Posts tagged problem solving

Continuous Improvement Development for Leadership and Professionals

CIC Process Improvement

Train your leaders first to change the culture

Oftentimes we get leadership support to an initiative to change the culture, but they don’t have the actual skills to implement the changes they’re supporting.  Before you can expect your front-line employees to live a culture of continuous improvement, you have to develop your leaders, managers, and professionals.  Everything we’ve discussed over the past six blogs have built to this.  See how building a culture of continuous improvement starts with developing leadership and professionals.

http://ngs.edu/2014/06/20/building-culture-continuous-improvement-continuous-improvement-development-leadership-professionals/

Skill requirements for today’s workplace

Meandering Genius 1 Comment

Information Technology skills have been in high demand over the past ten to fifteen years and countries like India have capitalized on this, leveraging their people’s desire to grow and their low labor rate.

IT will remain a high demand field into the future, especially with app development and miniaturization of electronics to get everything to the wearable market.

However, IT is a commodity today and the market of IT professionals has become over saturated with available talent, especially with business process outsourcing companies literally knocking down your door to get at your work.

This issue really pressures employees today, especially the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, to fear daily for the job their doing today and future prospects. Let’s face it, almost anything repetitive is at risk of both outsourcing and automating. And, both options are cheaper and normally improve the service.

So, today, what are the things that are much more difficult to outsource and automate?

That would be Analysis and Problem Solving.

To gain a competitive edge in today’s job market, whether you’re in IT or not, is to build skills in data analysis and problem solving. IT systems can evaluate large pieces of data, if it’s structured, and data can be reported in predetermined manners, but the employee of today can truly demonstrate value if they have the skills of analysis and problem solving.

Additionally, these aren’t overly obscure skills for employees to learn that you have to earn through a degree or spend hours going to training. With a little bit of education, and a fair amount of common sense, you can apply these skills.

Also, these are the type of skills you can apply today in the job you’re doing. You don’t need to find a job somewhere that fits these skills…every job today needs these skills and often we outsource the job because it lacks these two capabilities.

So let’s look at these two items:

Analysis. If you haven’t heard the words Bid Data by now, you’re living under a rock. Companies today aren’t looking at just one piece of data to make decisions anymore, they are tying together everything they have in their company and whatever they can get their hands on to make much more informed decisions.

I’m not proposing you become a big data wizard…that is a specialized capability, although I think that is the new frontier in business. What we lack in most companies is armies of workers who can analyze the data they have in front of them every day.

This means they understand one of the most basic of tools most people have–pen and paper–and can organize and collect the right information to start to make decision. Additionally, workers today don’t need to know any in depth data analysis tools like Minitab that your local process improvement expert uses, but the everyday Microsoft Excel program is your powerful weapon in this new normal.

To properly analyze data, all employees today need to have a small, but effective tool bag to work from. They need to know things like affinity and tree diagramming…sounds difficult, but it’s a simple skills. This works well with data, information, and ideas. Additionally, there are seven basic charts that every employee needs to be able to create, read, and understand: bar chart, line chart, histogram, Pareto chart, control chart, box plot, and radar or spider chart. The Pareto chart is a type of histogram that combines both bar and line charts together. Pareto, box plot, and radar charts allow you to compare data for deep analysis. Control charts are much more powerful line charts. Along with this skill, you need to learn the anatomy of charts and how to use multiple axis’ to analyze and report data.

Lastly in the analysis realm, the employee of today’s workplace needs to know root cause analysis. It’s one thing to be able to review and report data, but to truly use data to dig to the root cause is powerful.

Problem Solving. The start of problem solving is problem identification. Being able to even see that you have a problem is the first step in problem solving.

Problem solving, to be effective, must follow a repeatable process. There are many problem solving approaches that people can learn, but understanding the core of PDCA is pretty powerful. Once you understand how all–and I do mean all–repeatable methodologies are based on PDCA, you’ll have cracked the base code on the problem solving system.

Another key component to problem solving, which is in line with following a problem solving approach, is to be able to establish and follow a project. A project is a series of steps that have a beginning and an end. Effective and efficient problem solving works best when performed in a project. Once you can think in project speak, you can plan out how you will solve any and every problem and you’ll be able to tell anyone how long it will take and where you are in the process of solving the problem.

The biggest key to problem solving is being able to define the problem and the goal, without trying to solve the problem up front. Many of us think that we are really good problem solvers, because we jump into a problem once identified and immediately put a fix in place. I’m here to ell you that you are part of the problem. Learning true data-driven problem solving and applying it, is a skill. Fighting fires is not.

These two skills of analysis and problem solving are key in today’s workplace and they are also very absent! Both compliment each other and they are fairly easy to learn. Mastery is another thing, but with time everyone can get there. Be a data-driven problem solver and you’ll never fear again the threat of outsourcing and automation. You’ll have a skill set that you can apply in any job anywhere.

I am going to start a weekend blog much like my Think Big, Take Small Steps, weekly blog to focus on this topic. I will walk through both of these skills and feature a specific approach or tool. I plan to post this blog every Sunday and apply graphics and screen shots to help with the understanding. Follow my blog to keep up with the story.

We don’t need no stinking burning platforms

Change Management Meandering Genius Process Improvement

Burning PlatformThe first step in change management is to define the “burning platform.” If you’re waiting for the platform to catch fire, you’re too late.

We’ve become a nation of reactionists instead of a preventionists. We’re constantly looking to identify a burning platform so we can put it out instead of spending our time making sure the fires never start to begin with.  What’s worse is that if we can’t define the burning platform because the fire hasn’t reached our room, we tend to ignore the fact that the smoke alarms in the house are going off.

If you really want to be successful, you need to stop looking for the burning platform and start looking at what your company does good today and what you can do to make it even better.  They say that Good is the enemy of Great and I believe it has to do with the fact that we wait for something bad to happen and until that time it’s “good enough.”

On top of that we’ve become a nation of hero worshipers, recognizing the fire fighters who wait until the house is burning down and then jump in to put out the fire.  Instead, we should be focused on those that do well at preventive maintenance and never have a house fire in the first place.

What this amounts to is that we need to live in a world of constant change where readiness to change is how we exist–we thrive on change through constant improvement.  This doesn’t mean that something won’t go wrong from time to time, but the more preventive we’ve been, the better we’ll be to react to the issue.  More than likely, we simply won’t experience the issue in the first place.

The problem is that leaders are often too blind to prevention and its value.  When something goes wrong, they can see the tangible impact of the fix, the money that was saved, etc.  Prevention is hard to measure and thus leadership devalues it.  I have worked on several projects that were focused on measuring this unmeasurable item–prevention and preparedness.  I’ve done this because, all too often, those that are getting ahead of problems are often challenged by the hero worshiping leaders because they don’t see them adding any value and simply costing the company money.

The fact is that these leaders need to get a clue about leadership and vision.  Constantly managing to the problem breeds poor leadership discipline.  Leaders need a strong discipline to stay ahead of problems and they need the courage to recognize those people who prevent the fire versus those that put them out.

Recently I was sitting in an event where a team was getting recognized for solving a problem that they did nothing to prevent.  When the problem finally flared up, they reacted quickly and put the operation back on track.  This team was honored in front of everyone as the shining example for all to model themselves after.

The fact is, if we don’t change this nation of reactionary thinking and hero worshiping, we’re going to end up being full of a bunch or arsonists putting out the fires they create.  Because, in the end, what gets measured gets done and if you’re only going to recognize me if I solve a problem, then by God, I’m going to create the problems to solve.

So leaders, put away your fire extinguishers and pull out your pocketbooks, because you need to start paying for prevention versus recognizing reaction.  Stop looking for burning platforms and start preventing fires.

Own the problem, not the process

Meandering Genius

All too often we are involved in the finger pointing game when there is a problem. It is very easy to shift the blame or point out what someone else isn’t doing / is doing wrong to transfer focus away from yourself.

This should be a golden rule: Own the problem, not the process.

When there is a problem, stop being the one to point at others and shift blame or even look to others to discover the cause. Simply say to yourself, “This is my problem and I’m going to help fix it.”

In a culture that practices transference of blame, this is a very difficult concept, but it can be a very powerful concept as well. Some of you might already be saying that if it’s not your problem, why would you own it?

Owning problems is what it means to be a solution provider. When something is wrong that you’re aware of, how can you help fix it?

Think about this…in your company, there are a lot of people and organization (teams) that deliver integrated and non-integrated services. Right?

Your company is delivering these services to one ultimate person–your customer. Right?

So, when there is a problem that you are aware of or part of, why would you spend your energy shifting the blame to someone else instead of fixing that problem? Is the customer not important to you?

Let’s say that the blame for this problem definitely belongs with another team…so what? Are you so focused on your own process and only worrying about what you control that you ignore problems that affect your customer?

If I were the CEO of your company, you wouldn’t work there anymore. Customers don’t care where the problem resides, all they care about is the service they receive is less than expected.

So, when I say Own the problem not the process, what I mean is to focus on the customer. If their is a problem that you are aware of, more than likely, if you are aware of it, you are part of the integrated process that delivers it. Stop pointing fingers and highlighting the failings or another team and step up and see what you can help do about it.

However, don’t do this–don’t step in as another process owner that is going to “save the day.” Come in as a problem owner with the desire to help truly fix the problem.

If we spent half our time focusing on fixing problems that we focus on assigning blame, we would have significantly less problems.