In our training, Building a Process Improvement Mindset, the cost of poor quality is spelled out in practical, simple terms.  Day in, day out in every organization we are spending money on 3 things:  either value-added activities that improve the product or service directly, value-enabling activities that are required by law, regulation or business necessity and non-value added work or what the Japanese call muda or waste.  Muda is work that is non-essential to meeting customer needs or to producing product.  That waste can either be an internal failure cost (within the organization) or an external failure cost (experienced by the customer).  There are lots of things that are considered failure costs, including some of these that you might not have considered:

o Meetings starting late, with no agendas, outcomes or action-items
o Missed deadlines and milestones
o Rework, rechecking, duplicate effort
o Absenteeism
o Customer complaints; loss of a customer
o Not communicating clearly and completely
o Downtime due to systems or backlogs
o Poor choices in vendors, staffing
o Broken or waste-producing processes; bottlenecks and constraints
o Poor performance that remains uncorrected
o Doing work that doesn’t need to get done
o Lost opportunities

These quality expenses exist in every organization, yet the actual costs are rarely identified and shared on any meaningful level.   So let’s see what that might look like:

If we say that quality costs usually represent about 30-50% of expenses in an organization or department, let’s imagine that we’re a department of nine people with an expense budget of $750,000 per year.  That means that our overall quality costs (value-enabling + non-value added) = between $225,000 to $375,000. Now, of that cost, about 70% represent failure costs, or $157,000 to $262,500.  Divide that now by the nine people and the failure cost per person ranges from $17,444 to $29,166.  At this point, we often say “But let’s imagine that you are the very best of the best, so let’s cut this cost per person in half” – to $8,722 – $14,583.  Now comes the fun part.

Knowing that we average between $8,000 to $15,000 in wasted activity per person, can we find it – and if we find it, can we share in the gain?  Here are the next steps:

1. Train each employee in the department on the Cost of Poor Quality, including how your figures were derived.

2. Invite each employee in the department to go on a scavenger hunt for two weeks looking for where the waste is occurring in the work that they are doing.  Invite them to look for the original 7 wastes (created by Taiichi Ohno):  The video, Kaizen Toast, is great at elaborating on quality wastes in a simple approach.

1 waste in motion including reaching for, looking up, walking
2 waiting time including watching the computer, standing around, having no work because of delays and reviews, equipment downtime and bottlenecks
3 transporting or moving work in process from place to place
4 storage including excess inventory
5 defects including scrap, repairs, wasteful handling, and rework
6 excessive processing time, overproduction by producing earlier or in greater quantities than needed or poorly defined process steps
7 unused employee creativity

3. As employees find the wastes have them write them on post-its that are put on a large high-level process map in the department.  This part encourages the department to move from an individual process to a group process where the entire department is looking for, identifying and posting wasteful activities.  (insert sanofi team picture of putting post-its up on the process flow chart)

4. Once the wastes are identified, sort them according to “low-hanging fruit” and “high impact but hard to do.”  Prioritize the low-hanging fruit and determine an estimated failure cost (labor, materials) for each.

5. Assign them to a “Failure Fixing Team” that will work to eliminate the waste.  Once the waste is reduced, calculate the savings and put the “paper money savings” into a bowl.  This process can go on for months as FFTeams are at work.

6. On the deadline day, empty the paper money savings and add it up in front of every employee in the department.  It’s typical in most gain-sharing environments, for 75% of the savings to be returned to the organization and 25% shared with employees.  Let’s imagine that our team of nine employees was able in 4 months to save $50,000 in failure costs.  That’s $12,500 that can be shared among the nine or $1,388 per person!

Whenever we have used a gain-sharing approach to attack the Cost of Poor Quality and put it at the employee level, we have seen enormous interest and application that continues way past the event.   For example, a research science group addressed mistakes in their notebooks and poor labeling of freezer items; a banking department addressed accuracy and rework issues; a municipal highway department addressed inventory excesses.  All shared in the gain of recovering the cost of poor quality.

ASQ’s Influential Voices:
I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own.

It had been a long couple of years leading up to the day when my boss approached me and said, “What’s changed Mike?”  Not knowing what she was talking about, I shot off an inquisitive look. “Your commitment level,” she said, “it’s apparent that something in you has sparked a renewed commitment to your job and the organization.”  I thought for a moment, realizing that it had changed, and searched for an answer.  “I’m not sure,” I said, “but I can tell you what’s different; I feel very confident in my abilities to do my job well.”  It was as if a light went off when I said that, because it wasn’t that I had been uncommitted to the organization; I just hadn’t been committed to myself.  I realized at that moment that there was a direct connection between a person’s commitment level and his/her confidence in his/her own ability to do his/her job. This is typically identified as competency.

Ken Blanchard speaks about Competence and Commitment (C&C) in his discussion around situational leadership; however, what is rarely discussed is the relationship between the two and the belief that competency is a driving factor for commitment.  Blanchard uses these two indicators to help identify an employee’s level of development, which is determined by the level of competency he/she has coupled with his/her level of commitment to the job or organization.

Whether talking situational leadership or the conversation I had with my boss, it is the behavior that is the end result of one’s competency and commitment levels. In addition, if we look at all behavior being driven by a particular motivation that one has, then we can also draw a line between motivation and commitment. The understanding is that if I’m committed to doing something a certain way, then I must be motivated to do it that way as well.  For this specific instance, one might even suggest that commitment and motivation are one in the same.

Over time, these two attributes present themselves over and over again. The understanding that in each of us, and the employees in which we supervise, competency and commitment not only determine the way we interact, the attitude we have or the behavior we see, but also provide for us a way to diagnose level of need and the root cause of poor behavior.  Often times we witness a behavior, possibly poor customer service, or a lack of quality in the work being completed, and depending on how we, as managers, choose to handle conflict, we either address the behavior in an aggressive way by providing direct feedback to the employee, or choose a more passive approach by providing deeper training or instruction that might address the issues we’re witnessing. Unfortunately in this case, our response is determined by our personal preference. Using the C&C attributes, we are able to assess the direct cause of the behavior we’re seeing and apply a more exact approach to tackling the issue at hand.  Let’s use the example of poor quality at work. If we were to use the C&C attributes we would first look at the competency level of the employee, recognizing that competency drives commitment, and so it is appropriate to start there before jumping directly to commitment level (figure 1).  If we assess the competency level of the individual, defined as possession of required skill, knowledge, qualification, and/or capacity, we begin to ask the question if the reason or cause for the poor quality is a result of the employee not knowing the correct method, or simply a lack of commitment to doing it right.  Our ability to ask this question first allows us to delineate between competency, which is resolved through teaching, training, and education or commitment, which is around proper management.

Commitment, defined as the act of engaging one’s self, speaks to the motivation of an individual.  In an article by Ken Blanchard’s company, “From Engagement to Work Passion,”  he identifies a direct correlation between an employee’s commitment to the organization and his/her engagement level within the organization.  The article goes on to talk about the attribute of engagement, but for his conversation, it was the idea of commitment as it relates to either the employee’s job or the company that caught my interest. In my experience, commitment level is typically attributed to either a need deficiency on the part of the employee, or the development of group think on a team resulting from a lack of proper management/coaching.  From the individual perspective, it may be the lack of competency, praise, organizational entanglement or meaningfulness that leads to a lack of commitment.  In regards to the team or group atmosphere, the lack of group commitment typically results from a lack of clear standards, morale building activities (figure 2) and level 5 leadership, all of which drive accountability down through the ranks.

Developing Your Approach

If you are familiar with Frederick Herzberg’s theory of motivation (read our article on employee motivation and retention), you begin to realize how intertwined his idea of the four motivating factors (competency, choice, progress and meaningfulness) is with Blanchard’s use of the term ‘Commitment.’  If we assume that commitment and motivation are one in the same, than it is no surprise that ‘Competency’ would be a driving force in determining an individual’s level of commitment to the job or the organization.  More so, as we begin to apply this understanding to our daily work, we begin to see how our approach as managers can have a direct effect on the engagement level of the employee (figure 3).  In my case, had my boss simply looked at my behavior and  immediately associated it  with a lack of commitment, which she openly admits she did in the beginning, her response would have been dictated by a belief that I was not committed to the organization.  In hindsight, it was simply a lack of my knowledge for the business, which was manifesting in a way that was similar to commitment, or a lack thereof.

In hopes of helping you to review your workforce and determine whether what you see is a competency or commitment issue, we’ve constructed a short assessment tool for you. By using this tool you’ll be able to determine the cause of behavior and from there, apply the appropriate tools and methods to achieving the end result of a more engaged and motivated workforce.

THE CONSERVER
The Conservers prefer current circumstances over the unknown. He/she is attracted to continuous improvement that is gradual and incremental. A Conserver buys into doing things differently as long it represents preserving the existing structure, and only considers minor changes to resources such as people, technology, knowledge and capital.

Conservers can be found in or attracted to particular organizational cultures. A perfect environment might be one where 1 + 1 = 2. In this scenario resources are added together to produce a consistent and stable result. These organizations are often highly regulated or lack competition such as government agencies. In this circumstance, advocating or initiating changes could result in negative consequences such as being labeled a “trouble maker,” exclusion and alienation from others, loss of promotion or opportunities, and even, job elimination or termination.

Conservers frequently view other types as impulsive, wanting change for the sake of change or reckless (rejecting the need for testing and verification). Their fear has been fueled over the years from the existence and consequences of “groupthink.” Conservers could cite this fear as the rationale for more controlled and slower changes, and a perfect reason for delaying the need to do things differently. What do we mean by groupthink?

While William Whyte, Jr. coined the term, “Groupthink” in 1952 in Fortune magazine, Irving Janis, a research psychologist, in 1971, defined it as “…the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive ingroup that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.” Conservers would cite historic tragic mistakes such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941), The Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), Vietnam War, Watergate scandal and even more recently, Dina Badie argues that the invasion of Iraq by the United States, were all driven by groupthink. Some studies suggest that groupthink can be found in decision making in many facets of our world from economics (collapse of Swissair and UK Bank Northern Rock), politics, and even, sports (MLUA mass resignation in 1999). In fact, according to Wikipedia, more than twenty major studies focusing on some aspect or application of groupthink have been published since the beginning of 2010. The danger of groupthink and mistakes in decision making can easily promote this “fear of doing things differently,” particularly when failure results in serious consequences. Check out our podcast at the end of this blog to see if your group or team is in danger of groupthink and what to do about it.

THE PRAGMATIST
In the middle of the spectrum, we have the Pragmatists. They advocate for doing things differently if the current circumstances warrant change, regardless of the impact on the existing structure. They explore change in an open and objective manner and seek to make improvements that can immediately be applied to a particular situation or process. Pragmatists are open to doing things differently as long as they have a clear implementation plan and achieve real, concrete results. The amount of their support may be determined by the level of trust they have that (1) it will actually happen and (2) that those responsible are competent and committed enough for it to be successful. Pragmatists can be perceived by the other types as compromising, mediating, indecisive, easily influenced and noncommittal. They, too, can have a true blind spot if the urgency of the present situation keeps them from focusing on the future negative consequences of the decision or if they fail to learn from the mistakes of the past. Pragmatists lean either towards the Conserver side or the Originator end of the spectrum. In groups or teams, pragmatists may find themselves spending more time on mediation between the other two types, then than creating or addressing change.

THE ORIGINATOR
On the far right of the continuum are our Originators. They prefer a fast and radical approach to change. They initiate change or continuously challenge the existing structure, constantly re-engineering on all possible fronts. Originators show no fear of doing things differently. They believe in focusing on the task at hand and getting it done. They poke the box and look for alternatives that have not even been discovered yet. They discard any fear of failure or fear of success and believe that, in the majority of circumstances, there is no harm in failure. In fact, failure gets you closer to success.

One might suggest that Seth Godin, author of Poke the Box is an Originator. He stresses that we need to “go from no to yes;” “start something, initiate, ship – go, go, go.” Godin encourages each one of us to start something “important, frightening and new.” In fact, he suggests that the “fear of doing things differently” is one built from years of conformity and mediocrity. Organizations often reward the person who is “not wrong” and do not reward the person who “tries or starts something.” Our education system rewards the “right answer,” not the person who comes close, challenges or creates something new. I’ll never forget my final exam in Introduction to Macro-economics, freshman year at Wellesley College. Professor Marshall Goldman gave us a final with questions that we didn’t have the knowledge to answer. Basically, we wouldn’t get it right. He graded our answers based on how close we could come to the answer. I have never forgotten that experience. I don’t have a clue what grade I got on the final. However, the challenge of that exam is what led me to continue to take courses and eventually choose Economics as one of my major areas of study at Wellesley. It drove my curiosity and a desire to learn more.

Godin believes that the focus needs to be on hard work and “not the fear that comes from doing the work.” The last quote in his book by Siddhartha Gautama says it all; “There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way and not starting.”

MSN Money’s article “5 Huge Just-Missed-It Business Ideas” by Joe Mont might agree with Godin. He uncovers the fortunes lost by such companies as ABC, when they missed the opportunity to host Bill Cosby’s sitcom which eventually went to NBC, or Mars that passed up the chance to have M&Ms as the candy featured in the movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Yahoo who backed away from the one billion dollar deal in 2006 to buy Facebook and later lost that deal.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
These are three approaches to doing things differently, their strengths and weaknesses. So, how would you describe your dominant preference for change? What about your staff or co-workers? What about your leadership or cross-functional teams? What type does your organization reward or encourage? Which one is best for good decision-making?

What happens if you find you or your group/team is surrounded by predominantly one style? How do you encourage balance or alternative viewpoints? How do you avoid groupthink and its perils, yet reap the benefits of fast decision making and seize opportunities?

Download this podcast for some suggestions for avoiding groupthink and overcoming the “Fear of Doing Things Differently.”

• Between 35-50% of meeting time is seen as wasted.
• Most meetings start 8-12 minutes late.
• 75% say agendas are not prepared and distributed in advance.
• Less than 30% of decisions in meetings are recorded.
• Over 40% of people don’t know the purpose of the meeting they’re attending.

Looking at the numbers on poor meetings
So let’s take a typical meeting of 8 people, paid approximately $50/hour (with benefits rolled in) who have a weekly one hour staff meeting.  The cost of that meeting is $400 to the organization times 50 weeks or $20,000 for the year, or an individual cost of $2,500.  The meeting’s purpose is to share information with each other in a round-the-table fashion.  The problem is that in any given week about five of the participants already know the information being shared.   So for them, the meeting is a redundancy waste of time amounting to $12,500 a year.  The $400 meeting typically starts 10 minutes late, or a cost of $24 x 50 meetings or $1,200 due to the late start.  Because the agenda isn’t provided in advance nor actions and decisions recorded at the end, the members spend an additional hour per week talking about how the meeting is so frustrating, or whether anybody knows what the meeting is about – an additional waste of $400.  So let’s look at our total:  for a $20,000 investment of time and energy, the return-on-investment is actually $5,900, or a $14,100 loss on the original investment.

Why so frustrated?
Many people find it very difficult to speak up about their frustrations, despite the fact that they agree their meetings are a waste of time.  They accept the waste, rather than explore ways to improve the situation.  Often, in training, when we propose doing things differently – like setting up an agenda – they will counter with the remark “but no one else does that around here.”  In other words, to step out and do something differently, albeit with the intention of making things better, is seen as a negative.  How is that?  I’ve come to realize several things:  a) people need to articulate the personal and organizational loss of continuing with status quo; b) they need to work with others to introduce change, rather than going it alone; and c) they need to experience a very quick win to gain confidence.

When we ask about the negative effects of unproductive meetings, many mention the following:

• Loss of credibility as a leader
• Loss of morale and engagement of the team/group
• Confusion about who is doing what, when and for whom
• Harm in working relationships
• Delayed decision making
• Poor image in the organizational network or marketplace
• Boredom and frustration

Are those consequences enough to drive a change in approach?  We have found it beneficial to couple the consequences with the benefits of improving meetings.  Here are the benefits participant often list:

• Can make you a stand-out as a leader who is admired (and noticed) by others
• Increases results which increases selection for other high-visibility projects
• Improves feelings of accomplishment; raises self-esteem of members
• Improves attendance and engagement of members who understand why they are there and what’s to be accomplished

Running an effective meeting is not rocket-science.  It does take confidence, some new skills and a bit of hutzpah to herd the cats.  However, once the high productivity meeting pattern is established and practiced six times, very few people want to go back to the way it used to be.  Meanwhile, you emerge with a reputation for great meetings – a true stand-out in your organization.

Download our Skinny Mini-Meeting Tool Kit for 5 quick things to start right away to improve your meetings.  Good luck!

Mackin Chosen As An ASQ Influential Voice:

A social media initiative from ASQ entitled Influential Voices will feature Deborah Mackin, founder and Principal Performance Strategy Consultant at New Directions Consulting, as an ongoing quality thought leader for the series.  Influential Voices, a global network of bloggers, is a way to increase awareness of quality around the world by featuring a cross-section of quality experts, including Mackin, as they weigh in on the ongoing discussion of quality management within organizations.  Mackin is one of 29 other Influential Voices chosen from around the world by ASQ.

Mackin has consulted and coached for over 27 years in high-stakes, cutting-edge quality organizations such as Delta Faucet, Sanofi Vaccine Division, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Coca Cola and Alcoa.  With her many years of experience in the quality manufacturing and production field, as well as a keen eye towards what actually works in the newly emerging, multi-generational, multi-cultural workforce, Mackin is, “acknowledged as one of the most credible voices in the online quality conversation,” according to Laurel Nelson-Rowe, the Managing Director of ASQ.  Mackin is also the best-selling author of the The Team-Building Tool Kit (AMACOM 2007).  As Mackin joins other quality professionals from different industries around the world, she will write a blog post on her blogging site, NDCBlogger, once a month that partners and provides additional insight to ASQ CEO, Paul Borawski’s posts on a similar quality topic (http://asq.org/blog).

Mackin’s NDCBlogger, a leadership and management blog on her website NewDirectionsConsulting.com, introduces the best theories, practices and tactics for management, leadership and organizational efficiency that are being used in the workplace today.  Weekly, Mackin and her team of Performance Strategy Consultants publish content that is top-of-mind, thought-provoking, and yet practical and implementable for teams, managers, and executives around the world.  Tune in every third Tuesday of the month, as Mackin discusses quality in her pursuit of organizational excellence at http://www.newdirectionsconsulting.com/resource-room/blog/.

In a Wall Street Journal Career Strategies article, Most Promotions Take Place in January, Study Finds, Joe Light references a study conducted by LinkedIn Corp showing that the “greatest percentage, 16%, of in-house promotions occur in January.” Depending on the industry, the study finds June, July, and September are also popular months for job advancement. So either you missed the boat this year or you’re in the freeze for a bit more until the summer thaw. This is a great window of time to build on your strengths, neutralize your weaknesses, and demonstrate why your boss should take notice. Here are a couple of maverick thoughts of our own with ways to become indispensable by the summer.

Show up, on time, ready to go: This is a saying here at New Directions that is the principal philosophy in all that we do. Why so important or why so impactful? Because, if we show up, on time, ready to go the boss doesn’t have to worry. We have taken fear out of the equation by building a standard of excellence, a platform statement, a brand that demonstrates that we are “ always on time, always ready to go, and we always ‘show up’ each time.”  As a boss, I don’t have to watch my back because I know that those employees who do show up can take care of themselves and that actually makes me look good as a manager. It’s reported that U.S. companies lose between $200-$300 billion a year due to absenteeism and tardiness among other things. Imagine the impact of showing up, on time, ready to go, offering your boss with little to worry about you.

Become the Pirate: Steve Jobs made famous the line: “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” Jobs looked for the pirate in all his team members, as Peter Sander, author of What Would Steve Jobs Do? points out. “But it wasn’t enough just to be brilliant, and it wasn’t enough just to think different. Steve’s pirates had to have the passion, the drive, and the shared vision to want to delight the customer with a perfect, game-changing product.” How have you become a pirate for that new project – looking outside the box, in the box, or through the box to offer something truly creative, passionate, and game-changing? So often we are looking for a huge, innovative, genius product, when really some game-changing features might be taking the notes at the meeting, staying late when needed, having a positive attitude, or helping out a teammate because it’s the right thing to do.

Embrace Your Workhorse Muscle: “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration,” Edison said. I believe it. Find a person who knows how to truly roll up his/her sleeves, put his/her nose to the grind stone, dig in and efficiently produce high caliber work time and again and you will bear witness to the next innovative leader. In That Used To Be Us, Thomas Friedman notes, “The time for mediocrity is over.” If that’s the case we have to become very good at shutting out noise, including our internal negativity, having laser like focus on the task at hand and pushing through to get the job done. All the best quotes, great philosophies, and soapbox pronouncements mean little if you can’t just get the work done.

Develop Your Rhetorical Sensitivity: “We are all rhetoricians,” my former college professor of classical rhetoric used to say. What he was saying is that whether we like it or not all of us have mouths and perform actions daily that either cast a good light or a bad light on ourselves. Going a step further, rhetorical sensitivity is the idea that we must always be aware of who, where, what we are talking about and have the proper emotional and social intelligence to modify our content and approach to appeal to our audience. Many times I come across people who are offended that they should ever have to flex or modify their position, thought or even tone to accommodate others. Usually I’m having this conversation because the other person has offended someone, been called out, or has been reprimanded for something he or she said. We must be sensitive to how we are perceived and how that in turn, finds its way to the boss.

Strive for Level 5 Leadership: Famously described in Good To Great, a Level 5 Leader demonstrates humility and professional will with fierce resolve to do what is best for the company, not the leader. The Level 5 Leaders build enduring greatness in their organizations; they set up their successors for success, and talk passionately about their companies and others, but not themselves. They are ordinary people producing extraordinary results. To me, this is another simple axiom, the good of the company before my personal need, and yet it can be so hard to get out of our own way. This isn’t an argument about disenfranchisement (why would I sacrifice myself with the potential to get laid off). This is a recalibration of your perspective and attitude about how you will lead. Level 5 Leadership does not only apply for your time at the office – it should encompass your being and should be felt by family, friends, workers and strangers.

As a child, I used to watch a TV show called Eek the Cat. He was a clueless cat that always ran into trouble, but when it came time to help a friend or a stranger he would always be there with a helpful hand, saying, “It never hurts to help!” My family got a kick out of it and we would jokingly say it as chores or an extra workload came in. As the years have gone by, it is still a theme of our household, as we have found it embodies the notion of servanthood leadership. Servanthood leadership is leading for the sake of and on behalf of others.  Think about that in your workspace. How often do we truly have that spirit of “it never hurts to help?” I challenge you to try it out for two weeks – even saying “it never hurts to help” and see what results. I’m confident that your boss will take notice.

Don’t Throw a Hail Mary; Plan a Touchdown: “The essential question is not, ‘How busy are you?’ but ‘What are you busy at?” thus spoke Oprah Winfrey.  You can work hard every hour, of every day, of every year and still get nowhere. How is that possible? You can throw all the Hail Mary passes for 50 or 75 yards and never get a single touchdown.  However, if you strategically go down the field with a game plan, you’re more likely to score.  This is the difference between looking busy and actually getting things accomplished. Planning is a crucial component to becoming the streamlined and efficient employee the boss wants to promote. Planning, for most, can also be painful and difficult. It requires patience and focus and ‘not doing’ – which can be very hard for a lot of us. We like to go, go, go and yet that has statistically been the downfall of many great ideas, people and organizations because they never had a game plan.  Data shows that a team that takes one third more time in planning is statistically proven to perform better then teams that don’t.  How have you structured your day to incorporate, not doing, but planning? Do you take time in the morning before emails and conversations to make a to do list? Have you thought about multiple to do lists (daily, weekly, quarterly or internal operations, clients, personal)? My boss maintains a “Super 8” list that she updates daily to always have her top 8 to dos on her iPad.  Before promotion season comes up, go first team all-state, become a planner, put the ball where you want and make it rain.

Find the White Space and Innovate at the Verge: In a recent article on the Sabri brand, the founder mentioned that when he was looking to make the most positive impact as a businessperson he didn’t go where competition was most fierce, which for him was in high tech.  He knew that at a high-tech company, “the most junior software engineer” would be smarter than he was, so instead he changed direction and found the white space where the competition was least. “Low-tech businesses have a massive talent gap,” he realized. With that in mind, he set up his new company Sabri and has had great success manufacturing products for Baby Boomers with an artistically tech bent. Joel Barker, a renowned futurist, would call this innovation at the verge – taking your talent and pioneering where competition hasn’t gone yet to have the greatest impact. As an individual, have you gone where the competition is least? Are you innovating for your boss at the verge?

Do all of these and get promoted? Perhaps, but there is no guarantee. However, I have had many conversations with peers, supervisors, managers, executives, and bosses – these are the themes that keep floating to the top as game-changing, attention-getting attributes that leaders look for in their best employees.

Matt also blogs weekly about branding, marketing and communication on the site howimetyourbrand.com  

Mackin, considered an international authority on teaming after her best-selling Team-Building series (The Team-Building Tool Kit, 1994; Keeping the Team Going, 1996; & The Team-Building Tool Kit 2, 2007) – all published by AMACOM, has worked with teams over the past 27 years.  Implementing teams in organizations such as Delta Faucet, Coca-Cola, Alcoa, Sanofi Vaccine Division, and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Mackin comes with a wealth of in-the-field experience, as well as a practical and pragmatic approach to implementing team-based initiatives within businesses. As a follow-up to her successful book series, Mackin created NDCBlogger, where she blogs weekly on teaming, organizational efficiency, implementing change initiatives and building management skills in the leaders of tomorrow.

Six More Reasons for Team Dysfunctions picks up where Five Dysfunctions left off.  Included in Mackin’s list of other dysfunctions are: wanting team–based results without constructing a team-based structure, not building a culture that encourages collaboration and cooperation, and neglecting the talent pool that resides in a team.  To read the full article visit: http://thebuildnetwork.com/2011/10/why-teams-fail-six-more-reasons-for-team-dysfunction/ 

BUILD Magazine was started on the idea that Inc. Magazine has been helping start-up companies for over 30 years and was looking for a new way to help more established companies reach another level of success and maturity.  The Build Network, the online portion of BUILD Magazine, is a new source of insight and connection dedicated to CEOs and executive teams of midsized businesses— what they call “the economy’s hot core.” Members of the Build community can connect with the world’s top management thinkers and leading middle market CEOs either through their website or their quarterly magazine.  The premier issue includes other articles focusing on teaming including The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Teams, The Top Three CEO Blind Spots, The Death-By-Meetings Quiz, and How To Create a Pipeline of Leaders Your Business Needs.  For more information on The Build Network visit www.thebuildnetwork.com.

While some researchers say that the millennial generation will make up half of the work force within the next 10 years, what will be more critical will be the gap that retiring Baby Boomers leave in the leadership ranks.  With more spaces than the Gen-Xers can fill, it will inevitably fall on the Gen-Ys to fill in where appropriate.

Knowing this, it would behoove those Millennials currently employed to begin positioning themselves as emerging leaders within their respective organizations. Likewise, there are still a significant number of non-millennial employees still seeking leadership roles that would benefit from this as well. But how do we do that, and how are today’s executives changing their selection process when considering future leaders?

The other day I was speaking with a senior leader at an organization and he used the term “high potential/high performer.”  This term caught my attention as it was used to identify individuals within the organization that had not only demonstrated the potential to lead, but also those that had regularly delivered results. Specifically, it was the combination of these two capabilities that this particular organization was looking for in order to promote from within. It was at this point that I realized that the battle for leadership positions within prominent organizations was extremely competitive and driven by performance and a commitment to learn.

This approach to leadership, I dare to say, is relatively new when compared to the workplace of 15 years ago, and because of that, requires skills that current and emerging leaders must possess. As I step back and view the ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ approaches, I am struck by the differences that were apparent between the more seasoned employee and someone who was relatively new.

Style Differences

Below you will find three areas that have presented themselves recently as critical focal points for employees of all generations to consider when positioning themselves as an intricate part of an organization in the future.  In addition, I’ve included my own personal observations of how each school of thought has a different mindset around these areas.   Take a look at these three areas and determine if your style falls more into the old or new school ways of thinking. 

The interesting piece though, is that the skills don’t always need to exist, but the interest in striving for that skill must be apparent for managers and leaders to take notice.  Even more so now, what I see differentiating the workforce is not their age, but their willingness to accept that changes are necessary and their ability to adapt in order to optimize the change that has occurred.  In a simplified version, its how to turn lemons into lemonade without getting caught up in the fact that we’re using a new blender.

Key Characteristics
In addition to the need for individuals to flex from their old style to a style that meets the current needs of the organization and its employees, recent conversations with executives have yielded insight into the characteristics they look for in leadership, and surprisingly, technical skills didn’t make the list. In the end it was critical thinking, effective communication, and collaboration that proved most beneficial to the organization as a whole.

To me, this was so insightful and was part of a conversation I had earlier in my career while I was at Paul Smith’s College.  From the institutional perspective, it was scary to hear that the traits most desired by employers were not ones we specifically provided as part of the curriculum, but instead, those skills developed in the white space between formal learning events.

Over the years, I have been exposed to a number of different organizations, each of which has its own set of skills that play into these three categories. Below I’ve dissected each of the above leadership skills and have tried to apply behaviors to each in order to make them more directive.

 Critical Thinking

• The ability to make timely and data-driven decisions
• The ability to identify implications of decisions and minimize any negative impact
• The ability to identify problems and develop value-added solutions
• The ability to differentiate between the symptom of a problem and the root cause
• The ability to break down a process and create ways to maximize its effectiveness

 Effective Communication

• The ability to produce well written and thought provoking content and material
• The ability review current communication processes and improve on the quality and quantity of communication that is occurring
• The ability to speak the language of the intended recipient to maximize impact
• The ability to communicate constructive feedback in a way that motivates
• The ability to communicate a clear goal and approach for accomplishing projects

Collaboration

• The ability to work as a team player
• Puts the team’s success before his/her own
• Is constantly seeking ways to provide value to whatever aspect he/she is involved in
• Works to capitalize on the combined skills of team members
• Actively seeks input from others to provide a better product

In the beginning of this blog I made the comment that if I knew what I do now back when I was first entering the workforce, that I may have positioned myself a little differently.  So imagine you had that ability to go back; what areas would you tell yourself to gain skill in and what’s one step you’re willing to take today to make that happen? I know that I would’ve told myself to not only focus on how well I do the task, but also, how well I manage the variables associated with the task, such as people, problems and process.

As we begin a New Year, it’s a great time to look at how to build a quality mindset in your organization.  Ask yourself:  Have we become too complacent about repeating errors or problems?  Do we continue to make assumptions that a particular problem can’t really be solved?  Are we frustrated that nobody seems as committed to quality as we are?

We recently were asked by a scientific organization to help them put together their first Quality Days event to kick off the New Year.  The purpose of the event is to reawaken in all employees the need for attention to quality.  Employees experience a half-day infusion of “everything quality,” and hopefully leave with renewed commitment.   I thought I’d share some of the activities we have included in the event to get you interested in, perhaps, doing the same.

1. Quality Posters:  Posters announcing the event were hung up a week ahead of time throughout the site, coupled with an announcement email from the head of Quality.

2. Quality Video:  The video included very brief interviews with 8-10 employees from all levels, asking them to define what quality means to them, when they first learned to have a passion for quality, and what behaviors they feel are key to acting with quality.  These videos are posted on the organization’s intranet and play on a continuous loop in break rooms.

3. The Quality Guru Video:  We pieced together clips from Joseph Juran, Edward Deming and Phillip Crosby – three of the original quality gurus – to play continuously as people enter the Quality Days session, greet each other and have a coffee.  Many young employees have no idea who these tremendously influential quality giants were and their impact on quality.

4. The Quality Bingo Game:  In order to get some “buzz” going prior to the event, we created a Quality Bingo Game using 24 quotes about quality from all different types of famous people.   Every employee gets a bingo card to complete.  The quotes are hanging up on individual posters around the site.  On the posters are QR codes (for people with SmartPhones) or web addresses (for those with Internet access) for people to figure out the names of the people who said the quotes.  Once they have the names, they put them on the Bingo card.  Once they have achieved Bingo, the cards are eligible to be placed in a drawing for a prize.  On the day of the event the walls of the room are covered with the 24 posters, complete with quotes and authors.

5. Giveaways:  We decided that buttons, mugs and t-shirts would be the most popular giveaways for the group, as a remembrance of the day.  The t-shirt and mug have the event logo and three of the quality values on them; the button says “I am Quality.”

6. Quality Storyboards:  Each department was asked to put together a Quality Storyboard (think about your child’s science fair project) about quality in their department – what it means, how it is accomplished, continuous improvement projects, etc.  These storyboards line the hallway and room where the Quality Days event is held.

7. Guest Speakers:  The event program begins with guest senior level speakers, both in-person and via Skype and FaceTime (iPad) to share some inspirational messages about quality geared directly to the organization’s challenges and vision.  Once video-taped, these become available for playback throughout the month following Quality Days.  In addition, external experts in the Cost of Poor Quality and Validation and Quality Customer Service provide new voices to motivate and inspire employees.

8. The Quality Mission, Vision and Values:  The Quality Department got together prior to the event to craft their Quality Mission, Vision and Values statements.  These statements are shared during the event and participants are encouraged to identify the gaps between where they are today and the vision for the future.  Employees are asked to identify ideas they have for closing the gaps.  Three of their Quality Values are highlighted for the day as well and appear on the mugs and t-shirts.

9. Quality Customer Service:  For this particular event we used “In Pursuit of Excellence:  Commitment, Continuous Improvement and Collaboration” as the quality logo, incorporating three of the Quality Team’s Values.  During the program, we share how other organizations have built their quality customer service platform and standards as a way to hold themselves accountable for quality improvements.  Each participant group is asked to write a “quality platform statement” for one of the Quality Values.  The key message here is the recognition that quality excellence must be pursued every minute of every day, for both our internal and external customers and that without a “quality platform” we’re likely to do what we want to do rather than what we should do.

10. Case Study:  A fun case study drives the quality message home, as participants identify what quality issues emerged in a traffic collision, including containment of the problem, root cause analysis, preventive and corrective action and how the three C’s impact each of these.

11. QD Action Plan:  The goal is for each person to leave Quality Days with a specific behavioral commitment to continue and advance his/her quest for quality.  Employees are invited to hang their quality commitment charts in their work environment to encourage their quality mindset throughout the year.

The energy generated in a Quality Days event is contagious and clearly demonstrates to employees the importance management places on quality.  So often in our workplaces speed is the prevailing criteria.  But success comes from the ability to combine speed with quality, doing whatever it is right the first time.  That commitment is built through events like a Quality Days.

ASQ’s Influential Voices: I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own.

“Life is the sum of all your choices.” – Albert Camus (1913 – 1960), French Author

And many choices we make. Some experts calculate that most adults make 35,000 decisions each and every day. As Albert Camus suggests, decisions are probably the single most influential factor in individual and organizational success – whether they be our own decisions or the decisions of others – our CEO, manager, customers, friends and family.  So, what do we know about decision making?

Early in the 1900s, Katherine Briggs noticed that her neighbors approached decision making from two very different perspectives. Some approached making decisions objectively, applying logic and reason to the decision based on good data (Thinking types – T). Others focused more on values and people, and made decisions based on how the consequences affected others (Feeling types – F). This dichotomy accounted for the third letter type in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Introduction to Type and Organizations, CPP, 1998). Even if you’ve never taken the tool, I bet you can quickly guess your preference from the descriptions below:

While Thinking types prefer to follow a logical and rational model of decision making adhering to protocols and established policies, Feeling types prefer to look at each decision individually and subjectively. Feeling types are more likely to “break” the rules when it interferes with a given value or results in having a negative impact on the people involved.

Going further, Thinking types are best known for their cause-and-effect reasoning and their ability to apply science, data and fairness to a decision. They prefer to be “right,” rather than “liked,” and enjoy debating the facts and figures.  On the other hand, Feeling types delve into a decision and evaluate its effectiveness by whether it creates harmony and improves the relationships and/or supports their values.

So we can see where in group decision making, these differences often result in conflict. Agreed-upon (consensus) decisions can become harder to reach. As well, support for outside decisions can be more difficult to attain.  However, (1) these are preferences and each person can become more skilled at understanding the other perspective, and (2) both perspectives are valued and needed to make the best decisions.

So, as a manager, I can, first, recognize my own preference, either through taking the tool or simply looking at my past experiences. Secondly, with this knowledge, I can extrapolate my strengths, and become aware of my own biases or areas of blindness. The same is true for teams. For example, a team that is made up of primarily “T” decision-makers might make a logical and rationale cost-cutting decision that attains the goal of lowering expenses, but could neglect to take into consideration the effect that the decision might have on motivation or appreciation for the effort of its employees. On the flip side, I worked with one “F” decision maker who got reprimanded because of a poor decision. Even though it was clear that he had “broken the rules,” it was a struggle for him to see the error.  He felt that this situation should have been an exception to the rule because adhering to the strictness of the rules would have had a negative effect on someone he cared about. Also, it violated his sense of fairness.

As managers, how do we help our staff to use both perspectives to make good decisions? One way would be to marry the best of both worlds – an effective decision making process with our understanding of the two different approaches. So, let’s see if we can apply to the first few steps of a model such as the 4-Step Universal Decision Process:

Step One:  Setting Up the Decision
Here we ask for a proposal or an option from the people in the meeting.  (For example:  Do we want to decide to do A or B?  Ted, would you make a proposal to either do A or B?  We also ask: are there any important criteria to keep in mind when we’re deciding (e.g. control, difficulty, time, cost, resources, risk, importance, return on investment); how do we want to decide; and what is our fallback position?

If we look at our two types of decision-makers, it becomes apparent that each one would find value in very different criteria. Our Thinking decision maker might choose criteria such as: accomplishes the goal, ease of implementation, has all information needed, positive impact on productivity/efficiency, cost/return ratio is good and supports/improves quality.  Our Feeling decision maker would most likely focus on other criteria, such as: compatible with company vision, supports quality service culture, high positive impact on employees or customers, provides flexibility and adaptability, upper management support, able to reach consensus and strong participation in development.

So, from the get-go, we want to value each perspective in our decision-making process by including elements from both as criteria. We also need to consider that these types might approach who makes the decision differently. Because Feeling types are focused on inclusion and collaboration, they are more likely to stress a “consensus” or participatory decision making process, while Thinking types might be more likely to agree to whatever decision making method gets to the right answer. Thinking types might have more difficulty with a consensus decision if they feel it waters down the decision or results in a less than correct solution.

Step Two:  Discussing
Here we discuss the proposal to make sure we have gathered our data, surfaced concerns, and tested our assumptions.  We evaluate each proposal and eliminate or reduce our concerns.  Sometimes this section requires us to compromise or consider alternatives and modifications. It’s important to stay open-minded and ask lots of questions (Inquiry) before taking a firm position (Advocacy).

Even though our Thinking types believe that they are using a rational process to make decisions, neuroscience research in the 1990s suggests that the amygdala (emotional center of the brain) is the receptor for all stimuli that comes into the brain. In fact, according to Russell H. Granger, in his book, The 7 Triggers to Yes, the amygdala acts as the “gatekeeper” for the brain. It has the option of making its own decisions based on emotions or passing information on to the cerebral cortex for a review by the rational, thinking part of the brain. Often, decisions are made by the amygdala in an automatic response (which might account for the large number of daily decisions), and then interpreted as if they were made in a rational process.

Granger suggests that if you want to present a solution or proposal, you are best to appeal to the emotional center of the brain, not try to influence with logic and reason. This might require a different approach for our Thinking types.  Furthermore, if your team is having difficulty reaching decisions, the culprit may reside with the emotional responses they create, rather than any logical disagreements.

Feeling types may unknowingly gravitate to these triggers, while Thinking types may have to consciously consider them. He suggests that there are 7 triggers that work most effectively in gaining agreement and ones we might want to explore in this step of our decision making process:

1. The Friendship Trigger:  In my communications training, I often say, “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.” This trigger embodies just that concept. It suggests that in presenting ideas to others, it may be just as important to create positive feelings in others when you present the idea as the content of the idea itself. Friendship, or liking, is a prerequisite for most other triggers to be effective. It speaks to your likability, trust, similar interests or goals, dependability, fairness, compatibility, cooperation, teamwork and collaboration. If you are well-liked and trusted, you may find that your ideas are given stronger consideration, than if you aren’t.

2. The Authority Trigger:  Granger again suggests that when presenting solutions, others will be influenced by your authority, credibility and expertise. Your ability to establish yourself as an authority could quickly and automatically trigger agreement from others. Extraverts may have an easier time with this trigger as it requires them to talk confidently about their accomplishments, awards, education, competence and publications.

3. The Consistency Trigger:  Each decision we make has some similarity to a decision in the past. If the current proposal has a positive connection to a successful, past decision, we are more likely to accept and support it.  Don’t forget: perceptions are more important that reality. Thinking types are better off to accept the perceptions that people have of the past decision, rather than trying to argue the reality of the result of the decision.

4. The Reciprocity Trigger:  This trigger feeds into our sense of give and take. When we give something, the other person is willing to give back. When you are presenting a solution, being willing to alter or change some aspect may create a psychological debt that aids in ultimately reaching agreement.  Feeling types may be more willing to give something up to create harmony.

5. The Contrast Trigger: Used most commonly with Thinking types when they create a “pros” and “cons” list, this trigger asks you to frame your proposal in a way that shows its comparison in terms of factors such as: cost, time, energy, resources, and personal effort. This feeds into our brains’ natural tendency to respond in a relative way.  This supports our premise that logic and reason can play a less important role to comparisons and perceptions. A weather example came to mind for me:  today it is sunny and 46°F here in Vermont, while the past few days, it has been snowy and much colder. I heard comments like, “You’ve got to get outside today; it so warm.” I readily agreed. In contrast, if it was a day like today in the summertime or in different climate, we’d be complaining of how cold it is outside! I guess the saying, “It’s all relative” does hold true here.

6. The Reason Why Trigger:  Another good trigger for our Thinking types. Applying a “good reason to do what you are proposing” can convince our amygdala to shortcut the heavy thinking and make a quicker decision. Some good reasons include: how quickly something needs to get done or the opportunity to take advantage of some event that is happening. Feeling types would do well to consider more objective, “good reasons,” especially when presenting ideas to Thinking types.

7. The Hope Trigger:  When faced with introducing a decision that others don’t have any control over, managers might do well to frame the decision around something that will help their staff realize a hope or a dream. Some areas to consider for this trigger include: happiness, more time, health, independence, goals and ambitions, fears (what we want not to happen) and success. Again, appealing to our emotional center with a positive outcome will lower resistance.

I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on your own decision making process and building awareness of your emotional responses. You can download our free “poster” of the complete decision making process (including Steps 3 and 4) and the Agreement Cycle.

Whatever your type and process, this quote stuck in my mind as I contemplated decision making:

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
- Theodore Roosevelt (1854 – 1919), 26th President of the United States