How F.A.R. is Your Leadership?

Posted on January 30, 2012 by complexified

In a recent exchange on Twitter, I was asked about my use of the Cynefin Framework.  For the uninitiated, this is a way of thinking about and making sense of different types of challenges in organizations.  The Cynefin Framework has been developed and popularized by David Snowden, and was the subject of his HBR article with Mary Boone in 2007 (“A Leader’s Framework For Change”).  The framework describes four principal domains: simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic.  Mr. Snowden suggests different patterns of inquiry, sense-making, and response, depending on which domain we seem to be in at the time. 

My response about using Cynefin referred back to thinking and teaching I first developed in the aftermath of 9/11.  In 2003 I was working for a bi-state transportation authority that operated trains and bridges in the greater Philadelphia area.  Post- 9/11, we were rightly concerned about the possibility of an attack on one of our facilities.  In fact, a person was arrested and tried,  after sneaking out under one of our bridges and taking numerous photos of the walkways and service passages.  Later that year, I was asked to give the opening talk at the Eastern States Transportation Network’s annual conference. The main keynote speaker after me, was to be a New York City Police Captain, who was in the World Trade Center as a first responder on 9/11.  He was going to talk in detail about the experience, and what we might learn from his experience.

As I thought about the challenges faced by the first responders on that awful day, I realized that there were several recurring patterns:

  • Information was often incomplete or inaccurate
  • The facts as known, were changing very rapidly as the situation developed
  • The changes in what was known, were often changing to a significant degree
  • Options that were viable at one time, became impossible without warning
  • The information held and interpreted by different people, also varied considerably

Given these circumstances, how could an emergency responder know what to do in the moment?  How could a responder gather others, make sense of a rapidly and dramatically-changing situation, and decide what to do next?

My answer, and my remarks to the conference group, was framed by the initials in the title of this post: F.A.R.  F-FLEXIBLE, meaning we know many ways.  A-ADAPTABLE, meaning we can change our behavior in response to changing circumstances in our environment. R-RESILIENT, meaning we can accept a measure of adversity, and still persevere towards our objective.  Over all of these, was the capacity to listen closely to the ideas of others, and decide on action together. 

At the time, I had not yet heard of Cynefin, or Dave Snowden.  That came a few years later.  But in learning about Cynefin (and a tip of the hat to my friends at the Plexus Institute, who hosted article co-author Mary Boone), I quickly realized that the suggested pattern for the Chaotic domain – ACT, SENSE, RESPOND – matched up to both the experience of the 9/11 responders, and to my suggested F.A.R. skill set.

One other thing I have noticed about being in the Chaotic domain, is the sense of time’s passage.  As the pace of change becomes rapid, turbulent, and unpredictable, our ability to consider and experiment with options, diminishes.  Yet it is possible, as Ralph Stacey and Patricia Shaw describe, to “enter the living present.”  An article in the journal Strategy + Business a few years ago, explains this in terms of the modern physics discovery associated with an ancient Greek conundrum, the Quantum Zeno Effect.  Put simply, a heightened state of mindful awareness can effectively slow the apparent passage of time. In the midst of a crisis, that extra moment of sense-making, might make all the difference.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Gazing into the Q-Ball: I see three Bs…

Posted on January 3, 2012 by complexified

Over the past year, I’ve been pleased to serve as one of ASQ’s “Voices of Influence” bloggers.  In his December year-end post, ASQ exec Paul Borawski wrote about the future of the quality movement, and two disappointments in 2011.  You can read Paul’s remarks at http://asq.org/blog/2011/12/2011-in-quality-successes-and-disappointments/ 

As I gaze into my own “Qystal Ball,” I can see a bit into the past, and try to look ahead to the future.  My year-end gaze revealed “three Bs” – B B B.  The more I stared into the Q-ball, the clearer parts of the picture became.

One B for Baldrige:  The United States Congress stripped away Federal funding for the Baldrige program.  As most readers will know, Baldrige provides a comprehensive, integrated framework to drive continuous improvement in organizations.  We need not look into the magical Q-ball to see why this happened.  We know that organizations following Baldrige outperform others.  We know that the ROI for Baldrige is very positive.  What’s a bit more fuzzy is if this was just a case of politics overcoming reason, or if there was something else about Baldrige that Congress wanted changed.  Fortunately the leaders of Baldrige foresaw this through their own Q-ball, and took action to keep the program secure in 2012.  While it is disappointing to move from stability into the turbulent unknown, there is also a sea of possibility ahead.  My own wish for the future is that the Baldrige community will probe the new space of possibility, and learn deeply to shape vision, strategy, and action.

One B for Berwick:  The Congress wold not confirm Don Berwick, the nation’s leading advocate for continuous process improvement in healthcare, as the head of CMS- running Medicare and Medicaid.  Looking into my Q-ball only confirms, with great clarity, what I already saw.  There is no doubt in the mind of any politician or informed person, that our current system of providing healthcare for the elderly and indigent, is not sustainable.  There are several well-known reasons.  The World Health Organization ranks America #1 in per capita spending on healthcare, but only #37 in actual citizen health.  An enormous amount of money is spent each year to care for the elderly poor.  As a society, we believe we are entitled to any and every measure to prolong our lives, regardless of cost or degree of benefit.  We are the only democratic industrial nation that does not ration end-of-life care in some fashion.  This is not the “death panel” hokum of scare-tactic politicians and pundits.  But if grandma is 80 and needs a new heart in, say, Denmark, she’ll get great medications to help her old heart do its best.  She won’t be getting the transplant.  Don Berwick put himself on the line by speaking truth unto power.  He advocated significant changes in the processes of healthcare delivery in America.  Some of these changes would mean a lesser role, and lesser revenue, for parts of the old system.  The old system raised its own “voices of influence” to the Congress, and those voices of fear, called out loudly to their friends in Congress.  My wish for the future is that we all live long and healthy to see the changes that Don Berwick advocates, peacefully become an effective new reality.

One B for Beginnings: As a leader of ASQ, Paul Borawski is right to think about the future of the quality movement.  As the pioneers of the quality movement – Deming, Feigenbaum, Juran – all knew, “quality” is defined not by a maker or provider’s specification, but by the mind of the customer.  The pioneers of quality knew that this was often changeable and unknown – even to the customer themselves.  I have taught for years that “quality” is essentially a relational and dynamic process between product or service, and customer.  It comes alive in the customer’s experience, and rated by their comparison to expectations.  What then, do people want and expect from the “global voice of quality?” Perhaps more important in these complex and rapidly-changing times, what can the quality movement do to delight customers in ways that the customers didn’t know or even think about?  That was the approach of the late Steve Jobs.  Before iPods and iPhones and iPads, most of us simply did not imagine such products, let alone the ways they might help and delight us.  That is the power of vision, communication, and the pursuit of excellence.  My wish for the quality movement in 2012, is that it will look into the Q-ball, and see only the bright reflection of its own potential to become better tomorrow than it was yesterday.

NOTE:  yes, I am an ASQ Voices of Influence blogger.  I get a tiny bit of consideration annually for this.  But know that the opinions expressed here are completely my own.  I thought you should know 🙂

 

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Hammers, Nails, and a Cynefin Critique

Posted on October 31, 2011 by complexified

Through Twitter, I have come to know a fantastic diverse network of people around the world.  Twitter has helped me to meet people whose work I have studied and admired, and to meet others exploring similar ideas in their own work.  One person I have come to know personally, as a result of twitter’s connections, is Dave Snowden.  Dave’s work was knwon to me first, through his widely-cited HBR article with Mary Boone, about the use of the Cynefin framework.  In the past few years I have had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Mary (at a Plexus Institute event in D.C.), and meeting Dave for a chat earlier this year.  While I can not claim to be an expert on the Cynefin framework, I have used it in my own work and teaching for several years now. 

A recent post on twitter by Roger Sessions, pointed me to a blog post by Tom Graves.  Tom’s post was a critique of the Cynefin framework, and suggested a variety of limitations.  While no framework or method is perfect, my knowledge and understanding of Cynefin suggested that Tom may have made a number of mistakes or misrepresentations in his post.   My hope and intention in writing a reply, is that other readers will explore the Cynefin framework, and come to understand its structure and use.  I look forward to further comment and dialogue with my blog readers, and through Tom’s blog (and of course, more on twitter!).

You can find Tom’s post and various replies (mine included) at:  http://weblog.tetradian.com/2011/10/29/using-cynefin-in-ea/comment-page-1/#comment-69939

The text of my reply is also copied here:

There is a well-known saying, that “to the person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” In other words, our view of things is significantly narrowed by the limits of what we know or understand. To this I’d add a corollary: “to the person who only knows the hammer and nail, anything they don’t understand may seem useless.”

In the original post above, there is a critique of the Cynefin framework, largely popularized by Dave Snowden, and the subject of the award-winning HBR article from 2007 that Dave wrote with Mary Boone. Through the lens of my own knowledge and understanding of Cynefin, I felt that the original post above, is significantly flawed. I believe there are a number of points made by Tom that are incorrect, and bear further explanation and exploration. Below are a few of my own points on Tom’s post, and the Cynefin framework:

1) Tom writes that the “core purpose” of Cynefin is sense-making in “complex contexts.” this is not my understanding. Rather, it seems to me that Cynefin describes all possible domains in which problems/challenges/issues may appear in organizational life. The framework’s “purpose” appears intended to help us understand the differences in the ways that patterns and knowing emerge in each domain. From this, we can respond with our own patterns of inquiry, analysis, and action, that are best-suited to the dynamics of the domain we are facing. the “core purpose” then, applies to our interaction with all domains, not just “complex contexts.”

2)Tom describes the methods of Cynefin as mainly being “for narrative enquiry and the like.” As I note above, I believe a plain reading of the HBR article and other Cynefin info, suggest that Cynefin is intended to help us not only inquire and understand, but to understand what is happening in the context of a given domain’s unique patterns/dynamics, and thereby, take action that has a better chance of achieving our objectives.

3) Tom writes that the Cynefin methods are only available to those who take dave Snowden’s course. I have not yet taken the Cognitive edge accreditation course, but it is clear from the Cognitive Edge website that the methods of its practitioners are open source. There is a library of these with detailed application notes, on the Cognitive Edge website: http://www.cognitive-edge.com/method.php

4) Tom notes that most people on viewing the Cynefin diagram, only “see two axis..” I don’t have data on this, and it may be true. But my understanding of Cynefin again implies that these five domains are all present in the world, and that under changing conditions, we may find ourselves moving from one to another. Cynefin then, would appear to be a framework for viewing a muliti-dimensional and dynamic reality.

5) Tom dimisses the small “squiggle” at the center bottom of the Cynefin diagram. He admits he doesn’t recall what it represents. I believe this is intended to portray a “fold” or Cusp. That is, the way that under certain change conditions, we can suddenly and significantly go right over the edge from a simple to chaotic domain. As I understand it, this sort of cusp catastrophe dynamic is not present in the other domain boundaries.

While I am new to the concepts and methods of enterprise architecture, I have been working with concepts and methods based in complex systems dynamics for over 12 years. No framework is perfect, or necessarily useful in every situation. But I believe that the Cynefin framework relates to universal organizational dynamics, and is not as constrained and limited in the ways that Tom suggests. I look forward to further reply and dialogue on these matters. Thank you!

Posted in Change, Complexity | 4 Comments

Up on the Ridge: A Journey Alone, Together

Posted on October 26, 2011 by complexified

Over the past few days I had the pleasure of joining a small group of remarkable people.  The group included a South African living in Australia, an American living in London, a Hungarian also living near London, and several Americans.  This group was brought together by our all having a common friend; a woman whose work helps others create.  At a beautiful retreat facility on a mountain ridge, we all came to be.  No agenda, no plans other than to enjoy the beauty of the place, and explore the emergent possible.

Change comes from difference.  We respond to cold with a change of clothing.  Business responds to declining sales with special ads, or perhaps a “new and improved” product.  To truly be in an unchanging environment, is to stop evolving, to stop changing.

I went to the retreat up on the ridge to be.  To be alone with the challenges and opportunities in my life.  To be together with people both known and unknown, and engage in the dance of the emergent possible.  Who am I? What do I know, that might be helpful to others?  What can we learn and do together, as we share our narratives and questions?

In one person, I found a life of deep inquiry and learning, combined with incredible personal courage.  In another, a life in pursuit of deep and ancient wisdom.  Each of the others has a rich life, filled with work, travel, and the satisfaction of achievement.  But I am not in that place just now.  I am up on the ridge to become something not yet fully known, and not yet fully formed.  I know what I have been, and what I might be.   What will I learn in this place, with these people?

One fellow traveller journeyed along the ridge, and found a place of great energy for him.  I shared a story of a time I found such a place in a very unlikely environment.  Another companion shared a story of a deeply flawed father.  A third spoke with great candor about a failed marriage, and the bold actions that followed.

As an extraverting intuitive person, I usually derive great energy from talking with others.  My perceiving/connecting logic mind thinks through talking.  But up on the ridge, the Difference Engine was working within.  Looking out at a mountain fully 25 miles away, at the blaze of autumn colors, and the slow-circling hawks overhead, I pondered a question often asked by one of my fellow travellers: “can you tell me more?”

What more can I think about complexity in organizations?  What more can I do to help others understand, and make better inquiry together?  What more can I do to give others a way to better respond to the dynamic mix of technical/complicated, and complex/adaptive challenges that they face?  I journeyed a few steps farther, along the ridge.

Thank you, fellow travellers.  Thank you friend, for bringing me into this group, and to this place.  Thank you for letting us find our way along the ridge.

 

Posted in Change, Community, Complexity, Creativity, Networks | 3 Comments

Whose Q? GM’s New Quest for Quality

Posted on October 13, 2011 by complexified

Recently, Laurel Nelson-Rowe of ASQ, interviewed Terry Woychowski of general Motors.  Terry is GM’s recently-appointed VP for Global Quality.  In the interview’s video segments at  http://asq.org/blog/2011/09/the-ps-and-qs-of-the-new-general-motors/ we get a clear discussion of Mr. Woychowski’s vision for General Motors.

One thing particularly struck me as I listened to Laurel’s interview with Terry Woychowski.  This is, I believe, fundamental to GM’s chances of success in the marketplace.  I was struck by Mr. Woychowski’s statement about GM’s definition of quality.  In the interview, Mr. Woychowski asserts that GM wants to “promise that our products and services will do what we say they will.”  This is a clear reflection of how GM understands both the meaning of quality, and who defines quality in any exchange of product or service.

The definition of quality has been described in similar, but distinct ways, by the pioneers of the quality improvement movement.  In his well-known book Quality Is Free, Phil Crosby defined quality as “conformance to requirements.” Joe Juran and others, also mention “freedom from defects.”  These definitions match up well to Terry Woychowski’s pledge that GM’s stuff will “do what we said it would.”

Where Crosby and Juran (and now, it seems, GM) focus mainly on quality from the perspective of the maker or provider of the product or service, W. Edwards Deming focused more on the customer – the recipient and user of the product or service.  In his own book Out of the Crisis, Deming wrote about quality as being fundamentally about the customer.  Deming noted (correctly, I think) that business only exists to provide what customers want.

The greater challenge in defining quality (for GM or any other organization), lies in understanding WHO DEFINES QUALITY?  Again, we may turn to the pioneers of the quality improvement movement for guidance:

The difficulty in defining quality is to translate future needs of the user into measurable characteristics. . .This is not easy.  As soon as one feels fairly successful, he finds that the needs of the consumer have changed. . .Quality can be defined only in terms of the agent.  Who is the judge of quality? (Out of the Crisis, 1988, emphasis added)

This notion of quality as defined by the consumer, and of the consumer’s requirements as often changing, is stated even more dynamically by yet another quality pioneer, Val Feigenbaum:

Quality is a customer determination. . . based upon. . . actual experience with the product or service, measured against his or her requirements – stated or unstated, conscious or merely sensed — and always representing a moving target in a competitive market. (Total Quality Control, 1983)

So, as I listen to Mr. Woychowski articulate his and GM’s vision for quality, I am struck by how a promise that stuff will “do everything we said it would” seems to lack the deeper understanding of both Deming and Feigenbaum.  We can see an example of this approach to quality in the highly competitive market for fast food hamburger sales.  All three of the major chains,  McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s, work very hard to define specifications for their burgers, and then, to assure that consistent quality is assured every time, every burger, everywhere in the world.

But is this sufficient?  Wendy’s recently conceded that no, this was not enough.  Wendy’s saw their sales slipping, as new chains like Five Guys seemed to capture the customer’s evolving tastes.  Wendy’s assembled a team and studied thousands of burgers from all sources.  The team explored every component of the burger (pickles: straight-cut or crinkle cut? Winner: crinkle).  The result is Wendy’s recent rollout of a newly re-designed burger – their principal product.

Wendy’s acknowledged that it is the customer – even with their changing needs and wants – who defines quality.  As a company openly committing to quality, we might ask General Motors how it is applying the teachings of Deming and Feigenbaum, as GM works to re-build its dominance in the automobile marketplace.  In recent years, GM has been successful in reviving its Cadillac brand.  They are introducing new models in their Buick line, that have met with critical and market success (the LaCrosse, and Regal).  The Chevrolet Cruze has been perhaps the most successful product launch in recent GM history.

Perhaps the most successful auto-maker in recent years is Hyundai.  From a mediocre entry into the American market, Hyundai has risen to high levels of quality and customer satisfaction.  They provide the best warranty in the auto industry.  Moreover, their new models, the Sonata, Elantra, and Accent, provide class-leading style along with performance, reliability, economy, and value.  The quest for success in the auto industry must rely on more than “conformance to specification” or “freedom from defects.”  Quality in the 21st century is defined BOTH by the maker/provider, AND the consumer – simultaneously.

Whose Q will you buy?  I’d say, the folks who are best reading your mind at any given moment.

Posted in ASQ, Change, Continuous Process Improvement, Creativity, Innovation, Quality | 1 Comment

What’s the Point of Planning?

Posted on September 17, 2011 by complexified

NOTE: this article first appeared in January 2005.  It is freely available through the ASQ website. 

What’s the Point of Planning?

Bruce A. Waltuck

November, 2005

Appeared in the Journal of Quality and Participation January 2006

What is the real purpose of strategic planning in an organization?  How can plans be crafted that are effective tools for managers and front-line workers alike?  What can senior leaders do to best integrate the objectives expressed in their strategic plan, with the processes of data collection, analysis, and ongoing improvement?  To inform our understanding of these questions, we’ll take a look at the planning, analysis, and feedback processes utilized over the past five years at a Federal regulatory compliance agency.

The agency in question enforces a broad range of Federal laws.  Some of these laws affect employers.  To influence compliance with these laws, and to correct violations, the agency has a field staff of investigators.  The investigators engage in a variety of compliance activities, from education and outreach seminars, all the way through criminal litigation.  The agency uses a nationwide database to record and track all compliance and investigative activities.  Each year, this agency stops its normal activities, and involves everyone in its annual strategic planning process.

Before we take a closer look at the way this agency’s planning process has evolved over time, let’s consider the reasons an organization makes a strategic plan in the first place.  Traditional wisdom suggests that a government agency in particular, derives its revenue from the public, through Congress and the budget process.  Each fiscal year begins with a known quantity of dollars, and a known quantity of human and capital assets.  Like most of us in our own lives, from time to time we ask the same question made famous by Ed Koch, the former mayor ofNew York.  “How’m I doin’?” he would ask the people ofNew York.  Businesses and yes, even government agencies, also want to know how they are doing.

Strategic planning derives fundamentally from the sense of where we are, and a sense of where we want to be.  In typical business terms, we talk about our mission and our vision.  The resources we get are the enablers of achieving that vision.  So at the end of a fiscal year, if someone asks us how we did, we can look at some measures of our work, and give them an answer.  Did we reach our goals?  If not, why not?  Our sense of what we should be doing, derives from our mission – why we exist at all as an organization – and our values – the ideas we think are important in filtering our decisions about what to do.

 So our government agency, through its leaders and managers, has a sense of its mission and purpose.  But what IS the mission and purpose of a regulatory compliance agency?  That turns out to be a question with more than one possible answer.  We might think of a speed limit law, and the officers who enforce it.  Is the purpose of planning their enforcement activity to achieve compliance with the law, or to issue tickets that generate revenue through fines?    We might also think about discrimination and harassment laws, and employer policies.  Yes, there are penalties and consequences for the offenders.  But the Federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission has written that the purpose of such laws is to prevent and avoid violative behaviors in the workplace.  Clearly these are two related, but different ways to look at a compliance-oriented mission.

For more than a decade, our government agency has used a comprehensive top-down and bottom-up planning process.  Senior leadership, involving both career and politically-appointed managers, crafts a broad set of objectives.  For each major compliance program, the national office typically defines various goals and targets.  For one law, seek to achieve 90% compliance within the next five years.  Achieve a minimum 5% improvement over the coming year.  Conduct x-number of investigations in a certain program area this year, and to assure that your time is well-spent, perhaps 95% of those investigations should yield a finding of some violation.  To assure that the staff works efficiently, don’t take more than 90 days to complete at least 90% of your investigations.  To further assure efficiency, no more than 10% of your investigations should consume more than 50 hours of investigative time.  These are real objectives set by the senior staff of this particular agency over the past five to ten years.  We’ll come back to what these objectives mean, and to the kinds of (often unintended) consequences that such objectives create.

Our government compliance agency would send out its national plan to all of its regional and local office managers across the country.  At the local office level, both professional and support staff typically worked to create the detailed local plan.  Teams formed for each major compliance initiative area.  The office would meet as a whole to go over the national plan, and then the initiative teams split off to meet separately and make their plans.  Under this system, which was in place for many years, each team plotted its own utilization of staff hours for its activities.  There was no way for a given team, or a local office manager, to know in advance if the collective planning of their teams would account for 85% or 112% of the total available staff hours that year.  In some cases, nationally-mandated activities required very specific levels of support and activity.  But in most cases, a review of the team submissions was done by the local managers, and some adjustments in planned time (up or down) had to be made. 

Although the local office teams were working to devise plans that would achieve the nationally-set goals, they also had a considerable amount of freedom to design unique ways to do this.  Innovation could and did occur.  In 1996, one local office created a totally new approach to compliance in a particular industry.  A year later that approach was hailed as “the model for the rest of the country.”   In the 1997 national plan, this agency adopted the “model” in this initiative as the standard nationwide.  The innovative approach of one office, inspired positive change organization-wide.

As the saying goes, “with freedom, comes responsibility.”  We noted earlier that government agencies, like other businesses, periodically examine how they are doing in achieving their goals.  Stakeholders including Congress and the public, want to know how their funds are being used.  Agency managers want to know if the goals they set are realistic, and if progress is being made.  Our government agency typically set both output goals (how many/how much), and outcome goals (how well, or impact).

Data on the activities and performance of this agency derive from local investigator and manager input into a nationwide database system.  But there has not been any policy or guidance on precisely how various key activities are to be defined for data collection purposes.  One significant example of this came to light several years ago.  In one industry, our government agency frequently audits business with multiple subcontractors on-site.  Certain regulations apply equally and separately to both the primary employer, and to these subcontractors.  In one region of the country, our agency’s managers and field staff might check an establishment with ten independent contractors on-site.  Separate investigations of the main employer, and each of the ten contractors would follow.  Findings of compliance or violations of the law would be reported, and in some cases monetary liability and civil money penalties would be assessed.

But a serious disconnect was occurring in the collection and analysis of agency performance data.  In some parts of the country, local agency officials would report this example as a single investigative action.  All of the time expended in separately checking all 11 enterprises (the principal employer and ten contractors) would be entered in one (often large) sum.  In the rest of the country however, the long-standing practice was to enter a separate investigative action for each of the 11 individual contractor/employers.  Hours expended, and monetary liability/penalties were separately stated under each of the 11 actions.  In this (actual) case, one office reported a single action with 110 staff hours.  The other office reported 11 actions with around 12 hours on each. 

In the eyes of the database reporting system, there was no distinction made between these two sets of performance data.  No “red flag” went up to alert anyone that there was a serious problem with data entry, and performance analysis.  In a chance meeting between the two managers inWashingtonone day, the disparity came to light.  Someone reported the issue to the head of this particular initiative program in the agency’s national office.  While some discussion took place, no policy was issued about defining agency performance data or reporting.   It came as no surprise to those aware of the problem, that the outgoing Assistant Secretary of this agency mentioned in their farewell letter, their “disappointment” that the agency had not done better in achieving their objectives in this industry.

It should come as no surprise to any of us, reading this story, that the report of agency performance was negative.  Looking back, we can note again what the strategic plan set forth as agency goals and metrics.  Managers and individual auditors are gauged on the number of actions they do each year.  More is better.  Another measure of presumed efficiency is the average number of hours per action.  Less is better.  It is easy enough to understand why some regions would decide to split a place with 11 contractors into 11 separate actions (this is, in fact, the preferred method, because of separate legal coverage and liability issues that apply to each contractor individually).  But why did other regions refuse to do this, and skew the agency’s apparent performance by reporting just a single investigative action?  According to one district manager, it was because their regional leaders did not want the appearance of “pumping up the numbers” which they felt the other regions were doing.

This may not make much sense to us.  But the regional and local offices were periodically given accountability audits.  An internal team reviewed local practices and procedures.  There was a fear on the part of some regional heads, that they would be in trouble if they were viewed as artificially inflating performance figures.   According to one agency specialist in this initiative, this particular problem in data collection and analysis remains to this day.

If the data that is collected is not collected in a consistent manner, that data is essentially useless for any regional or national aggregated analysis or comparison.  But the process of making annual strategic plans goes on.  How can an organization know what strategies have been effective, if the performance data and analysis is useless?  How can the organization know what strategies to consider in future years? 

Over the past few years, strategic planning in our government agency has changed in several ways.  The national office now sets out more specific objectives than ever before.  Local offices are mandated to plan to the hour, more than 90% of all intended activities, over a year in advance.  Virtually every action has to be associated in the database with one or more of the nationally-devised initiatives.  Under the banner of “improved metrics,” the agency’s managers and professionals have new and more stringent goals for productivity and efficiency.  Few actions can require more than 50 staff hours to complete.  Very few can take more than 90 days to complete.   Some local offices now exclude their full staff from the annual planning process, because there is so little discretion for innovation anymore.

With this sort of plan and performance measures in place, what are the consequences for actual work?  What becomes of real indicators of goal achievement – especially the “how’m I doin’?” outcome goals?  Longtime agency managers and professionals know that some percentage of audits involve more complex legal and compliance issues.  These can not be completed in 90 days, or under 50 hours of work time.  The clear message that employees read between the lines of their strategic plan is that what matters most is numbers – more actions done in less time.  Quantity, not quality.

There are many lessons to be learned from this government agency’s experience with strategic planning and performance measurement.  Why do we do strategic planning anyway?  Professor Ralph Stacey of the Universityof Hertfordshireis widely acknowledged as a leading thinker in applying the concepts of complexity theory to management and organizational behavior.  Stacey has said in workshops that in fact, we really can not control the outcome of complex systems (like government agencies).  He dryly states that people engage in planning as a response to anxiety.  “We want to feel like we did something,” he says.

How many times have we felt that we have been unfairly held accountable for events that were simply out of our control?  Deming famously posited that at least 80% of defects in the workplace were not the fault of the workers, and said that “our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people.”  How would we feel if we investigated 11 businesses but got told to count just one for our productivity report?  How would we feel if we knew that others in our business were counting their work very differently?

A few years ago I was teaching a data collection and analysis workshop in Ottawa, Canada.  The room was filled mainly with government managers.  They didn’t want to talk about data, as such.  Instead, they told about the annual “performance contracts” they were required to sign each year.  These contracts set out what resources each manager had for the year – people, equipment, money – and included the annual plans for what was to be achieved.  At the end of each year, these Canadian managers had to submit an “attribution report.”  They were to explain what they did with all those people and all that money, and whether or not they had achieved their objectives.  As one, the 50 people in the room all said these should be called retribution reports, not attribution reports.     One manager said his job was to improve sanitation in rural Indian villages.  They sent people and money to dig wells, and teach about hand-washing.  But, he noted that there were 27 other non-government organizations in the same villages, doing the same kinds of work.  How, he said, could he attribute anything to his staff’s efforts?  Of what value, he asked, were plans and measures that bore no relationship to the real world of work that he and his people were doing?  I suggested he take his boss to a place where two rivers came together.  “Tell your boss,” I suggested, “that the smaller stream represents your efforts to achieve the goals of the strategic plan.”  Then tell him, I said, “that the larger river represents the combined efforts of everyone there – the agency and the 27 NGO’s.”  Finally, “ask your boss if he or she can ‘attribute” which drops of water in the river came from your wells.”  The manager smiled and said, “yes, and next year, we’ll strategically plan for rain.”

Bibliography

For more about the ideas in this article, check out the following:

Cloke, Ken and Goldsmith, Joan, The End of Management, Jossey-Bass, 2002

Cohen-Rosenthal, et al.  Unions, Management and Quality: Opoprtunities for Innovation and Excellence, Irwin Professional,Chicago, 1994.

Scholtes, Peter.  The TEAM Handbook, Joiner Associates,Madison,Wisconsin, 1988.

Waltuck, Bruce, Learning with Ralph Stacey, in Emerging, the newsletter of the Plexus Institute, www.plexusinstitute.org

 

 

 

Posted in Change, Complexity, Continuous Process Improvement, Government Improvement | Leave a comment

Competitive Advantage: Can we self-organize our way back?

Posted on September 14, 2011 by complexified

In a well-publicized recent report, the World Economic Forum had the United States slipping to fifth place in competitiveness.  You can read about the report at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44423519/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/us-falls-th-global-competitiveness-survey-shows/?GT1=43001

The article notes the slip is in part due to “declining faith in US government..”  We are still far ahead of China, India, and Brazil – in these particular competitiveness indicators.  But we clearly lag behind other nations.  One of the keys in this is a point I first heard raised by Lester Thurow many years ago now.  In his book “Head to Head” he urged the US to do what every other democratic industrial nation had done at the time- have a clear and well-coordinated policy for job training and apprenticeship, among industry, education, and government.  Instead, we now have what HBR blogger (and acerbic wit) Umair Haque calls a “ponziconomy” with little more than low-wage “McJobs” to offer people.  
Competitive advantage is a concept from Economics 101.  If you can not make or do things “better, faster, cheaper” than the other guys, they will get the business, all other things being equal.  We lost manufacturing jobs in part because of cheaper labor overseas, and cheap oil to bring the foreign-made stuff back here.  One day, when labor costs more over there, and oil costs more, we may regain the advantage.  But will we have the skilled workers to “carpe the diem?”
There are tremendous implications in this for government at all levels in the US.  Without competitiveness, our capital flows out not in.  Profits/surplus- the “extra wealth” that we use to fuel the engines of progress through education, innovation, research, etc., go away.  The loss of profits means less revenue for the government, who has been not only a significant employer, but an “investor of last resort” in so many key ways.
We simply must mobilize and deploy the vast cash reserves that are still present in our economy, in ways that will grow and sustain us into the future.  This need not mean “bigger government” or massive tax hikes on corporate profits.  There ARE alternatives.  Howard Schultz of Starbucks has proposed that the leaders of major corporations pledge to create new jobs.  A joint industry-education-government council could craft a fairly simple framework for skills training, and project selection, that would have the bare minimum in oversight, and be essentially self-organizing and self-managed by the corporations themselves.  Such a system could radically change the role of government, and also support a shift in the underlying values of the society, towards a higher global competitiveness.
Posted in Change, Complexity, Continuous Process Improvement, Education, Government Improvement, Innovation, Social Responsibility | Leave a comment

The Right “Q” for Turbulent Times: the past, present & future of the quality movement

Posted on September 6, 2011 by complexified

Do you know what your organization stands for?  When you see a question like that, it may call to mind an actual mission or vision statement.  For many, it suggests a sense of the core value or values that influence what your organization does (U.S. Marines = “Semper Fi.” Patagonia = “Let My People Go…Surfing”).  In a more literal sense, we can look at the letters in the name of our organization, and think about what they mean to us (or others).

The well-known organization for seniors – oops, for people over 50 – is legally just known as “AARP.”  They stand for various kinds of advocacy in behalf of their target demographic.  For many years, the letters stood for “American Association of Retired Persons” (sorry, citizens of other countries).  But as life expectancy changed, and retirement ages changed, so too did AARP.

An organization with which I have been affiliated for many years, is ASQ.  Like AARP, the letters today are the legal name of the organization.  Before the lawyers did their thing, ASQ stood for the American Society for Quality.  One reason for the change is that ASQ DOES include members from many nations around the world.  But, as with AARP, things changed.  At the time the Society was founded, ASQ was actually ASQC – the American Society for Quality Control.  This reflected the organizations origins in mid-20th-century methods of statistical process control, to reduce unwanted variation in manufactured products.  Definitions of “quality” specifically referred to “conformance to specification” and “freedom from defects.”  The clear implication in all of this – perhaps we might say, what the organization stood for – was that the ways people worked in organizations, and the results they achieved, were manageable and controllable.

Recently, ASQ chief executive Paul Borawski, wrote about the “past, and future of quality and ASQ.” http://asq.org/blog/2011/08/the-past-the-future-quality-and-asq/ Paul begins his blog post by noting that when asked, only about one-third of the people in his audiences have heard of the late quality and business improvement pioneer, W. Edwards Deming.  But just as my question at the start of this post may have unintentionally misled your thinking in response, so too might Paul’s question about Deming.

Instead of asking “have you ever heard of Deming?” Paul might have asked “how many here today would like to learn a pretty simple and straightforward system of profound knowledge, that will help you maintain constant purpose; drive fear out of your organization; restore pride to your workers; drive down costs, and improve quality – all at the same time?”  Do you think only one-third of the audience would have responded favorably?  I think otherwise.

How we phrase and frame questions DOES make a difference.  Just as the names of ASQ and others organizations have changed, to reflect changes in the world around us, so too do our responses about the future of quality” or “the future of ASQ” change, depending on the question we are asked.

In my own work over the past 10 years, I’ve taught extensively about the future of quality, and the quality improvement movement.  Wall Street Journal famously reported that around 75% of improvement initiatives fail.  So do we ask people today “do you care about quality?” or perhaps, “what can we do together, to make our products and services be better in the eyes of our customers; take less time to produce; cost less; and result in more satisfied employees and stakeholders?”  For more than a decade, both business leaders, and business students, have exhibited declining interest in “quality.”

Perhaps we all might be better-served, if we asked each other questions aimed at building the future we want, rather than just recalling the past.  After all, things change.  What do we stand for?

Bruce Waltuck has been a Senior Member of ASQ, and a past-chair of the Government Division.  He has been an active member-leader, presenting at many conferences throughout the country.  Bruce has worked extensively within ASQ on how the Society views itself, and its future.  Bruce is also a leading advocate for viewing quality and change leadership through the lens of complex systems science.  Bruce posts on Twitter as @complexified.  Please note that Bruce is a Voices of Influence blogger for ASQ.  As such there is a very (very) small compensation, but the words and ideas here are Bruce’s own.

Posted in ASQ, Change, Continuous Process Improvement, Quality | 5 Comments

Leadership for Turbulent Times: the changing role of leaders

Posted on August 31, 2011 by complexified

“. . . competition, we see now, is destructive. It would be better if everyone would work together as a system, with the aim for everybody to win. What we need is cooperation and transformation to a new style of management.” – W. Edwards Deming, 1993, “The New Economics”

One of the learning topics identified as a priority at both of my employers in recent years has been labeled “leadership.”  But what exactly does this mean?  How is “leading” different from “managing?”

For more than 20 years I have been involved in designing and leading various organizational change initiatives.  These have included large-scale efforts (U.S. Department of Labor) and smaller group approaches (public-private partnership withNew Jersey’s health care industry).  In every case, questions came up about the role of “leaders” and what the leaders of an organization can and should do to positively influence behaviors and outcomes in their workplaces.

Over the past ten years, I have been studying the field of complex systems, and especially, how learning from complex systems in nature can help us better understand human behavior, and foster more positive outcomes in organizations.  One of the leading business consultants, authors, and thinkers in the world on these topics is Margaret Wheatley.  Her book “Turning to One Another” builds on her groundbreaking earlier work “Leadership and the New Science,” and points to the use of dialogue as an invaluable tool in fostering positive change.

Following are two quotes from an email I received a while back.  The texts come from Meg Wheatley herself, and from one of her associates.  I hope you find them interesting and informative insofar as they reflect an approach to leading that may seem at first, quite different from your traditional views.

“…in this day and age, when problems are increasingly complex, and there simply are not simple answers, and there is no simple cause and effect any longer, I cannot imagine how stressful it is to be the leader and to pretend that you have the answer. And a life-affirming leader is one who knows how to rely on and use the intelligence that exists everywhere in the community, the company, or the school, or the organization. And so these leaders act as hosts, as stewards of other people’s creativity and other people’s intelligence. And when I say host, I mean a leader these days needs to be one who convenes people, who convenes diversity, who convenes all viewpoints in processes where our intelligence can come forth. So these kinds of leaders do not give us the answers, but they help gather us together so that together we can discover the answers.” Margaret Wheatley

What if the solutions for our future were hidden in our collective intelligence and wisdom? What if hosting conversations were the kind of leadership that allowed learning to take place? What would our societies be like if we based them on our collective awareness and the courage to exercise our understanding? These are my core questions and I trust we can give birth to a new way of working, leading, and being if we just go for it. Courage is to do what you’re afraid of and know in your heart what needs to be done now.  Toke Paludan Moller, Denmark, Co-creator of Interchange

In these quotes, we see a different kind of role for leaders.  It is not enough for a leader just to be a higher-level independent decision-maker and order-giver.  The emerging role of a successful leader is of one who recognizes the value of diverse ideas, and the innovation and business opportunity that can come from connecting more of the people in the organization to one another in meaningful conversation.

One of the most remarkable leaders I have ever met was Gordon R. Sullivan.  When I met Gordon, he was the four-star General, who was Chief of Staff of the United States Army.  It was after the first Gulf War.  The world was a dangerous and unstable place on many fronts.  I expected General Sullivan to say that he spent all his time responding to the various crises, major and minor, that were constantly flaring up all over the world.  In fact, his answer surprised me.  He said he spent more than half of his time “thinking about the future.”

Gordon Sullivan wrote the following in “America’s Army: Into the 21st Century”:

[we] understood that. . . the task was not simply to change; more than this, it was essential to manage change in order to minimize its disruptive effects. . . . The strategy was to allow change to become a powerful tool to be utilized, rather than a disruptive force to be accommodated. (pg. 1)  The lesson of [experiencing changes in the world] is the absolute requirement. . . to adapt. . .thinking carefully in response to change around [us] and to posture [ourselves] for the future. . . . Strategic vision is essential to any organization that seeks to adapt successfully to the requirements of the future.  (pg. 2)  The imperatives [for change] identify the lessons. . . for the present challenge of transformation.  First . . . is the imperative to recruit and retain quality [staff]. . . . A second imperative is. . .leader development programs- these programs create competent leaders. . . capable of creative, adaptive thinking. (pg. 20)  Three key considerations drive the Army leadership’s approach to managing change.  Foremost is the requirement of remaining focused on the [organization’s] core business. (pg. 31)  The rate at which changes are incorporated . . . is a second prime consideration guiding the thinking of the [organization’s] leadership.

As business thinkers and authors continue to evolve in response to new learning from the field of complexity science, several themes about leadership have emerged in the literature.  The list below represents my way of expressing these new common themes.  Instead of being the top order-givers, the new challenges for managers and leaders become:

  • first, understanding that they have been handed power, but that power does not really mean the same thing as control.  Many things managers and leaders want to control, can not BE controlled.  This has implications for things like “long-term strategic planning.”   Too much is unknown and unknowable (to paraphrase Dr. Deming); too much changes too fast and too unpredictably, to make “long term plans” realistic.
  • Understand that they DO still have a responsibility to themselves and to the organization.  This involves understanding, and acting based on the values and norms of the organization.
  • Understanding that the best chances for innovation and growth come from interconnecting more and more of the people in the organization.  This implies actions to eliminate barriers to communication and interaction.  This suggests that things like “department” and “job title” have less meaning then we have ascribed to them in the past, when it comes to people talking and working together.
  • Encouraging people to try new ideas.
  • Helping people let go of old ideas that either didn’t work as planned, or that no longer serve the organization’s needs
  • Encouraging people to learn, so they are best able to contribute to the dialogue that becomes the organization’s future.
  • Stop focusing on blame and guilt, for things over which people had no control in the first place.
  • Understand that every encounter with people is a chance to have a dialogue, a conversation that can shape the future.  There is the constant process of gesture and response, turn-taking, negotiation of agreed-upon meaning, and the decisions and actions that follow.

The ideas of business thinkers like Meg Wheatley and Gordon Sullivan point to a new perspective on the work of leaders in organizations.  While the new perspective may lead to a place that is seemingly more turbulent and less certain than the old perspective, our collective experience of the world in recent years confirms that the new context is real, and that our best hope for a successful future lies in talking, listening, and making better decisions together.  Leaders can communicate their vision, inter-connect people in dialogue, and work to influence the positive changes they seek.

NOTE: This post is an update of an article originally written in 2005.  Today, I’d add more about the need for adaptive skills- particularly the leadership ideas taught by Ron Heifetz, and by Dave Snowden.  For more on the ideas in this post, I recommend reading Deming’s book “The New Economics” and Wheatley’s “Finding Our Way.”

… Bruce Waltuck, M.A., CC&C

Posted in Change, Complexity, Continuous Process Improvement, Creativity, Dialogue, Innovation | Leave a comment

The Carrot And/Or the Stick: Strategies for Regulatory Compliance

Posted on August 5, 2011 by complexified

Two separate strories came my way this week, both very much about the challenges for government agencies tasked with seeking regulatory compliance.  Both stories concern agencies whose missions are explicitly aimed at protecting the statutory rights of employees.  Yet both stories involve the complex dynamics of multiple independent stakeholders, who often have competing interests. 

The first case comes from a long-time friend and colleague, who is a manager in a Federal regulatory compliance agency.  Over the years, we have often talked about ways his agency could better leverage scarce resources, and achieve better results.  Here’s a bit about their business environment:

  • enforce laws affecting most businesses in America
  • field staff of perhaps 1,000 investigators
  • enforcement activity divided between response to complaints, and targeted enforcement efforts in specific industries with known compliance problems

Given the typical time it takes to conduct a single investigation, and the capacity of field staff, the average covered business could expect a random audit every 20-30 years.  Not what I’d call a “burden.”  Nevertheless, given a complex combination of ignorance, economic pressures, and perhaps fear, there are stubbornly high rates of employer violation in many industries and areas.  Worse yet, employers who have been audited and found in violation, have stubbornly high rates of recidivism. 

The second story concerns OSHA- the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  A story in the news reported criticism of the agency’s widely-touted Voluntary Protection Program.  Firms may enter into agreements with OSHA, under which OSHA foregoes direct inspections, if the firms assure compliance on their own, and submit certain documentation to back their compliance claims.  On the surface, this sounds like a win-win.  The employees in the workplace are assured safe and healthy working conditions, and the agency maximizes its use of scarce compliance resources.  But the news story reported that there are now some challenges to the VPP, which claim that it is not working as well as intended, and that it is not cost-effective.  This matter is being further investigated by DOL and others.

Historically, the work of regulatory compliance has been mainly designed to achieve results through what I’d call an enforcement/punishment model.  That is, field investigators find violators of the law.  If there are monies owed back to employees, or conditions that need to be put right, the employer is asked to take those corrective actions.  If the employer refuses or fails to do so, they may face costly litigation, and the risk of steep civil money penalties.  In cases where the employer has been investigated before and still has the same violations, ignorance is no longer a defense, and the penalties for repeat or willful violators go up considerably.

Given the low general odds of being investigated at random, and the increasing fear of employees about their job security, it is no wonder that some employers – also feeling the pinch of the down economy – would cut back on things like workplace safety, overtime pay, the use of illegal immigrant workers, and so on.

What then, should the regulatory agencies do?  If they vigorously enforce the law, they may please the employees whose rights are protected, but further alienate the employers whose businesses provide jobs in the first place. 

Back in the mid 1990s, when I was working for just such a regulatory compliance agency, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, I was faced with this same dilemma.  We were tasked to seek greater compliance in the healthcare industry.  We had data that indicated chronic violations of nurse overtime pay, for example.  A shortage of skilled nurses meant that the industry couldn’t simply hire more nurses.  We had dozens of hospitals and hundreds of nursing home and related healthcare businesses in my local office’s jurisdiction.  How could I achieve more and better results with the limited resources at my disposal?

My answer came from the mix of competing priorities and constraints that I faced.  What if. . . ?  What if, instead of the usual “bad cop, here’s your ticket, see you in court if you don’t like it” model of enforcement, we truly worked to achieve what the law already intends – universal voluntary compliance? 

I’ll disclose right now that I was aware then of the OSHA Voluntary Protection program, and it certainly influenced my thinking.  I knew I couldn’t get Wage and Hour to create compliance agreements at that time.  But I also knew that OSHA used a vigorous program of education and outreach as an adjunct to its VPP activity.  This became the basis of our new approach.

This work began with one contact – a friend at the New Jersey Hospital Association.  He connected me to another senior person there, who connected me to leaders at the State’s biggest nursing home associations.  Another friend connected me to the State AFL-CIO, and they in turn, to the healthcare worker unions.  The resulting coalition met once, to hear my pitch about a true win-win-win option.  Happier employees (and i had the data to show happier employees are more productive), happier employers, and a happier enforcement agency.  Though initially skeptical, the participants at the table had nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.  In retrospect,  this was a key component of our success.

Within one week, this team had produced a colorful informational brochure, that Wage and Hour printed and distributed to thousands of recipients statewide.  We later designed a personal visit campaign that was strictly limited to education and outreach – no investigative activity.  This was a first for the agency, at that time.  Within three years, we achieved great success.  Compliance rates were up, recidivism down.

So the carrot seemed to prevail over the stick.  But- not for long.  Less than five years later, rates of recidivism had climbed back to their pre-initiative levels.  What had happened? 

In the study of complex human systems, we learn about “attractors of meaning.”  Ideas have the power to pull or push us and our behaviors in certain ways.  When the pressure to curtail labor costs overtakes the concern about regulatory enforcers, there will be a change in employer behaviors. 

This week, as I noted at the top of this post, my friend told me about the current enforcement strategies of his Federal agency.  The agency leader has decided to use a “strong big stick,” as a means to improve compliance outcomes.  More targeted investigations, harsher civil penalties, more negative wording in press releases to cast violative employers in a bad light.  I couldn’t help but ask if the agency also planned on having a carrot as big, or bigger, than the “stick” they were ready to wield.

Until agencies begin to see employer behaviors as the truly complex patterns that they are, compliance efforts are likely to fall below targets.  To paraphrase the old saying about how we humans behave, “how long do you stay in a bad situation? Until the pain of staying is greater than the fear of going – and not a moment sooner.”  The “big stick” can inflict pain, but the bigger carrot can can make the pain lessen by comparison.  Perhaps both are needed in a winning compliance strategy.  

Posted in Change, Complexity, Government Improvement | 1 Comment