Jason Yip explores the value of reducing work in process and reducing context switching costs to optimize throughput. By designing processes to work on projects serially instead of in parallel we reduce context switching, and other costs, of multitasking.
Related: Multi-Tasking: Why Projects Take so Long – The Importance of Making Problems Visible – One piece flow (continuous flow) – Kanban
If you have customers that see you as adequate you will keep customers based on inertia.
But you have several big problems awaiting you. Those trying to win your customers business only have to overcome inertia – which can be very low hurdle (saving a small bit of money, some minor additional feature). If your customers are delighted they won’t leave (by and large) without significant reasons to.
Also your attempts to increase price are very likely to lead to increased customer losses (than if customers are delighted). Delighted customers are willing to pay a premium which helps profits enormously (Apple has done this quite well).
Delighted customers will refer others to you – great free marketing.
Satisfied customers leave you very little leeway for error. If you cause satisfied customers some problem (which granted, hopefully you won’t but if you do) they are not likely to be forgiving. If they are delighted they may well stay even if you have a delay, provide less than stellar customer service for some request…
There are many ways to attempt to delight customers. One of the simplest powerful tools is to ask a very simple question: What Could we do Better?
Related: What Job Does Your Product Do? – It Just Works – Kano Model of customer satisfaction – customer focus resources
I believe the problem is likely not the person pointing out the problem. Now granted I have often been that person. Part of what I have been tasked with doing in various jobs is finding ways to improve the performance of the organization. I was told the managers wanted to hear about problems from someone working there, so I was asked to do so. What it often meant was they wanted someone to fix the problems they thought existed not point out the problem was the systems, not the people forced to deal with the systems.
I have learned managers are a lot happier if I just shut up about all the problems that should be addressed. There are happy if I can fix what I can (though really they seem to care much more about not being negative than any actually improving) and just be quiet about anything else – otherwise you are seen as “negative.”
How to Manage Whining with no Problem Solving
I think it is right to focus the effort on problem solving to improve the situation. I fear that far too often though “As individuals begin to focus on the negative and don’t engage in problem solving, this behavior is unacceptable.” turns into ignore problems. Yes, I know that isn’t what the post is suggesting. I am just saying that the easy “solution” that is taken far too often is to focus on the words “negative” and “unacceptable.”
I believe the focus should be on “broken systems are unacceptable.” I would prefer problem solving to address the issues but a culture of ignoring issues and seeing those that don’t as being negative is often the real problem (not the person that points out the problems).
I have discussed this topic in some posts previously: Ignoring Unpleasant Truths is Often Encouraged and Bring Me Problems, and Solutions if You Have Them. Once I am given those problems I agree with you completely. Use them as an opportunity to coach effective problem solving and process improvement strategies to improve the situation. And to develop people.
Often the problem is not the person at all. The organization never adopts fixes. People have learned that they can bang their head against the wall and then never get approval for the fix or they can just whine. Blaming them for choosing whining is not useful. I don’t see how Asking 5 whys you get to blaming the employee, except in very rare cases for not problem solving. It seems to me the issue is almost always going to lay with management: for why people are frustrated with system results and are not problem solving.
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What I have seen is truth is not valued much. I’m interested in creating improvement. I thought people would be driven by data and possible strategies to improve. But I have found that just isn’t often true.
So, from my experience, the strategy to improve means not distracting people with many of the truths. Try to fix the system and convince others to fix the system as you can. If some efforts are resisted try to adjust. Sometimes try a different strategy to get improvement. Sometimes I just drop trying to improve that particular thing. There are usually so many options for improvement it isn’t tough to find plenty of others that may be more successfully tackled.
I am someone who find it frustrating that many don’t seem interested in really understanding what the system is producing and where weaknesses exist. But, at least for me, trying to have things work the way I want (where an open exploration of the truth was the focus) isn’t the priority. I have figured it is better to give up on that desire and work within the reality that exists.
I can’t stop myself though from pointing out things far more often than people want. I have no doubt it has annoyed people and gotten me in trouble. But nothing that wasn’t manageable, I just make things a bit more difficult for myself.
One, very visible, sign of people avoiding the truth is if people say very different things in meetings and out of them. It is amazing to me how much less likely anything that could be sen as a complaint or criticism to be voiced in a meeting versus in the hallway. It isn’t so surprising if you understand human psychology (the tendency to blame those who voice a problem). People figure this out and keep their mouth shut. But to their friends they understand they can point out the problems and not be blamed (so in the hallways, you get a much more honest understanding of what people think). This is a bad sign. If your organization trains people to ignore unpleasant truths it makes managing more difficult and results in poorer performance.
Related: The difference between respect and disrespect is not avoiding avoiding criticism – Information Technology and Business Process Support – How to Improve – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame – Information Technology and Management – Respect for People, Understanding Psychology – Bring Me Problems, and Solutions if You Have Them – Better Meetings – People are Our Most Important Asset
This very brief introduction to control charts by PQ Systems provides a very watchable non-technical overview. Getting people to understand variation is important, and not easy. This video is one more quick reminder for those still trying to incorporate an understanding of variation into their view of the world.
The idea is simple. But actually thinking with an understanding of variation people find difficult, it seems to me. It is very easy to continue to revert to special cause thinking (who did it? is often a sign of special cause thinking) – thinking that results are due to a special (unique) cause, instead of as the result of a system (which includes lots of common causes).
The value I see in this video is as a reminder for all those trying to operate with an understanding of variation. It is also a decent introduction, but much, much more would be needed to get people to understand why this matters and what is needed.
Related: Control Charts in Health Care – How to Create a Control Chart for Seasonal or Trending Data – Measurement and Data Collection – Six Sigma and Common Sense – European Blackout, not Human Error
Toyota is receiving plenty of criticism now, much of it for good reason. There is also a large amount of psychology involved. From what I have seen, the insurance companies still see better claims history (fewer and lower cost claims) against Toyota than other manufacturers. And there is another strain that seems to enjoy criticizing what has been praised. Toyota does need to improve. But that is improvement of the existing management system, not a need to radically change the management of the company.
I think Toyota, even with the problems, is a fantastic example of a very well managed company. Yet even with all the study of lean manufacturing even basic ideas are overlooked. For example, the two main pillars of the Toyota way are “continuous improvement” and “respect for people.” For all of us, it is valuable to refocusing on core principles. We are too often looking for the next new idea.
This is one way of looking at the pillars of the Toyota Production System, from the Toyota Technical Center – Austrailia
There are three building blocks shaping our commitment to Continuous Improvement:
1. Challenge – we form a long term vision, meeting challenges with courage and creativity to realize our dreams;
2. Kaizen – we improve our business operations continuously, always driving for innovation and evolution
3. Genchi Genbutsu – we go to the source to find the facts to make correct decisions, build consensus and achieve goals.
Respect For People refers to our own staff as well as the communities and stakeholder groups that surround us and we are part of. We respect our people and believe the success of our business is created by individual efforts and good teamwork.
Respect For People is translated in:
1. Respect – we respect others, make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and do our best to build mutual trust
2. Teamwork – we stimulate personal and professional growth, share the opportunities of development and maximize individual and team performance.
These elements combined define our corporate DNA, provide a way of operating that is recognised by each and every Toyota-member around the globe and enables us to sustain our success in the future.
Back to Basics for Toyota by Akio Toyoda
While recent events show Toyota obviously needs to improve, that has been true all along (it is just more obvious lately). Some may see this as an indication that these lean manufacturing ideas based on Toyota’s practices are no better than other management practices. I don’t believe this. I feel just as strongly about the value of lean management as ever. I think that the recent events show you that no matter how well an organization in managed there is plenty of room to improve. Toyota never was close to perfection. They have much to improve, but they are still one of the best managed companies in the world.
Related: Toyota Stops Lines – Lots of Lines – Akio Toyoda’s Message Shows Real Leadership – Deming Companies – Respect for People Does Not Mean No Criticism
And my comments in 2007:
Automated software testing is a mistake proofing (poka-yoke) solution for software development.
The way automated testing works is that software code is written that tests the software code of the application. This automated testing code test that business rules are correctly being followed by the code in the application.
So for example, a user should not be able to create a new account without entering password. Then you create code that does not allow an account to be created without a password. And you write a test that passes if this is true and fails if it is false.
The best implementation will then not allow deploying code to your production environment until the code has passed all the automated tests. So if a software developer changes the code, the automated tests are all run and if there is an error noted by the automated testing the code cannot be deployed to the production environment. So, in the example above, if somehow the changes made to the application code somehow now let an account be created without a password the test would fail, and the developer would know to fix the problem before putting the code into production.
Thus automated testing mistake proofs the process. Now the mistake proofing is only as good as the test that are added. Software development is complex and if the code has an error (based on the business rules) that is not tested then the code can be deployed to production and affect customers. But it is a huge help in preventing many errors from affecting customers.
It seems pretty obvious but until the widespread adoption of agile software development techniques and frameworks that make it easy to adopt automated testing (like Ruby on Rails) this sensible process improvement tool was used far less often than you would think.
Related: Combinatorial Testing for Software – Metrics and Software Development – Checklists in Software Development – Google testing blog – Hexawise software testing blog
Robert Lloyd, PhD From the IHI Open School‘s, presents a nice overview of the PDSA Cycle (plan-do-study-act). The webcast includes an example of using PDSA to improve the discharge process for a hospital.
As I have said many times the keys to success are to turn the PDSA cycle rapidly, predict the results in advance, and analyze the results to continually improve. the Improvement Handbook is an excellent resource.
The IHI Open School is a great resource and exactly the type of thing organizations with a mission to improve performance should be doing. Provide resources online that are easy for people to access and then apply in their organization. See more management webcasts.
Related: Tom Nolan on PDSA – Saving Lives: US Health Care Improvement – 5 Million Lives Campaign
Some things about what people do also have their roots in psychology. Deming had an understanding of psychology as one of 4 areas in his system of management. A huge factor in what people do is based on what they are used to doing – habits. It is often difficult for people to change – not necessarily because they don’t want to, or the alternative is more difficult or they think it is unwise. It is difficult just because they are in the habit of doing something else.
William James explored the power of habits – The Laws of Habit
Often I favor convincing people why certain actions are best and then they can chose to take those actions. But you can also get people in the habit of the actions you seek to encourage and then let the power of habit work. For health, I think this, often is a good strategy.
But it also is done in many ways that culture is established in an organization. You enforce that meetings must have an agenda. Then it becomes a habit. You enforce that decisions are based on data. Then it becomes a habit. You enforce that the work area must be clean. Then it becomes a habit.
Two ways you can notice that things are becoming a habit:
1) when people bring “work” ideas to their personal life – Visual Management and Self-Reliance, Laundry Kaizen.
2) you find yourself in a new environment where the habit is not practiced and you are uncomfortable. You go to a new organization and 5s is not being practiced and you feel uncomfortable. You go to meetings without agendas and they seem to wander and waste time and you can’t imagine why they don’t use an agenda and follow it.
When the ideas have reached the level of habits you have changed. I think with health issues this is the understanding people should have. How do I change things so people adopt good habits. Then you have to find strategies that effectively move people to adopt those habits.
The strategy is based on the idea that adopting the habit can be easier than convincing someone to change with the power of pure logic. But it is also important as habit are adopted to explain the reasoning on why the habits are important. By understanding the role those habits play in successful health, for example, a person knows how to adapt to changing circumstances. And they know what are the key factors that should remain as methods are adapted over time. Explaining why 5s is valuable is important even beyond the habit.
If you get someone to behave in a certain way to get some incentive you rarely get the change in psychology. They don’t adopt a new habit. They do something to get what you offer. They will continue to do it if the incentive is offered. If not, they stop. Does Rewarding Children Backfire?
In response to: In search of metrics
Related: Flaws in Understanding Psychology Lead to Flawed Management – Respect for People, Understanding Psychology – Information Technology and Business Process Support – Punished by Rewards? A Conversation with Alfie Kohn
I think the most important thing you can do to make better decisions is to learn from the decisions you make. It sounds easy, but very few people do so effectively.
The best strategy to learn from decisions is to:
Failing to do this leads most people to fail to learn from there decisions. It is hard to improve when you don’t learn. The similarity to the PDSA improvement cycle is not a surprise. Both are about learning so you can adopt more effective strategies.
Related: Predicting Improves Learning – Management is Prediction – Making Decisions, Taking Risks – Knowledge Management: Management is Prediction – confirmation bias
Low inventory levels do not mean failing to have products available for customers. Now, if you manufacturing in huge batches and can’t respond to customer feedback then it might mean failure to predict customer demand does mean failure to deliver. But lean thinking has shown how to avoid this problem. People need to adopt lean manufacturing practices and gain the benefits of low inventory levels without the costs of failing to deliver what customers want.
Sorry Santa, We’re Out of Stock
That’s when stores hit the markdown panic button, slashing prices upwards of 75 percent. The result was the worst holiday selling season since 1970, according to The International Council of Shopping Centers.
But although leaner inventory levels should drive profit margin gains this holiday, “retailers might not have enough inventory to fully satisfy demand,” said Citigroup retail analyst Deborah Weinswig, in a research note. It is a risk they are willing to take.
“They would rather lose a sale than take the markdowns they had last year,” said Goldman Sachs analyst Adrianne Shapira.
The retailers need to design their systems with lean thinking in mind (not lean – as in cut expenses without thought). And they need to work with suppliers using lean manufacturing principles.
Related: Be Thankful for Lean Thinking – Guess What? Manufacturing in the USA is a Good Idea – Tesco: Lean Provision – Zara Thrives by Ignoring Conventional Wisdom – Operational Excellence – lean manufacturing articles
I don’t see any evidence six sigma is making a comeback but magazines like to talk about new ideas rather than just explore what continues. They like to discuss common cause variation as though it were special cause. Six Sigma Makes a Comeback
How sad. Six sigma has always been hampered by a lack of core values (like respect for people, constancy of purpose) and a focus on cost cutting but the direct desire to pursue a deadly disease (short term focus) is sad indication of where some have taken what can be very useful tools.
Six sigma and quality management other efforts can be very useful. But many of the efforts (as many of any management efforts) are executed poorly and do little good and much that is rightly ridiculed.
Related: Quality and Innovation – Six Sigma Much More than Common Sense – Process Improvement and Innovation
An Introduction to Deming’s Management Teaching and Philosophy by Peter Scholtes – webcast from the Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin, November 9th, 2008. My previous post on this speech: 6 Leadership Competencies.
Next month, the Annual Deming Institute conference will be held at Purdue on Oct 10th, 2009.
Related: Peter Scholtes’ Life – Curious Cat’s Deming on Management – The Leader’s Handbook – Performance without Appraisal
Unfortunately I cannot actually use the website to watch more than 5 minutes because the site fails to support linux operating system with their solution for longer videos. Google will only allow 10 minute videos without special permission – YouTube has not replied to my request for over 6 months. Update: Twitvid let me upload the whole video.
Google does a great job of using statistical and engineering principles to improve. It is amazing how slow we are to adopt new ideas but because we are it provides big advantages to companies like Google that use concepts like design of experiments, experimenting quickly and often… while others don’t. Look Inside a 1,024 Recipe Multivariate Experiment
via: @hexawise – My brother has created a software application to provide much better test coverage with far fewer tests using the same factorial designed experiments ideas my father worked with decades ago (and yet still far to few people use).
Related: Combinatorial Testing for Software – Statistics for Experimenters – Google’s Website Optimizer allows for multivariate testing of your website. – Using Design of Experiments
One of the reasons my organizations switched to Ruby on Rails for software development was the great integration with automated testing. We always wanted to have good test coverage on our software applications (which are web applications – some used only inside our organization) but didn’t actually find the time to do so. Since we adopted Ruby we have been doing much better in this regard. It isn’t just the switch to Ruby, of course, but the switch to Ruby coincided with the beginning of many improvements to our software development practices that have continually improved over the last couple of years.
Here is a post on How to build quality software by an agile, Ruby, lean software developer
We work in an agile manner, iterating through development with extreme programming practices and Behaviour Driven Development. Facilitating our relationship with the business is Scrum and we utilise kanban principles and systems thinking to maintain a speedy throughput of high-quality work. This mixture allows us to communicate effectively, develop the correct features properly and continuously deploy our work when it is complete, thus maximising business value. I should also mention that we are fortunate enough to have our business people/customer sat across from us.
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Without testers or a QA team there is no wall over which work can be thrown and the responsibility for quality absolved.
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The inspection typically carried out end-of-cycle only yields bugs that were low severity and of no real impact to the end user.
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An agile testing must-have, we use TeamCity to continuously run our unit tests on each check-in. We also execute our Cucumber acceptance tests on scheduled runs. The status of the builds are visible on dedicated monitors around the office as well as a nice 6′ projected screen.
via: @benjaminm
Related: Combinatorial Testing for Software – Checklists in Software Development – Software Supporting Processes Not the Other Way Around – Software Development and Business Process Support – Top Blogs for Software Development – Hexawise: more coverage, fewer tests (my brother’s company)
Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. They are developing this as an open access project. The creative team is lead by the creators for Google Maps (brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen). A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. You really have to watch to understand what it is.
This is a long webcast (1 hour and 20 minutes) and likely will be best only for those interested in internet technology solutions. But it also provides useful insight into how Google is managing the creation of new tools. But the ideas are not explicit (the demo was meant to present the new product Google Wave, not explain the thought behind producing useful technology solutions), so you have to think about how what they are doing can apply in other situations.
For software developer readers they also highly recommended the Google Web Development Kit, which they used heavily on this project. They also have a very cool context sensitive spell checker that can highlight misspelled words that are another dictionary word but not right in the context used (about 44:30 in the webcast). And they discuss using Wave to manage bug tracking and manage information about dealing with bugs (@ 1 hour 4 min point).
Very cool stuff. The super easy blog interaction is great. And the user experience with notification and collaborative editing seems excellent. The playback feature to view changes seems good though that is still an area I worry about on heavily collaborative work. Hopefully they let you see like all change x person made, search changes…
Related: Eric Schmidt on Management at Google – Joel Spolsky Webcast on Creating Social Web Resources – Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation – Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices – Amazon Innovation
– Colin Powell
I discussed my feelings on this in a previous post, Bring Me Problems:
Related: Where to Start Improvement – Stop Demotivating Me! – How to Improve – Leadership quotes
“Having no problems is the biggest problem of all.” – Taiichi Ohno
Dr. Deming long ago stated in his 14 obligations of management: “Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas and management by objectives.” I think he was right then, and is right now. A goal can help set the scope of the effort. If you are aiming for 2% improvement different strategies may make sense than if you are aiming at 50% improvement. But that type of use is rare. The problem with goals is what actually happens in organizations. They create serious systemic problems and should be avoided (other than in setting the scope). They are deeply ingrained in the way many people think, but we would be better if we could eliminate the use of goals, as they are used now (mainly as arbitrary numerical goals).
Ready, Aim … Fail, Why setting goals can backfire
Today, as the economic situation upends millions of lives, it is also forcing the reexamination of millions of goals – not only the revenue targets of battered firms, but the career aims of workers and students, and even the ambitions of the newly installed administration. And while it never feels good to give up on a goal, it may be a good time to ask which of the goals we had set for ourselves were things we really needed to achieve, and which were things we only thought we should – and what the difference has been costing us.
Related: Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations – Arbitrary Rules Don’t Work – The Defect Black Market – Goals can Distract from Improvement – Be Careful What You Measure
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Involve IT Staff in Business Process Improvement
Posted on July 6, 2010 Comments (5)
I started out basically working on management improvement from the start of my career. My makeup (I am never satisfied and figure things should always be better) along with a few traits, experiences and probably even genes made this a natural fit for me. I tend to take the long view and find fire fighting a waste of time. Why fix some symptom, I want to fix the system so that problem doesn’t happen again. My father worked in statistics, engineering and business improvement and as I was growing up I had plenty of experience with process improvement, understanding variation, experimenting, measuring results…
I came into the IT world as I had needs and found the best solution was to write some software to help me accomplish what I wanted to. One thing that better software tools allowed is this type of thing when organizations failed to use technology well, individuals could just do so themselves. Without these tools people had to rely on the organization, but today atrophied IT organizations can often be circumvented. Though the IT organizations often try to avoid this largely by bans (instead of by providing the tools people need), which is not a good sign, in my opinion.
I then spent more and more of my time working with technology but I always retained my focus on improving the management of the organization, with technology playing a supporting role in that effort. That is true even as where I sat changed. And I have become more convinced organizations would be served well by using the information technology staff as business process experts.
At one point I sat in the Office of Secretary of Defense, Quality Management Office where I was able to focus on management improvement and using technology to aid that effort. Then I went to the White House Military Office, Customer Support and Organizational Development office and focused largely on how to using technology to meet the mission. Then I was moved into the White House Military Office, Office of Information Technology Management.
And now I work for the American Society for Engineering Education in the Information Technology department. My role started as partially program management and partially software development and as we have grown and hired more software developers I am now nearly completely a program manager.
I believe technology is a central component of understanding business processes today. But the truth is, many business people don’t have as complete an understanding as I feel they should. Now I believe, most anyone interested in planning their management career needs to develop a facility with technology and specifically how to use software applications to improve performance. You don’t need to be an expert programmer but you need to understand the strengths, weakness, limits of technical solutions. You need to understand how technology can be used (and the risks of options).
At the same time I just don’t think it is likely management everywhere will get a decent understanding of application software development. I also believe that in many cases organizations should do software development in house. This is a issue that certainly can be argued (but I won’t do it here). Basically I don’t think organizations should cram their processes into designs required by off the shelf software. Instead I believe they should design processes optimal for their organization and using off the shelf software often does the opposite (forces the process decisions around what software someone decided to buy). There is plenty of use for off the shelf software that doesn’t force you to make your processes fit into them (and sometimes even if it does that is the business decision that has to be made – I just think far too often organizations look at short term costs and not the overall best solutions for the system).
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Categories: Career, Deming, IT, Management, Popular, Process improvement, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking
Tags: agile management, Career, commentary, curiouscat, IT, John Hunter, management, Popular, Process improvement, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking