Focus on Achieving Life Goals

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

Author unknown

You will probably reach the peak of your career at about the age of 60 and at that time your personal life will be well defined. To accomplish what you desire in life, both in your work and home perspective, to make the most of your talent and ability, you need to identify and clearly define those goals and make sure they are in sync with each other. Then plan how to get there, prepare to succeed, and execute your plan.

One way to identify your ultimate goal in career and personal life is to find a quiet place where you can think and reflect. Close your eyes and picture yourself at the peak of your career, both in a work setting and in your home. What would that picture look like? What would you be doing? What people are with you in that picture? What would make you happy? Then document every detail in that picture or pictures.

Now that you have identified your goals in life, plan the best path to get there. Include personal life and career life together as both are important and need to be planned together. What type of organization offers the best path and what do you need to do to reach your family dreams? Define specific action items that provide the best approach to accomplish both dreams. Make sure you have timetables for these action items. If you find yourself straying from the path or lagging the timetable, re-examine your dreams and if they are still the same, take action to get back on your plan and timetable.

Next you need to prepare yourself to reach your dreams. You can define what education would be needed. You are never too old to go back to school and acquire that basic education. Then ask your self what training you would need for each step in your action plan. Acquire training to excel in your present job and to prepare you for the next step. Also, identify what training would help you become a better family person and seek that out.

To execute your life plan, seek to excel in everything you do. Don’t waste time in work positions and personal situations that don’t help you reach your goals. Ensure the values of your organization and personal contacts are consistent with yours.

As a side note, when interviewing to hire people, it is useful to determine if the present opening fits their dreams. If not, no matter how good they look for the present job, they will probably not be a good fit for the long run.

Having said all of this, it is important to remember to be flexible and adjust as you learn and grow. Technology, times, and our desires change over time but armed with the above, you are better able to adjust and move forward.

Do Results Justify Improvement Efforts?

“I wish Quality was easy; unfortunately it is a hot and sweaty job!” Dr. Noriaki Kano of the Science University of Tokyo often made this statement to emphasize that performance improvement is not easy. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to excellence. Are the results of this extra effort worth it? An objective evaluation from three perspectives is useful to document the value of efforts expended versus results. Keep in mind that we are not talking about “quick fixes” but sustainable, long-term results.

Customer Perspective

The efforts are probably not worthwhile if they are not apparent to the customers. Surveys, focus groups, and face-to-face meetings can be used to measure reliability, performance, timeliness, value, defect levels, complaint resolution, etc. Additional internal data can be collected on retention of customers, gains/losses of customers, warranty costs, service costs, and number of complaints.

Workforce Perspective

Trade, industry, or local data can be accessed to compare to data from your organization to measure workforce perspective. Factors to be considered are turnover, safety, absenteeism, employee satisfaction, grievances, and organizational and personal learning.

Business Perspective

Key financial measurements such as return on investment (ROI), return on assets (ROA), revenue, profit and loss, cash flow, and growth are important and easy to measure but are not the only important measurements. Collection times, write-offs, budget tracking, societal responsibilities, meeting key objectives, and compliance with environment, legal, and government requirements are also important to measure.

Because change is gradual, benefits of performance improvement efforts are not truly appreciated unless objective evaluation measures are in place. Armed with this data, organizations can evaluate their achievements. If the return on investment in time and effort are deemed worthwhile, they can re-dedicate themselves to continue their journey to performance excellence and advance to the next level.

No task is quite so “hot and sweaty” when you can see beneficial results.

Strengthen Your Workforce

“Your employees are not assets to be bought and sold, but treasures that must be preserved at all costs.”

W. Edwards Deming would use this statement to make a point about the fact that you have made a big investment in hiring, training, coaching, and enduring mistakes while employees are in the learning phase of the job. Rather than writing off that investment, if you have an employee whose performance is not up to your expectations you are should investigate why. Have they been put in poor processes or systems, have they been given adequate training, are they unqualified for the job, etc. As the manager, you hired them and are responsible for them being in that position, so if they are a total misfit you should find them a position where they can do good work, whether it is in your organization or not. Deming and others agreed that 90% of the time, it is not the employees fault.

It is interesting to look at a matrix comparing workforce capability to process capability. If we have a low process capability coupled with a low workforce capability, the organization will struggle and the future looks bleak. If we have a high process capability matched with a low workforce capability, the organization will coast and get by. If we have a low process capability coupled with a high workforce capability, we have a situation of instability where the employees are dissatisfied, frustrated, and likely to jump to another job at the first opportunity. If we have a high process capability matched with a high workforce capability, we are on the high road to success.

Many of the previous columns of Basic Business Cents dealt with the 90% category and were focused on process improvement. In this article we will focus on the workforce element. To achieve that high capability ranking, we need to examine four elements of the focus on workforce-Environment, Development, Engagement, and Management.

Workforce Environment

Looking at the environment, first and foremost it must be safe; safe from physical harm and safe from mental harm like harassment and bullying. The employee should be secure that the organization is as loyal to the employee as the employee is to the organization. To that end, management and co-workers must be supportive and helpful.

Organizational values should be consistent with the personal values of the employees so that they are comfortable and proud of what they do. A former employer once offered a seminar titled, Work/Life, taught by a psychologist and was all about getting your work life and personal life in sync with each other. It was probably the best seminar that I ever attended.

The position and the organization should fulfill the employees’ social need or responsibility of being worthwhile to society. The organizational direction or aim should be consistent with that of the employee. It is helpful if the organization provides recreational and cultural activities that build teamwork throughout.

Last but not least the employees should see clear career opportunities that lie ahead.

Workforce Development

Performance is due in a large part to basic education, skills training, coaching, ability, and motivation. Education opens up our mind and makes us curious about learning more. We should never stop learning our entire life, as the world continues to change around us. Training should be formal and consistent and followed by coaching to ensure the implementation of lessons learned is correct. The organization needs to have a regular system of sharing knowledge throughout the organization. Skill training should not only be for the present job but for the next one, which has been identified as a possibility by proper career counseling. The employee should practice new skills and consider learning as a part of daily work. The employee’s ability should have been identified during the hiring process. Motivation comes from within and needs to be viewed by management as what can be done to provide more satisfaction and pride in work so as to create intrinsic motivation. Attempts to provide extrinsic motivation rarely succeed and can backfire.

Workforce Engagement

The employees’ are more likely to be engaged in their work as we stated previously if they have consistency with their work/home life, if they get great satisfaction from their work, if they take pride in meaningful work, and get joy and happiness from their efforts. Mutual trust and respect, up, down, and across the organization are necessities for a highly capable workforce. They should be customer focused, both on internal and external customers.

The employees should be provided with clear direction, both for the organization and their position so that they understand their role in achieving the company’s goals.

Constant innovation and flexibility in the work tend to make it more exciting and interesting.

Workforce Management

In order to achieve high workforce capability, management must do their part. They need to be honest, fair, consistent, and committed to the employees’ wellbeing. They should act consistent with the organization’s strategy and action plans. They should be effective in problem and grievance solving.

Prior to the employee’s placement in the position, management must have good human resource planning and hiring practices to avoid mistakes. As mentioned above, these mistakes are very costly. Once hired, management must be committed to the employee’ success.

Proper focus on the workforce as outlined will result in more engaged, satisfied, and versatile employees that stay with your organization.

Reducing Waste and Rework

In my experience of working with organizations around the world, manufacturing companies can usually document about 35% of their time, effort, and cost go into producing waste and rework. Service organizations are usually around 60% and government operations somewhere around 60-90%. There are reasons for the difference. Manufacturing companies have had industrial and manufacturing engineers working to improve production processes for years. A big reason the 35% number is so high is those same engineers seldom work on improving processes in finance, personnel, sales, etc. departments. They still have lots of room for reduction of waste and rework. Service and government organizations numbers are higher for the same reason; they just haven’t focused on process improvement. Government figures tend to be higher because of the many regulations that must be followed and tend to be accepted rather than challenged for better ways.

All work is made up of a series of processes and no process is perfect. The modern manager understands that his/her focus needs to be on managing the processes and not the people. People will do the best they can within the processes that they are given and must be trusted to do so without management micro-managing them. Management will receive much more satisfaction in work by providing improved processes for their people rather than constantly looking over their shoulders. A tremendous breakthrough seems to take place when managers accept that their role is to manage the processes and not the people.

With that acceptance of their role, the managers focus on improving the processes and look for ways to reduce wasted effort and cost. Last month, Vern Campbell conducted a workshop and presented a useful method of remembering the keys to identifying waste based on the term, DOWNTIME.

D-defects. This can be the rejected products, service, mistakes, or anything else that is less than desired.

O-over production. Doing more than is desired can result in scrap or reduced returns.

W-wait. Delays anywhere in the process cost time, effort, and therefore money, let alone a decrease in customer satisfaction.

N-non-utilized talent. A tip-off to his cause of waste is to see people standing around waiting, watching, and wondering what to do next.

T-transportation. It can be useful to chart the actual flow of work in a process and look for needless travel or movement. The old saying that the shortest route between two points is a straight line is true but often in our work processes we have the work product going back and forth all over the area, which can cause delays and possibly damage.

I-inventory. Inventory may be necessary to some extent but usually it is evil. It can produce obsolescence, rework, lost or misplacement, theft, etc.

M-motion. This is related to transportation but can be needless movement of people.

E-excessive processing. Examples of this are over-cooking in a restaurant, over-medication by a doctor, over-testing in manufacturing, and over application of regulations in government to cover any possible violations.

The goal is to not only remove the waste, rework, and redundancy as can be found with the above technique, but to streamline the process and improve the output. No process is perfect nor will it ever be. There is always room for improvement. By focusing on improving the work processes, the work product will constantly improve, little by little, better and better, resulting in improved success of the operation, happier employees, and more pride and satisfaction in their work achieved by the managers.

Improving Workforce Effectiveness

Are you proud of your workforce? Could they do better? Of course, none of us are perfect. So, how do we get from our present state to the new improved desired state? Would you believe the federal government can help? The National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, manages the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. Their mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness and to that end they publish a book detailing criteria for performance excellence. It can be obtained free by calling (301) 975-2036 or by emailing baldrige@nist.gov.

Category 5, Workforce Focus, provides some excellent food for thought.

The first element is to engage the workforce to enthusiastically perform to their highest level. First and foremost is to ensure good information flow, up, down, and across the organization. Keep people informed. Empower them to make changes needed. In order to do that, they must be adequately trained and trusted. That means get to know them and work with them.

People need to have meaningful work, which provides them with satisfaction of doing something worthwhile. The work must be enjoyable and provide opportunities to take pride in the outcome. The work should be aligned with the workers personal values.

The next element is to develop the workforce. The people must be enabled to do excellent work. Good professional training is always a necessity for good performance but one of the first budgets to be cut in periods of belt tightening is always training. Worker-training-worker is not the answer as can be demonstrated by the old game of whispering something into the ear of a string of people and asking them to pass it on to the next person. What comes out at the end has little relevance to what was whispered to the first person. Similar distortions occur with the worker-training-worker concept.

With the rapid advancements happening in the world today, people need to be continually learning. It can happen inside or outside the organization, in-person or distant, or by mentoring. How the learning takes place doesn’t really matter as long as learning is constant. Individuals should be counseled to identify their next position and training and education provided to prepare them.

The third element of workforce effectiveness is management. Clear direction of the desired outcome of the work must always be remembered. There are two parts to communication, sending and receiving. Using two of our senses is also key to communication, whenever possible, provide written form and oral explanation. The manager needs to practice active listening and to reinforce desired behavior with positive feedback. Trust and respect is absolutely essential, up, down, and across the organization so it needs to always be on the mind of the manager.

The managers’ main role is to innovate and improve capable processes that enable the workforce to take pride and satisfaction in their work. The workers role is to do the best they can within those processes.

By constantly focusing on improving engagement, development, and management, a more productive, happier, and satisfied workforce will result.

Teams That Get Results

Why is it that some teams get results effectively and efficiently and others just waste our time? Could it be that they are organized? Could it be that they have a process? Could it be that they have effective leadership? Could it be that they share a mutual responsibility to act professionally and are focused on moving toward desired results? Probably all of the above.

The potential for great achievements lies within the grasp of all organizational teams. There is no doubt that several brains are better than one. Our history of autocratic management styles, organization charts, and past experiences have led us to rely on the brains of a few to make decisions for the many. The reality today is that work is so complex that no one is smart enough to make all those decisions. Leaders may determine some decisions independently, but often we benefit by using a team to develop direction or solutions to problems.

Teams that work usually exhibit characteristics such as:

·      Identifying a clear and strong purpose and direction

·      Members are selected based on complimentary skills rather than popularity. Team efficiency goes down as the number of members increase so an upper limit of eight members is ideal. Special resources can be brought as needed but need not be regular members of the team.

·      Exhibit team discipline and structure

·      Identify acceptable behavior guidelines

·      Identify clear mission oriented tasks and goals

·      Welcome different perspectives and face facts

Time is critical and non-renewable for all teams in today’s workplace so clearly defined roles are important. They are:

·      Member. Each member shares the responsibility for the team’s success. Ground rules reflect the team’s agreed-to values and serve as guidelines for team member behavior.

·      Leader. In high-performance teams, each member is in a very real sense a leader; the environment of participation and openness created allows members to contribute leadership to the total team effort. When teams are structured with a formal leader role, it is the responsibility of that designated leader to help create this kind of environment. The leader’s role during meetings includes:

o   Challenge the team to clarify its purpose, objectives, and timeline.

o   Help the team define the methods/process to be used

o   Deal with conflicts by focusing on objective/purpose

o   Encourage the group to challenge conventional thinking

o   View members as partners, not as subordinates

·      Facilitator (may or may not be the leader). The facilitator helps to ensure balanced participation while keeping the group focused on its agenda and purpose. The facilitator maintains objectivity and neutrality on the content of group discussions. He/she also challenges the team to confront difficult issues and helps them become unstuck when they get mired down.

·      Scribe. The scribe maintains an ongoing record of each meeting and shares with all members

·      Timekeeper. In collaboration with the group, the timekeeper determines the beginning and ending time for each meeting and also for each agenda item. It is the responsibility of all team members to monitor their own behavior in ways that show respect for time. However, the timekeeper may serve as the “time conscience” for the team.

Teams outperform individuals acting alone or in large organizational settings, especially when multiple skills, experiences, and/or judgment are required. None of us is smarter than all of us, especially if we are organized and work effectively together.

Tenets to Live By

Just as business organizations need Operating Principles to guide behavior of employees, individuals benefit with a documented set of principles, developed by them, for them. As we journey through our career and personal life, we need beliefs and principles to guide us through challenging times and good times. Following are tenets, which I have found helpful. They may not be right for you; they are simply the ones I try to follow.

Stay Active. Satisfy your inherent need to feel worthwhile by striving to pay back to society for all the blessings you have received. The alternative is to atrophy and die.

Strive toward your ultimate Aim in life in every aspect-career, social, family, and financial. Identify what you hope to achieve and make every decision toward that aim.

Genuinely Care about others. Practice the Golden Rule as a matter of habit.

Be Dependable. Others need to be able to rely on your words and actions.

Be Enthusiastic. Norman Vincent Peale published a wonderful book on this subject titled Enthusiasm Makes the Difference. People gravitate toward those who exhibit enthusiasm and want to help and work with them. Enthusiasm and confidence rub off on others.

Be a Friend to others and your group of friends will multiply. Stephen Covey said we need to start inside out, in other words, start with our own behavior and we will receive what we sow.

Be Honest with others and most of all, with yourself. Surveys reveal that the most important trait of the best bosses people have ever worked for is always honesty.

Be a Leader. If you want to get ahead in life, you need to get ahead of the pack. Leaders lead! Have the self-confidence and courage to innovate.

Be a good Listener. Communication has two parts, sending and receiving. Make sure you are listening at least half the time in any setting. We learn by listening, not talking.

Persevere in your undertakings. Tenacity is a common trait of successful people.

Be Positive. You tend to get what you expect in life. Optimism does not cost any more and makes you much happier.

Take Pride in everything that you do. We have an inherent need to be proud of our achievements, those around us, and most of all, ourselves.

Develop mutual Trust and Respect throughout all of your circles; business, family, volunteer work, and social settings. Do not be a critic; criticism drives wedges and makes one unpopular.

Stay true to your Faith, whatever it might be.  We all need a rudder to keep us true to our desired direction.

You may wish to develop your own list of tenets, print them out, and review them often.

Qualities of an Exceptional Leader Part VI

The last few articles have discussed the Leadership requirements in the Qualities of an Exceptional Leader. This article will focus on two other requirements, Direction and Action.

Direction is composed of four components—Aim, Planning, Implementation, and Review.

Strategy, like leadership, is an elusive concept. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines it as “the science and art” of conducting a major campaign to achieve some objective. Strategy is the idea on how to achieve goals. It is based partly on prediction.  That is, if certain activities are carried out effectively, the aim is achieved. W. Edwards Deming has made it clear that the leadership of the organization must determine its aim and establish a system for getting all employees involved in it. Management must determine where the organization is headed in the long term, and what ideal conditions, strategies, and values can get it there.

Management must state a system’s aim so that everyone can understand and be guided by it. A farmer knows he must provide guidance to his team so they are pulling together. So must management provide guidance to employees so they are pulling together to reach their common goal.

The word theory comes from the same Greek root word as theater and means to get a view of, to understand. Knowledge gives us a basis for planning. Deming said there is no substitute for knowledge and that is certainly true for management to determine proper direction for the organization.

Yoji Akao makes a useful distinction between planning and designing. Planning is determining what to make, designing is deciding how to make it. Akao’s Quality Function Deployment technique is very useful in comparing customer needs with features of our products or services. Noriaki Kano’s Attractive Quality Creation concept helps to identify the articulated and unarticulated customer and prospect needs.

With the Aim articulated and the Strategy developed to achieve the aim, the next step is to get buy-in from all employees and their participation in achieving it. The Aim and  Strategy should be summarized on a one-page document and distributed to all employees at the same time as management meets with them to explain it and engage in discussions. It usually takes more than one of the senses to effectively communicate important matters.

The final element of the qualities of an exceptional leader is Action. After we have analyzed our leadership style and made appropriate changes in our behavior, have determined and communicated the direction of the organization, we need to take action to achieve results. If you want to be ahead, then you have to get ahead, said Deming. 

If you want to be a leading organization, then you have to take action. For those who understand their role of leadership and have provided clear direction for the organization, know the next step is to take focused action to improve performance. The Strategy should be deployed throughout the organization so that every employee has a role in accomplishing the strategy.

Not to be overlooked is the importance of regular progress reviews at all levels to focus attention on the importance of achieving the strategy and to remove roadblocks faced by the employees.

The Quality Masters have provided us with a very clear message of what action to take to achieve the qualities of an exceptional leader. The elements and their key components are:

·      Leadership—roles and responsibilities, appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology

·      Direction—aim, planning, implementation, and review

·      Action—communicate, deploy actions, and follow-up to get results

What we do with this information determines how successful we are with our performance improvement. One of the first portable computers, the Osborne Executive, had a sage bit of advice in its manual, “When in doubt, do something.” Try some of these concepts out a little at a time (PDCA-plan-do-check-act). Said Lorne Ames, president of INCO Manitoba, “What is important is baby steps.” Gather data on your progress, learn from your mistakes, and move on a faster pace each time around the PDCA cycle.

Dr. Deming said, “It does not matter when you start, as long as you start now.”

Additional Key Elements of Leadership: Theory of Knowledge and Psychology

The fourth component of leadership is Theory of Knowledge. Leaders need to understand how people learn.

Deming was fond of saying, “Experience by itself teaches you nothing. You must have a theory.  A statement devoid of rational prediction does not convey knowledge.” Learning requires comparison of results with the original prediction or theory.

Measurements or observations are the basis for prediction and theory. Control charts are analytical tools that help us understand the capability of our processes and what to expect in the future. If we are not satisfied with the nominal position or the amount of variation around the average, then we must change or improve the process. 

The lead article in a major U.S. newspaper recently reported on the results of the secondary school students. They were shocked to find that half were below average.  This is not news. It is reasonable to expect that about half will always be below average (or technically speaking, the median). The article went on to say that those schools that were below average three years in a row are suspect and put on probation. Statisticians know that they are probably victims of normal variation. A school would have to be below average for seven periods in a row to be considered outside the norm. The leadership of this particular educational system apparently did not understand this and may be making matters worse by pressure to “do better”.

Leaders lead. Everyone is learning so much so fast today that the leaders must never sit back and think they know enough. Leaders must learn at a faster pace than their employees and that is a challenge. You cannot lead what you do not understand; you cannot understand what you have not done.

The fifth component of leadership is Psychology. Generation gaps, attitudes, work habits, independence, are examples why the leaders of today need to have a working knowledge of psychology.

A manager must have some knowledge of psychology to better understand people to optimize their abilities. Management too often operates under the supposition that people are all alike. Deming said that in fact, they are quite different from each other, having different ways of learning and different values. In other words, there is variation between people as well as processes. There are some basic premises about the psychology of people that we need to understand:

·      Everyone is born with a natural inclination to learn and be innovative.

·      Everyone in the organization needs to understand the need for harmony and cooperation.

·      The most elusive edge in the new global competition is the galvanizing pride of excellence.

·      Workers must be treated with respect.

·      One inherits a right to enjoy his work.

·      Fear must be driven out of the workplace in order to empower employees at every level to work toward performance improvement.

To get everyone involved in the quest to improve productivity, we need:

-       Commitment by everyone

-       Ownership of the work and organization

-       Feedback, up, down, and across the organization.  Information keeps the sense of commitment and ownership alive.

Key Leadership Traits: Appreciation for a System and Knowledge of Variation

The second component of leadership is Appreciation for a System. We all work in a system and we need to make decisions with the benefit of the entire system in mind.

A manager’s role is to understand how the organization works as a system and to know when and how to optimize the system. Micro-management, improving one part of the organization at the expense of another, demanding results from people that the system is not capable of producing, and automating faulty processes are examples of mistakes managers make when they do not understand the system of work.

The organization must have a well-defined process to:

·      Recognize a system

·      Define it so others can recognize it

·      Analyze its behavior

·      Work with subordinates in improving the system

·      Measure the quality of the system

·      Develop improvements in the quality of the system

·      Measure the gains in quality, if any, and link these to customer delight

·      Take steps to guarantee holding the gains.

Product defects are rarely the fault of the worker; the process, established and controlled by management, is more likely to be at blame. Workers work in the system, management works on the system.

People are trying their best in the system they are given. They have an intrinsic desire to improve themselves. Deming really believed that people were doing their best and always concluded his four-day seminars by saying, “And now I leave you with five words, I have done my best.”

Only about 20% of all problems are caused by workers. They are responsible for only a trivial small part of the problems, management is responsible for 80% of the problems because they have the responsibility for changing and improving the processes. Deming in his later years stated that management was responsible for more like 94% of the problems.

Management is the major cause of:

·      Waste

·      Rework

·      Untold losses

Management must understand their system and how it works before they can make any recommendations for improvement.

The third component of Leadership is Knowledge of Variation. Nothing is exactly the same, for example if you bought a sack of nails, if examined under a microscope you would discover that there are minor differences between each nail.

Managers must have knowledge of variation, which exists in everything—systems, services, people, and nature. Understanding what a system can do, and what it cannot do, depends on having statistical data and knowing how the data was obtained. The past is helpful to us only if it helps in the future, if it predicts.  Management is prediction.

Deming gave lectures to top Japanese business leaders in the 1950s regarding the importance of management’s understanding of statistical methods, which helped them attain a significant role in world trade. There are no absolute truths, only data from measurement of observation. Deming used to use the example of our perception of the value of the speed of light to support this statement. What was considered to be the absolute speed was changed several times over the years as we developed new ways to measure it. He jokingly credited Galileo with saying that if the speed of light is not infinite, then it is awfully darned fast.

Like Shewhart, Deming identified two ways to improve work processes; resolving “special” causes of variation and reducing “common” causes variation. Managers must know the difference. Special causes of variation appear on a control chart as a point lying outside the calculated control limits or as other non-random patterns.  A manager should ask, “Is the process performing in a dependable, predictable way over time, with no evidence of assignable causes of variation?” If the answer is no, the process is not stable, that is, there are sources of variation that are not part of the process. These are called special causes of variation, which must be identified and resolved before the process can become stable. The elimination of special causes is often the responsibility of someone working directly with the operation. Common causes, or problems with the overall system, are the responsibility of management. Common causes of variation are those inherent in a system. 

Management’s efforts to reduce variation must be unceasing and must be consistently communicated to the workers.