Posts in Meandering Genius

ASQ Conference Recap–Day Two

Meandering Genius

Mike Abrashoff, former Navy and now Founder of GLS Worldwide, opened up yesterday’s conference festivities with some serious shock and awe. Mike is one of those people that when he speaks you capture a lot of profound quotes. His message on leadership was right on point and one of the best I have heard.

His book was sold out before his speech was over if that is any indication of how good he was at the podium.

Like any conference of this type, where you have volunteer presenters, you can always end up with a few duds. I ended up with one where a guy from the EPA was presenting on change management. He had a lot of information and focused his message on writing a change plan, because that solves everything in change management and completely breaks down resistance to change.

I’m not sure what his experience has been with change in the government, but he really needed to read some of the references that he was throwing up on slides, which he admittedly said he did not know–like John Kotter’s 8-step model and McKinsey’s 7-S model.

Well, everything came out in the wash when he was finished presenting and the session was opened up for Q&A. I was able to stay for three questions that he couldn’t answer, but had to leave when he told the audience he had never heard of the term “burning platform.”

I found day two to have a great deal more downtime than the day before. This allowed me to spend some time working on a couple of special projects. I was so engaged in what I was working on, I missed the lunch keynote speaker, but heard that I didn’t miss much.

Word to the wise for future ASQ Conference attendees; if they still do Flip Sessions, ensure you watch the video before hand.

Basically, they are trying out this new concept called a Flip Session where you have to watch a video presentation before going to the presentation–pre-work. Well, I don’t think anyone at the conference actually understood the concept because I went to one of these sessions yesterday afternoon and no one in the entire room had watched the video to include me.

Everything went downhill from there. There was a guy in the session playing stump the chump, and he was asking questions out of some manual that he had brought. There was also this other guy that would ask questions that few could understand, to include the presenter. It was just going from bad to worse.

Near the end of the hour-long session, the presenter asked how many in the audience had ever used a SIPOC, to which about 80% or more of the hands went up. Then she asked what they used it for and what values it brought–she received lots of good answers. Then she proceeded to do a SIPOC example on the white board. I walked out.

So, there were nuggets of goodness in the conference and opportunities for learning. The networking is always great and I even got some work done. All in all, not a bad day.

Day three is short, with two sessions and then a closing keynote speaker. The exhibitors are gone, since the hall closed at 4 last night and they won’t have a lunch for today. I suspect that the attendance will be much lighter today, but will report on my nonstatistical hypothesis tomorrow.

ASQ Conference Recap–Day One

Meandering Genius

Yesterday was the first full day of the ASQ Worldwide Quality Conference.

They actually had a conference kickoff Sunday night with the opening of the Exhibit Hall.

If you have never been to a an ASQ Worldwide conference, let me recommend you plan to attend one–next year will be in Nashville TN. There are many vendors present and over 2,000 attendees fill the conference halls.

The hotel for this year’s conference is uber awesome. Of course, that come with a price–a beer, for instance, at the opening as $8! However, the location is top notch.

Eric Wahl kicked off the conference. All I knew is that he was a “graffiti artist” so I questioned what message he would bring. WOW. If you haven’t seen him on a TED Talk, look him up. I also recommend following him on LinkedIn and Twitter. He was awesome!

As usual, the conference presentations, for the most part, are pretty good. You have so many choices that you would be hard pressed not to find something you wanted to hear.

Being a Service Quality Division member with ASQ, I was invited to their annual meeting lunch. Let me tell you that the food at the lunch was terrific. This was the first division activity I have attended and it was good. I didn’t know the division was doing everything they were doing, so it was enlightening.

I also received a great demo on Sigma Brew, a Six Sigma simulation from Moresteam. That was really interesting and I can’t wait to see more in the future. I am really impressed with their Engine Room and look forward to when Engine Room and Traction is one integrated system.

Our conference was cut short at the start of our last session–one I was looking forward to–because of a fire alarm in the hotel. Since we are staying at the Marriott down the street, we ended up leaving before the fire trucks even showed up.

I’m looking forward to another great day at the conference sans fire alarms!

ASQ Worldwide Conference Opening

Meandering Genius Process Improvement

The ASQ Conference opened with a tremendous presentation from Erik Wahl. I had no idea what to expect, but he did not disappoint!

Erik has some TED Talks out there…I haven’t seen them yet, but I recommend you check him out.

Over 2,000 in attendance here is Dallas and the hotel/convention center is beyond impressive.

 

 

Blogging Weekly with National Graduate School

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john knottsHappy Cinco de Mayo!

I am now a weekly guest blogger with National Graduate School.  Please check out my blog there.

Follow us as we explore how to build a culture of continuous improvement.

Building a culture of continuous improvement isn’t easy and can take a considerable amount of time.  However, it’s very possible and results can be felt within weeks of embarking on the journey.  Over John’s 25 plus years of experience, he’s developed a model rooted in strategy and designed to build this culture in any organization.  Join John and National Graduate School as we weekly explore this model and ways to drive this type of culture.  We look forward to your thoughts and inputs along this journey, so join us and watch for our future blogs about once a week with the tag line “CIC.”

http://ngs.edu/2014/05/01/building-culture-continuous-improvement/

First step in process improvement

Meandering Genius Process Improvement

The first step, I often see missed, in any process improvement activity is alignment of the process to the strategy.

In any process improvement, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself, “Why is this process important in the first place and how does it support the mission?”

This is often not done. People take for granted that everything you do is in support of the mission and aligned to your strategy. However, having this discussion with yourself up front might eliminate not only the need for the process improvement, but you might remove the process all together.

When I was working in Intel, they had done away with a certain type of operation…people listening into communications over a specific channel. However, during a visit, by a senior commander, to a unit, he discovered a team that was still performing that operation several years later.

People ask, “How is that possible?” Well, in large organizations, operations become very diversified and if you aren’t constantly validating your role, you might find it to become obsolete.

However, the tendency is to say, “We’ve always done it, so it’s obviously required.”

That is a severe example above, but I have seen processes where something was produced that people had always produced and other people in the process were not even aware that there was someone producing something. Every day people would come to work and produce a product in relation to a large process that spanned an organization and they would file their results as they always had. All the while, the people in charge of the process were not even aware of what was going on. Essentially, that entire process step was a waste of effort and the final product they were creating wasn’t even being looked at.

How do these things happen?

We validate process needs at the beginning of the stand-up of a process, but then the years go by and we just keep working the way we’ve always done it. Meanwhile, people change out, the process changes, and maybe the process gets automated. Suddenly the need for one of the steps goes away.

However, no one told the people performing that step in the process, because no one knows that that part of the process even exists. Unfortunately, that part of the process is still accessing the system, on the email distribution for workflow, etc. and they’re happily working away at a process that someone already made obsolete.

So, when you are in the initial phase of your process improvement whether it be Plan, Define, or something else, ensure the relevancy of the process you are looking to improve. Research that stakeholder list using the SIPOC and go talk to the people in the process to ensure your work is still aligned and valid.

To solve this problem, before it gets this far, any process that spans multiple areas, as most processes do, it is best that that process meet regularly to discuss changes and impacts, validate expectations, and ensure relevancy in the process. This is the reason that people are ‘missing the memo’ that the process has changed, because the process is so siloed that no one knows what the other hand is doing.

However, even if you are meeting with the parts of the process regularly, ensure the relevancy and alignment of your process before you go through the effort of improving it.

Powerful influencer — Jim Clifton

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Readers,

I want to share this morning one of the most powerful influencers I have come across in a long time.

His name is Jim Clifton and he is the CEO of Gallup.

On LinkedIn, he has a regular blog that highlights the problems that not only he sees, but that his companies measures.

His messages are extremely powerful. Please take the time to follow him and read some of his stuff.

My best blogging ideas

Blogging Meandering Genius

Lately I’ve been getting my best ideas for my blog in the shower. What’s bad iOS that the next morning when I’m sitting down in front of my iPad, I can’t remember the great ideas I had the day before.

When I would sit down to blog, the ideas generally flowed.

Then I discovered that I would have ideas on the ride home from work every day and sometimes during the work day. To capture those ideas I would quickly jot them down on my notepad on my phone.

That was working for a while, but lately, the ideas haven’t been cropping up at times when I can write them down. In the shower, I don’t have anything to write with.

As a matter of fact, this blog idea came from the shower yesterday and I have mentally reminded myself regularly of it since. I was sure I would forget it. 🙂

When do your best ideas come and how do you capture them?

Speaking in May for ASQ

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I will be speaking at the upcoming May American Society for Quality Section meeting.

The location is the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center Donor Pavilion. The Donor Pavilion is up the road behind the Center itself. The date and time are Tuesday, May 13, 2013, at 6:00 to 8:00.

Stop Jumping To Do!

We are all project managers. When you think about the basics of a project, you can see that every day we manage projects. The question is, how well do you plan them?

John will share his simplified project planning methodology he developed when investigating a way of easily turning strategy into action. Not only will he share with you the simplified approach, but he will take you through an example of the approach and leave you with the basic planning tools you’ll need to apply this technique in every project you manage.

Here are the benefits of the approach:
• It’s easily repeatable.
• It ensures project success.
• It allows for simple timeline planning.
• It takes less than an hour the first time you use it.

Hope to see you there.

Simplest business tool, hardly ever used

Meandering Genius

Have you ever heard of a “maturity assessment” or “maturity model?”

Maturity is so simple that I’m surprised that everyone doesn’t use it for everything they do in business. Especially if you are a large organization…maturity is a great way to identify and determine measurable areas for improvement.

The original maturity model was created to evaluate government IT contractors and quickly evolved into a tool for all IT to assess itself against a measurable standard.

There have been several models created since then, but they aren’t widely known. In USAA, we created a Document Management Maturity Model (The DM3) and we use it every day to strategically improve enterprise document management across the company.

Why do I say it’s so simple?

Because it really is.

A maturity model is traditionally measured across five levels (1-5). These levels are very simple to understand once you think about them. Most companies today operate at a level 1 or 2…few operate at 3. Operating at a
4 or a 5 probably isn’t seen often.

Let me explain the levels:

Level 1 is what I call AdHoc. This means that what you do is completely without a repeatable approach. Every instance of it is a one-off occurrence. I worked with Rackspace before, and they had a culture of “Fanatical Customer Service.” This meant that every customer engagement was treated as a one-off or AdHoc service offering. What this means is that you aren’t doing things in a repeatable manner that, from a quality manner could be considered easily measurable or improvable.

Level 2 is what I call Siloed. So, here you have established repeatable approaches to what you do, but every organization, team, department, whatever, (silo) does it their own way. So, now it’s measurable and you can effectively improve it, but the system is sub-optimized because it only applies to one area.

Level 3 is what I call Integrated. That is what I would refer to as a mature organization. Getting to Level 3 really doesn’t take a great deal of work, but getting past this is difficult in comparison. What this means is that you have tied the silos together by building translation systems that allow the silos to operate as one…or at least look like they operate as one. You are still Siloed, but what you do works together.

Level 4 is what I call Incorporated. This is where you throw out the silos and rebuild the system to operate as one entity. No longer do you have a bunch of translation systems “patching” between activities…everything is built to operate as one system. Essentially, taking an end-to-end view from a customer’s perspective and redesigning the value chain could get you to Level 4.

Level 5 is what I call Best in Class. Why do I call it this when I haven’t researched what Best in Class actually looks like? Well, if you get here, you have no where else to go. So, by default, you would be Best in Class. If you haven’t come to the realization of this statement, let me explain. Everyone can become Best in Class at what they do–there is room at the top for everyone. People think that becoming Best in Class means you have to be better than others…no…it means you are the best at what you can do. Level 5 is not about what you do operating any better, now the area that is measured is actually influencing everything else around it to make everything else work better.

To make maturity models simpler to understand, we actually make them more difficult to understand. The levels are across the top, but then we break the thing we’re measuring into functional areas down the left-hand side of the model. This allows you to silo the major aspects of an organization or activity into pieces that you can focus effort on. These areas should be functional in nature, not organizational.

What you will find is that regardless of how you break up the thing you are measuring for maturity, all the functions interact with each other to make the whole more or less successful.

For instance, in the model we created at USAA, we have two functions called Strategy and Governance. A strategy by itself without governance is just a document that has no accountability. I can develop the strategy maturity but without a governance structure to implement and control, it pretty much is only a doorstop.

In the same vein, having a robust governance structure without a strategy developed for the structure to govern is pretty much a waste too.

However, by splitting strategy and governance into two functions, it allowed us to better focus on developing each of them somewhat independent of each other based on their levels of current maturity. If you don’t break THE thing that you are measuring into functions, it’s kind of like trying to drain the swamp to kill all the alligators–too much work.

At the last ASQ conference, I talked to a few organizations that were actually applying an organization-wide maturity model to their operations. When you sit down and think about the simplicity of maturity, it makes sense how everyone could use this.

I suggest you take a look at what you do and look at it through a maturity lens. What maturity level do you think you operate at today and why? What would be the step to get you to the next level? That’s the other simplicity to maturity assessments…you only need to focus on getting to the next level so you don’t have to completely tear down your organization and rebuild it to improve and become more mature.

Now, if you look at yourself and see that you are at Level 1–completely AdHoc–you might want to redesign your organization to jump to Level 4, Incorporated and be done with it. This can be a lot of change that people might not be ready for. However, once your are up and running, it is a lot easier to get to Level 5 and takes less time if you went this approach.

I would love your thoughts and would like to hear your past experiences with maturity models.