Category Archives: Business Management

Making a Point or Making a Difference

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Telling someone they are wrong does not inspire them to do right. Instead, it usually creates an atmosphere of conflict. The problem has two faces. First, conflict tends to entrench people into their positions, even if they realize that they are probably wrong. Nothing constructive can come from a conflictive environment because people quit trying to find solutions and start trying to save face. Second, it is quit possible, and maybe even probable, that the person accused of being wrong may actually be right.

The point is that making a point is not the same as making a difference. If the truth be told, most of us would rather win the argument than make a difference. This is the sad truth within our government. We vote and behave as if the processes of our lives were a game where the point was to score points and win, even if no progress is being made.

You might ask how this applies to Lean Six Sigma process improvement teams. Let me explain. When working in a team environment, the team leader must always be focused on keeping a constructive dialog that is not based upon scoring points. The hardest part of process improvement is to “lead” change. To make a difference. When team members are committed to making a difference, they are not keeping score. When they are keeping score they are not making a difference.

I have had to remove individuals from process improvement teams because their “point making” attitude was distractive to the team’s mission to make a difference. This will obviously not make everyone happy, but that is OK. Being a change agent is not easy, nor is it for the faint of heart. When teaching Six Sigma Black Belts, I always instruct them to ” Leave them mad or leave them glad, but never leave them indifferent.”

Voice of the Business

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Some of the first questions that a business must answer are:

• Why do we exist?
• Who are our customers?
• What is our mission or purpose?
• What is our vision?

To understand the importance of the answers to these questions, we must first understand that different stakeholders in a business have different perspectives. The stockholders wish to get a return on their investment. Workers wish to get a good wage for their work. Managers and officers wish to meet the business performance metrics set forth by the owners (stockholders, etc). The community wishes to have a neighbor that provides jobs, pays taxes, supports the community, and has no negative environmental impact. These are just a few.

Understanding the answers to these questions from the stakeholders’ perspective helps to define problem areas within the business and its ambient environment. It allows the business to have clearer vision. In the final analysis though, there are two high level purposes of a business. In a capitalistic society, businesses exist to make money, to make a profit. Without this, the business would not exist. Secondly, when the business is profitable, it ideally gives back stability to the community in which it exists.

When a business correctly defines its problem areas, from the customer and business points of view, it is ready to take the next step to improve processes connected to the problem areas.

So what does process improvement mean to the business? It means lower cost, higher efficiency, and higher profits. These manifest themselves in higher customer satisfaction, improved market share, and larger margins. The tie between customer satisfaction and profitability is evident.

Similar metrics apply to organizations like non-profits. For them the metrics may be lower cost and higher efficiency. These may manifest themselves as lower dependence on outside funding and improved margins. The commonality between businesses and non-profits is that the focus is upon doing more with less, thus returning more margin to the stakeholders and more value to the customers.

These bottom-line metrics in a healthy business are in alignment with their strategic planning. Furthermore, when strategic planning is in alignment with customer expectations, improvement projects will improve customer satisfaction and profitability.

Communicating, Diversity and Problem Solving

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In the 1970’s, if you had a problem to solve, you could invite others to your office, write letters or make phone calls to bring minds together to help you. From a practical standpoint, you could bring maybe 5 or 10 of the best minds in your geographical area into one place, for a limited space in time, to synergize together.

Today, thanks to the internet, you can easily bring a million minds together to solve the same problem. These million minds do not have to travel to participate, so they are not on a time table. This is why the pace of change, world wide, is so fast. In fact, the pace of change is so fast, if you were to jump 10 years into the future, you would have the skills and knowledge of a child compared to others who have evolved to that time.

This poses a problem to our society. If the internet can bring millions of minds together, real time, then societies with large numbers of internet literate people will have an advantage coping with the fast pace of change. Additionally, societies that spend their energies looking for a way to work together will leverage these million minds to do great things and solve the un-solvable problems.

We in the United States do not have an advantage in numbers. I have read that there are more honor students in India than there are total students in the United States. The economic ramifications of our disadvantage in numbers of educated and internet literate people should be obvious.

Additionally, in the United States we spend our time looking for ways to differentiate ourselves from each other and from the rest of the world. Our focus is on divisive issues. Instead of celebrating our differences and leveraging our diversity, we try to destroy or eliminate anything that is different. This will be our undoing, if we cannot change.

Lean Six Sigma and People/Leadership Skills

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The problem with Six Sigma these days is that it is becoming a math exercise. Six Sigma, especially Lean Six Sigma, is a people thing. That is where the excitement is and where success can be found. I have never seen a project fail due to bad math, but I have seen many fail due to poor people skills and poor leadership.

If you want Six Sigma to work in your business, get people involved with people and the math will take care of itself. I can teach statistics all day (and I have), and not enhance project effectiveness. I can elevate the people skills of participants (and I have) and good things happen immediately.

Organizations and the Laws of Physics

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I am writing this article to create an imbalance in the world of those who read my posts. I am not in any way attempting to consider all of the options, or to be fair.  I just want to Step on your t pets a little. If it makes you uncomfortable, that is a good thing.  It is what this article is meant to do.

Newton’s Second Law of motion, in paraphrase, states that to change the state of motion of an object, a force must act on it to create an imbalance in forces. The object will then move to establish a new state of equilibrium.

The second law of thermodynamics, in paraphrase, states that systems always move toward a state of equilibrium. This movement will persist until the system reaches absolute zero (system death) or equilibrium is reached.

These concepts taken from physics also apply to human endeavors at the individual and organizational levels. In the human experience we call equilibrium the “status quo”.  I personally find that the status quo is a place for those who need rest or are not motivated to move forward. I am not against rest, but if you are resting and your competition isn’t, you’re losing ground. In other words, the status quo for me is good only when the status quo is to avoid the status quo.  Chew on that one for a while.

The status quo mentality usually forms in organizations and individuals who are internally focused. Being internally focused will isolate you from your external operating environment. You do not feel, or you fail to recognize, external forces that create imbalances in your external operating environment. The result is that you become out of alignment with the world around you. You fail to benefit from changes in the environment or maybe you even fall victim to them. The ostrich may have protected his head, but his rear end is more than a little exposed.

I know that some will say that organizations and individuals must isolate themselves from destructive forces in their operating environment in order to protect their assets.  I will answer that I disagree. Individuals or organizations that do not try to manage within the environment they operate in are simply exchanging one master (the larger outside world) for another (isolation). We do not have to be mastered by either. We control our choices and we become stronger and more robust as we exercise our ability to choose.

Let me give you examples. Governments and businesses isolate themselves from the governed and customers with bureaucratic layers of management. Religions do this by operating on a paradigm of exclusion (us, them) instead of a paradigm of inclusion. The result is that some governments, businesses and religions become more and more isolated, lose connection with their sense of purpose and eventually fail.

So what do you do? First understand that nothing stays the same in our world.  We age, tastes change and the people around us change. There is an interesting story line in the movie “The Time Machine”. The time traveler sits in his time machine and watches the world change around him.  He is isolated from the effects of the change and when he arrives in the future he is out of place and out of sync with the world around him.  The world experienced the changes first hand and has adapted, he did not experience the changes and finds himself in danger without a full understanding of how to cope. In the movie the good guys win, but in real life it probably would not have turned out that way.

We don’t have to agree with, or placidly accept, the changes around us. We can push back, adjust our strategy, etc. What we cannot do is ignore what is happening. The wise person evaluates these changes against reality and avoids letting others interpret their meanings for them. In sports we call this “keeping on your toes” or “keeping you eye on the ball.” In life it is simply a matter of paying attention to what is happening around us and keeping the main thing, the main thing.

In short we must embrace change. The world is moving onward with a great deal of inertia and it doesn’t care if you get left behind. The days of large stable bureaucratically ran organizations are coming to an end.  These are the days of smaller, fast and flexible, organizations that can move quickly to take care of customers, no matter how the environment changes. What customers, and people in general, want are solution providers, not protestors or clingers on to the old paradigm.

One way to manage this is to balance long term projects, goals and rewards with short term projects, goals and rewards. The long term perspective tends to add stability to an organization’s progress over time.  The short term perspective creates more employee engagement and a degree of instability, which is also good. Short term projects, goals and rewards operate in the current reality and force us to see what is actually happening right now. Long term projects, goals and rewards keep us focused on our mission and vision, which may be based in another reality. Short and long term efforts tend to modify each other in a healthy way when managed properly.

The balance point is always shifting.  Don’t let it become a tripping point.

Organizational Re-design

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In organizational re-design, there are changes to process, infrastructure and procedure. These are impersonal and structural in nature. They are also, by the way, the easiest things to modify when re-engineering an organization.

Just as important, but much more difficult to deal with, are behavioral changes. The best business process that has ever been designed will not work if the underlying user behaviors are not also changed.

The same is true in transactional processes such as sales. For example, you can design and build a totally green house, but can you change consumer behavior enough to get people to choose to live in it?

What this means is that we must value human behavior expertise as highly as we do technical expertise. The philosophy of “If we build it, they will come” only applies if you build something that the consumer or employee see as valuable.

The point is that you must listen to the “voice of the customer”. The customer can be an employee or someone who pays you for a product or service. It also represents a strategy of change management and innovation. That is, address human behavior issues before technology issues. The truth is that if you build it, they may not come.

Sometimes when we change human behavior first, the users themselves change the process in the direction you were trying to achieve. You may even find that change was not necessary or that your ideas for change were faulty.  This applies to all aspects of a capitalistic culture. Consumer demand drives technological innovation and cultural values drive cultural change.

Personal Motivation

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Personal motivation has 4 components:

  • Belief in purpose
  • Belief in process
  • Belief in self
  • Definition of success

Belief in purpose is about having a reason to want to achieve a goal or objective. What is the burning “Yes” in your life that makes you want to be successful?  For some it is our families, for others it may be a desired life style or a cause we are passionate about. In any case, you have to know what it is.  I am not talking about head knowledge in this case.  It is heart knowledge you need.

Belief in process moves you from the purpose of your efforts to an understanding, and adherence to, a methodology for achieving your goals. This means knowing what sacrifices it will take to achieve your goals and what map you will follow.

A good friend of mine gave me this advice a long time age. He said “find the person who is the most successful at doing the things you want to do and learn from them”. Let go of your preconceived notions, open your mind and learn.  At the same time don’t lose sight of what you value. In other words, don’t use a map to success that compromises your values. For example, you can get rich taking advantage of others, but you will lose the richness of self.

Belief in self is about seeing yourself being successful. Visualization is a key ingredient. Successful people see themselves in a positive light and visualize what success looks like. A successful hitter in baseball goes to the plate expecting to get a hit and seeing the event in their mind’s eye. Visualizing failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People who do not believe that they deserve to be successful, or doubt their abilities, are doomed to a lower level of success. “I can’t do it, so why try.” The first person to convince is you. If you don’t believe, neither will anyone else. Conversely, if you do believe, others will follow.

A definition of success allows you to measure your performance. It involves answering two questions.

  • What does success for me look like?
  • How do I measure my performance?

This success component is important because we sometimes set our definition of success too high or too low. It is best to set up a series of smaller step goals that take you toward a larger goal. This way you can celebrate your success along the way.  It is the difference between running 5 miles every day for a week or just showing up on Saturday and trying to run 35 miles all at one time.

Your definition of success will tie directly into your belief in purpose. If not, you will be lost in the jungle of life, making the wrong choices and expending precious time and energy being successful at things that do not take you where you want to go. For example, if your 5 year plan is to become financial independent, going into debt for the “status” car may not be your best decision.

This is a personal journey.  You must make your own choices as you move through life. Getting your life into focus using the ideas above will allow you to move with purpose. Not getting things into focus will cause you to be like drift wood, tossed about by the forces of life, going nowhere on purpose and everywhere by accident.

Fractured Thinking

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Have you ever been behind someone in traffic who was driving exceptionally slow or erratically? Then when you passed them you see them speaking or texting on a cell phone? You have just witnessed fractured thinking. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what kind of safety problems this creates.

Fractured thinking occurs when you are forced to jump around from one cognitive activity to another, or splitting your thinking between multiple subjects. It is usually the result of interruptions, or outright hijacking, of your intellectual activity.

The interruptions and split focus effects us in places outside of our cars also. Imagine that you are working on a project and you get interrupted by a phone call, text message, or a personal visit. You don’t just restart right where you left off when the interruption occurred. Some back tracking is usually necessary.  Sometime you even forget to get back to the original task. The next thing you know, you make a mistake and get to deal with all of the negative results.

It used to be good advice to not answer the phone every time it rings. Don’t let the phone dictate your work flow. Let the voice mail pick up or simply work in a different area.  One without your phone. Working in a different area will not work anymore because we carry our phones with us. “Hands Free” functionality will free up your hands, but you are still subject to the interruption and fractured thinking.

Here is the trick. Realize that you are addicted to your cell phone. You do not have to answer the phone every time it rings or alerts you about an incoming text message. You still have the power to control incoming information and to channel it into a less destructive time.  Really…You do.

Here is how.  Select ring tones that can be assigned to specific callers or groups of callers. That way when the phone rings, you can make a decision about answering now or waiting on a message based on what ring tone you hear. Text messaging is even easier. Simply turn off the notification and check your phone for text messages at a better time. How many people text you in an emergency? Not many, especially if you tell them that text messaging is a low priority communication medium for you.

Don’t use emergencies as an excuse to continue your addiction. I have arranged with my family to make an immediate second call to me in an emergency.  That second call within a few seconds tells me that I need to answer. A little planning on the front end saves me a lot of aggravation during my daily routine.

The take away is that you do have control over your cell phone. It is only a myth that you have to answer it’s every beck and call. The less fractured thinking you have, the better your performance will be and the more successful you will be.  Not to mention having less stress.

How is Your Vision?

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How detailed is your vision? I’m not talking about whether or not you need glasses, but whether or not you have enough detailed information to make good decisions.

This is an issue with both business and personal decisions.  It is, in fact, why so many business process improvement initiatives fail. Six Sigma process improvement projects are meant to address this issue for businesses, but you also need a personal strategy to avoid falling prey to poor resolution (lack of detail) How many times have you decided on an action only to find that a critical, missing, detail undermined your success?  .

The problem is our reliance on two dimensional, discrete, thinking. Pass/Fail, Yes/No, Democrat/Republican, etc. Two dimensional thinking allows you to be 100% right or 100% wrong, but never partially right

A more continuous way of thinking will lead to better detail and better decisions. As detail increases, so does our ability to see problems in their true colors (resolution). What you will find is that you will move from the “what”(pass/fail), to the “why” (causal relationships).

Consider this analogy of moving from low resolution to high resolution.

At 50 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 38 miles.

At 10 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 1.74 miles.

At 5 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 2300 feet (a little less than ½ mile).

At 1000 feet of altitude, if you fired at a target and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 3 feet.

More Detail = More Resolution = Higher Accuracy = Improved Performance