great Video on Social Media


social-media-waste-of-timeThis YouTube clip is getting some well-deserved attention- both for the startling statistics it cites (I assume they are reasonably accurate) and the effective production qualities.

So, with light apologies for simply pointing you to the clip, I think you will find the 4.5 minutes worth watching.

The source of the video is “Socialnomics,” by Erik Qualman

 

Graphic courtesy of kozinets.net

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