Nov
16
A Sense of Urgency?
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I saw Steve Forbes Friday night and listened to a fairly compelling argument that our current financial crisis is a series of bad decisions. President elect Obama, you should talk to him. The rest of you should find what he has been writing over the past months because his knowledge and depth were wasted on my short-term memory.
Four things that did stick with me –
1) We need a policy of a strong dollar. This is not negotiable.
2) We need to help our domestic auto industry in ways that will help their sustainability. Simple question we all need to understand is why are GM and Ford phenomenally successful outside the US? Forbes made the point that if GM and Ford would close down their US operations they would be seen as world-class companies. Wow – something to think about and it has little to do with unions, although the unions need to get their workers to work more often. Ten percent absenteeism is obscene – if the UAW deals with that they will be seen as more relevant. The work needs to be made more interesting as well, which is on the leadership of GM, Ford and Chrysler.
3) Taxes cannot be raised in a crisis. This means that spending must be cut. This is combination of stopping dumb things like bailouts that don’t address root causes. It also means efficiency in government vs the current placebos. Cut non-entitlement budgets across the board including the Pentagon and hire consultants that know how to implement and advise - instead of the mass training houses. Also buy all managers in government agencies a copy of Kotter’s latest book. Fire all who whine or block instead of seeing the opportunity. Efficiencies will be found and the work will be more interesting.
4) Health care has to be addressed with efficient system wide solutions. Piece-meal solutions will not cut it which means expansion of existing programs won’t do. Forbes’ example was that of medical tourism – why is a flight to Singapore and surgery to have a knee replacement one-fourth the cost of doing it in the US? How can these hospitals offer first class results with infection rates that are nonexistent? Lasik surgery is another example – success rates are up and costs are substantially reduced from a decade ago. Why? Understand the answer and you will be looking at what efficient reform looks like.
Forbes says it is time for Obama to turn into a pragmatic politician to make sure he is there for 8 years. Steve has some good thoughts, take some time to understand them and encourage your government officials to understand them as well. I personally would like to keep a smart person in the White House and have them surrounded by smart people. I don’t want Steve as my President, but I would be impressed if he became a trusted advisor to Obama.
Read what Steve is writing at - http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=Forbes
Gary
Nov
10
What’s Important?
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With the economic turmoil and the elation and fear to go with the recent elections, we sometimes make things more important than they are.
I listen to Christian radio sometimes and also NPR. I have been intrigued with the absolute negative response to Obama in some circles - the sign of the coming apocalypse because of some of his views. I wonder how that is balanced with the killing going on daily on false premises. I honestly don’t know the answer.
I would never want a child brought into this world that will not be loved often and always. I would not choose to impose my position on anyone, but I see children on a daily basis that are not loved, that are not taught values, that are not taught self worth. Life is tough anyway, and those children don’t have good chances in life - it is not their fault.
Tonight I held and danced with my almost four-week-old niece. I sang Jimmy Buffet songs to her and she cooed and made baby sounds and slept in my arms for more than an hour.
I cried.
Tomorrow is my birthday – what a great birthday present.
Life does not get any better than this.
Gary
Nov
7
People and Processes
Filed Under Human Architecture, Leadership, Lean Enterprise, Six Sigma, Strategy Execution | Leave a Comment
These are interesting times we live in.
An economic crisis bigger than any in my lifetime.
Job losses in the US at catastrophic levels and it’s even worse in areas dependent on the US Big 3 automakers. Reports of GM buying all or part of Chrysler and the cascading effect on employment. Optimistic views talk in terms of 30,000 displaced in the metro Detroit area. Some reports say it will be 124,000. I think it is like what we have seen with the bank and credit crisis, it will be worse than current projections. GM announced just in the last few minutes that they will lay off 30% of their work force and stop funding 401K’s.
How are companies responding to this? They have stopped spending money. They are looking for cost savings in 2009. This will mean more job loss and it will mean many okay processes will be broken.
It is a time of hope and opportunity.
At a macro level in the US, it is the presidency of Barrack Obama. Many, many are willing to take the risk that he is real and that he can move us out of these troubled waters.
On a smaller level, many companies can use this time to redefine and reinvent themselves. Some companies get the opportunity of high risk investment by the government, some get the opportunity to take advantage of grants for business development in areas like alternative energy.
On a personal level, if you have been displaced in banking or the auto industry, it is a reasonable assumption you will not be going back to your old job. The opportunity is to learn new skills, to go into new industries, or maybe to start your own business.
What is the role of people who have dedicated their life to teaching, mentoring, and making companies processes better?
I think there are three distinct areas in which we should play –
1) For those displaced and looking for new skills, we should help find the grants and teach them new skills. This is not confined to training as Lean Masters or Six Sigma “belts”, but how about things like taking the person who has been working in Quality and has been taught the “real world” approach and getting them certified as a Quality and/or Reliability Engineer?
2) For companies that are in survival mode, we should go in and help them make quick gains by leading the improvement projects. Many companies will not be worried about training their internal resources in 2009, it is hard to think that way if you don’t know if you will be in business in 2010. I will offer a company gains on a focused project in one month or they do not owe me any money. They just have to commit the time and team on their end.
3) On the companies in the emerging sectors, they will be making the transition from startup to fulfillment. Many companies struggle with that. They also will not see clearly how to go to the outside for help since they have limited resources. Again grant money will need to be found, but we can go in and teach them to set up an efficient business system that can comply with things like ISO 9000 or 14001. We can go in and help set up their processes to flow and we can teach them best in class methods to run their processes with efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness.
How does this impact the traditional Lean Six Sigma consulting model?
In short, I think the model is dead.
Few companies will go for the idea of adding infrastructure and diverting 1% – 5% of their resources. Of those that have been doing it, many will pull back. For what it is worth, the original model had process improvement being everyone’s job where everyone got trained.
Does the focused full time model have merits? Of course, especially where is an apprenticeship every professional serves as they transition into a company or as we transition from professional to manager. But the idea of setting aside a significant portion of a scant resource in 2009/10 – companies will be running away from this idea in mass.
What is the new role?
The new role is the ability to give companies very focused help on people and processes.
People – two factors here, knowledge and behavior. Both can be assessed fairly succinctly. Companies will need to know if the remaining people in their enterprise are right people in the right jobs.
Processes – Are they efficient and effective at least with respect to their competition? If they are not, how do we offer to make significant gains in a very short amount of time.
This means we need new skills with respect to people and we need to be people who know how to really do what we have been teaching.
My opinion.
Gary
A special thanks to my friend and mentor, Elmano Nigri, of Arquitetura Humana in Sao Paulo, Brasil for helping me talk through this.
Jul
16
I’ve been reading, for the second time, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.
First of all, if you’ve not read it you should.
Second, both times I’ve read it my mind drifts to some of the best and worst team situations I’ve encountered. I believe there is a lot of truth in the book but I don’t think they take it far enough. I think there is a lot of what we call Human Architecture that can be brought to play.
I will not tell you many stories about Motorola during the time I was there for a couple of reasons –
- They are merely a shadow of what they once were in terms of market dynamics and human dynamics. Why? Lots of reasons but first was the leadership. Gary Tooker and Chris Galvin were no Bob Galvin. Tooker had no passion for change and Chris Galvin took the message of Participative Management a step too far and could not act autocratically even when he was clear he must for the good of the organization. This is not something his father Bob, or Larry Bossidy and Jack Welch suffered from. Also the guys at cellular skipped the Econ class on Sunk Cost Fallacy.
- Motorola was not a monolith. What I experienced was unique to the two places I worked there and they were also quite different experiences. I worked at GEG first and it is credited with being the birthplace of the ideas and methods of Six Sigma. Which is kind of true. I can tell you for a fact that I gave Mikel Harry a copy of Managerial Breakthrough in late 1993 and it is the template for Six Sigma. GEG was an awful place to work for the most part, very slow moving, just like their customer – the US government. There were a handful of exceptions, like FMU-139. What is true is what a talent pool came out of there! With the cover of Bob Galvin, several of us learned well beyond theory. The second place I worked was AIEG (automotive). The customer was aggressive, the management was aggressive and there was truly a group of people working in a clear direction. Oh, and we had Marty Rayl. It was the most fun I’ve ever had working. Not everyone working for Motorola in that period had fun or learned.
Anyway with that said, I’m going to tell you about AIEG with respect to the Five Dysfunctions (or how to build a cohesive team).
1) Dysfunction # 1 absence of trust / Cohesion # 1 presence of trust – This was the work of leadership. They expected results, they expected unfiltered data, they expected honesty. It was not done in a day, but those that could not meet those expectations left. Most on their own, some after being assigned to the library for six months (a kinder, gentler Motorola that never laid off anyone). Done, trust was gained because everyone knew everyone else was working in the same direction.
2) Dysfunction # 2 fear of conflict / Cohesion # 2 unfiltered conflict around ideas – The easiest way to explain this is there was nothing you could say that was wrong as long as it was heartfelt and backed by data and hard work. You could cuss, you could challenge, and you could lose your temper. When meetings were over, everyone knew to leave it in the meeting and go out with a common purpose. I encountered the opposite of that soon after leaving Motorola, telling some folks at Compaq what I thought about their processes (they sucked and I had data to back it up), several in leadership positions shunned me for several months.
3) Dysfunction # 3 lack of commitment / Cohesion # 3 commit to decisions and plans of action – This was simple, leave your opinions and concerns on the table (see #2) and when you leave a meeting have a common purpose. We had a real neat way of doing this too. We called it a “contract”. When a group of people made an agreement, it was written down in very simple terms and everyone involved signed it. You left the meeting and did what you agreed to do or the expectation was you had to reconvene the group to tell them about what obstacles you were encountering and make a new agreement. No surprises. Peer pressure took care of this one.
4) Dysfunction # 4 avoidance of accountability / Cohesion # 4 hold each other accountable – see number 3, it says it all.
5) Dysfunction # 5 inattention to results / Cohesion # 2 focus on achievement of collective results - working level results were reviewed daily, teams took time to go over results weekly and agree on what to go solve, leadership reviewed PROCESS results monthly. The expectation was to have adequate movement in the right direction every month or have a plan to get on course – no tap dancing and no excuses. You would lose your status as a leader if the team under you did not make significant, consistent results. We were talking about not tolerating anything less than a four sigma process in 1988 and launching new processes at greater than five sigma in 1990. Anyone who has ever done it knows that is a significant achievement and there was no nonsense with the data or stupidity around opportunity counting.
How do you build a team environment like this? Strong minded leadership and getting the right people on the bus. Read some off what I’ve written about Predictive Index, it can take some of the trial and error out of the process.
Gary
Jun
13
Thoughts on the Full Time Change Agent Role
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Loads have been written on why Change Initiatives fail. One of the most common reasons given is that those tasked with making change are not given adequate time to make the change happen.
Loads have also been written about Motorola and how Six Sigma and the Black Belt role were developed there.
Two truths –
1) Industry has had full time change roles since, at least, the early days of scientific management and F. W. Taylor. The movement to separate industrial diagnosis from operations gained momentum in the early 20th century. Roles such as Market Research, Product Manager, Value Analyst, Quality Engineer, … (Managerial Breakthrough, J. M. Juran, 1964, page 58). There was also a specialized role to make processes more efficient, while reducing delays, and inventories – the role is that of the Industrial Engineer. The truth – fulltime change agent roles have been in place since the early twentieth century.
2) Motorola made their most significant gains starting in 1984 through about 1991 or 2. The DMAIC strategy was not even fully articulated until 1991 or 2. The role of fulltime change agents outside of the Quality and Industrial Engineers was not even talked about at Motorola (except possibly the SSRI which operated in a vacuum in Schaumberg) until the mid 90’s. The truth – Motorola’s greatest accomplishments were made without a DMAIC (or MAIC since the D is attributed to GE) strategy and without full time roles outside of the traditional full time roles.
So why it is critical now to segment off yet another organization to do what should already be done? A couple of thoughts –
1) The traditional QE role has evolved to being a place where we dump people. The traditional QE doesn’t have a background in Knowledge Sharing or analytic tools, and those that do are told that their knowledge is not the “real world”. The regulatory control need has filled the role with people who are all about black and white instead of people who see “systems”. The same for the IE role, people have learned to sit in offices and dictate the work to be done and blame the mistakes and failings of the system on others. Neither role has been taught about human nature and overcoming resistance. The leadership of the organization have not adequately studied organizational design and have probably never read Deming or Juran. Those that have read and understand don’t have a mentor to guide their transistion.
2) Leadership does not know how to manage part time. By this, I mean we don’t know how to make it acceptable for people to do work that requires time, space and a continuity of thought.
Both of the above are good reasons to just create yet another function, but this time we show them how to do the analytical work and we define their jobs as separated from the daily operations.
Is there an appropriate role of full time change agent?
Yes. If your organization were mine, I would do one of two things –
1) If your organization has a management development rigor, build it into the rotations of the development work. Require technical and social leadership be demonstrated in a strategically significant project or two. Require management by fact throughout operations including HR, Purchasing, and all Finance/Accounting functions. Require management by fact from Development and Marketing functions to the extent of having a rigorous, verifiable product/collateral launch program. Learn to manage creativity by hiring creative people (an easy to measure attribute) and holding them accountable.
2) Lacking a formal management development program, make a requirement of transition from individual contributor to management the demonstration of technical and social leadership on a strategically significant project or two. Make education and mentoring available to all. Require management by fact as in 1) above.
What else?
1) Make sure everyone in your organization is learning and trying. Motorola’s model of requiring a minimum of 40 hours of training for every employee, every year is still the best I have seen.
2) Make sure every employee is given at least 2% of their time to do problem solving in their own area of influence. This includes the provision of real time data on the critical process factors in their process.
3) Make sure everyone understands the company’s strategy and make it okay for people to question to clarify.
4) Make it okay to fail.
5) Make it not okay to not change.
6) Read Managerial Breakthrough, Out of the Crisis, and Adhocracy. Make sure the QE’s and IE’s read all of Shingo’s works within the first year on the job.
Gary