Quality and Innovation

Are you an expert? According to tradition and research, it takes 10,000 hours of focused effort and a dedication to continuous improvement to become one. On October 2, 2007, Bill Harrison described the phenomenon well:

I’ve been immersed in a fascinating book called This Is Your Brain On Music. The author, Daniel J. Levitin, is a musician/recording engineer/producer turned neuroscientist. Despite the unfortunate title, the book is a serious exploration of the connections between music (from both a listening and playing perspective) and the brain… The emerging conclusion is that experts in many fields (sports, literature, composition, performance of every kind) need about 10,000 hours of practice time to achieve world-class levels of proficiency. 10,000 hours is the equivalent of 3 hours a day, seven days a week, for a period of 10 years. These studies do not address the differences in the efficacy of practicing for different people (which is known to vary widely).

It might seem like this is a revelation from modern neuroscience, but the idea is not new. New research only serves to support a concept that is ages old. Time magazine notes that the concept appeared as early as 1899, citing the academic journal Psychological Review. Herbert Simon, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and socio-technical systems who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1978, “said that to become an expert required about 10 years of experience and he and colleagues estimated that expertise was the result of learning roughly 50,000 chunks of information.” More recently, this idea has been popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success – it’s also described on the gladwell.com blog.

The concept of the 10,000 hours has been described at many levels of detail. For example, in July 2006, Philip E. Ross wrote about “The Expert Mind” for Scientific American. In this article, he described work by K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State, a collaborator of Herbert Simon’s, in a very accessible way:

Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but “effortful study,” which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time.”

“Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance–for instance, keeping up with one’s golf buddies or passing a driver’s exam– most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind’s box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields.”

These can all be summarized by the following statement:

Focused Attention + Reflection + Knowledge of What Constitutes High Quality

+ Commitment to Improvement  =  Expertise

There is no reason why this principle cannot be applied beyond individuals – this statement provides practical lessons for the development of group expertise, organizational expertise, and the expertise of a society or civilization. (Granted, the way to measure 10,000 hours would vary between individuals, groups, organizations and societies – this is an open question.)

So, are you an expert? Is your organization an expert in its domain?

Two days ago I commented on how technical jargon can either enhance or impede communications. I ran across this quote today from the 1987 book Thriving on Chaos by Tom Peters along the same thread, and thought I’d share:

Mostly, it’s the dumb, elementary questions followed up by a dozen even more elementary questions that yield the pay dirt. Experts are those who don’t need to bother with elementary questions anymore – thus they fail to bother with the true sources of bottlenecks buried deep in habitual routines of the firm labeled “We’ve always done it that way.”

We can only uncover changes in our expectations, and changes in our underlying assumptions, by asking simple questions over and over. The “5 Why’s” – that I mention in Real or Not Real – are another way to figure out what rudimentary questions to revisit to unlock insight. Remember that unlocking insight is a critical step for you or your organization to increase innovation.

2010 Update: Speaking of simple questions, a very basic question was the premise for my book Disconnected: Technology Addiction & the Search for Authenticity in Virtual Life – “if I disconnect from my virtual life, will I reconnect with my REAL one?”

(I originally wrote this article for the ASQ Software Division Newsletter compiled in the first quarter of 2009. I’m reproducing it here because I’ve found the ITEA criteria to be remarkably useful for all kinds of planning since I was introduced to it last year.)

For software professionals, particularly those of us who manage product development or development teams, it is important to track progress towards our goals and to justify the results of our efforts. We have to write effective project charters for software development just to get things moving, evaluate improvement alternatives before making an investment of time and effort in a process change, and ultimately validate the effectiveness of what we have implemented.

This past fall, I had the opportunity to serve as a preliminary round judge for the ASQ International Team Excellence Award (ITEA). My subgroup of judges met at the Bank of America training facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we split up into teams to evaluate almost 20 project portfolios. A handful of other events just like ours were held at the same time across the country, giving many people the opportunity to train and serve as judges. Before we evaluated the portfolios, we were all trained on how to use and understand the ITEA criteria, a 37-point system for assessing how well a project had established and managed to its own internal quality system. The ITEA criteria can be applied to any development project or process improvement initiative in the same way that the Baldrige criteria might be applied to an organization‘s strategic efforts. For software, this might include improving the internal processes of a software development team, using software improvements and automation to streamline a production or service process, and improving the performance or quality of a software product. (For example, I can envision the ITEA criteria being used to evaluate the benefits of parallelizing all or part of a software system to achieve a tenfold or hundredfold performance improvement.)

You can review these criteria on the web at http://wcqi.asq.org/2008/pdf/criteria-detail.pdf yourself. There are five main categories in the ITEA criteria: project selection and purpose, the current situation (prior to improvement), solution development (and evaluation of alternatives), project implementation and results, and team management and project presentation. An important distinction is in the use of the words Identify/Indicate, Describe and Explain within the criteria. To identify or indicate means that you have enumerated the results of brainstorming or analysis, which can often be achieved using a simple list of bullet points. To describe means that you have explained what you mean by each of these points. To explain means that you have fully discussed not only the subject addressed by one of the 37 points, but also your rationale for whatever decisions were made. Sustainability of the improvements that a project makes is also a major component of the ITEA criteria. Once your project is complete, how will you ensure that the benefits you provided are continued? How can you make sure that a new process you developed will actually be followed? Do you have the resources and capabilities to maintain the new state of the system and/or process?

The ITEA criteria can serve as a useful checklist to make sure you‘ve covered all of the bases for your software development or process improvement project. I encourage you to review the criteria and see how they can be useful to your work.

I was talking to a group of professors from James Madison University yesterday, when the topic shifted to “discrete event simulation”. They asked me if I knew anything about it – I said no. I don’t think I had ever heard of those words strung together in the same phrase, and so immediately assumed that this domain was just something I had never been exposed to. They also told me that they were using ProModel to do a lot of their discrete event simulation.

I’m addicted to learning new things, so I checked out to see what ProModel was all about so I would know what “discrete event simulation” was. And guess what! That’s the term for plant layout, for simulating new manufacturing processes, for designing kanban systems, for designing supply chains and other networks, for setting up queueing systems, for doing SPC and for managing your Six Sigma analytics. So I guess I do know something about “discrete event simulation”! I’m also wondering why I’ve never seen this product advertised in Quality Progress – it looks like it’s pretty good, and pretty comprehensive.

This reminded me that jargon can impede or enhance communication, depending upon the capabilities and understanding of the communicators. Neil Ward-Dutton, in a December 2006 post, collected some articles on this theme and reflected on them in “On jargon, and creating a common language.” He contrasts a message about the benefits of Web 2.0 presented in two ways: one filled with technical jargon, explaining the way it came to be, and one explaining the same thing but from the perspective of how Web 2.0 influences and affects people. The use of jargon – or the avoidance of jargon – can either communicate competence in a field or alienate people who need to know more about it.

Awareness of whether a term or a phrase is jargon can help us understand whether we are communicating accurately.

If I was aware of the nature of the term “discrete event simulation” I would have said “Sure! I really like discrete event simulation. In fact, I really enjoy designing plant layouts (which can be useful for designing software systems too), I am insanely enthusiastic about inventory models, and these are the kinds of analytical things that we do in Six Sigma projects all the time.” But no, I missed an opportunity to communicate – and maybe even to learn new things about modeling – because of jargon.

It reminds me of when I was a meteorology student several years ago. In one of our dynamics classes, I was dumbfounded by the number of times the professor referred to “zonal” and “meridional”. I had no idea what these two words meant – I could guess, but I might be wrong – so I searched all through our textbooks to find anything that would tell me about these two words. They were NOWHERE. And the dictionary was no help either. So one day I asked the professor, in class, what “zonal” and “meridional” meant. Her response is etched in my psyche forever: “If you don’t know what those words mean, then you shouldn’t be in this class.” Now this was in the days before Google, so I couldn’t just go look it up. What do you think I did? I felt totally embarrassed, crushed because I didn’t know something that was apparently so easy, decided to hide my lack of knowledge, and struggled through the class. I was even too embarrassed to ask my classmates. Years later, when I figured out the answer to my simple question, everything fell in place and I understood what went on!
The far more constructive answer from my professor would have been: “Zonal refers to the east-west direction and meridional refers to the north-south direction. So if we have zonal flow, it’s oriented predominantly east to west, and if we have meridional flow, it’s oriented primarily north to south.” My response would have been “Excellent! That’s simple! Now I understand what the equations are trying to say!”

The lesson here: no questions are stupid. Sometimes, a stupid question just reflects that someone’s trying to break through the barrier of jargon. This is a positive thing – it means they’re trying to figure stuff out! After this experience with my dynamics professor, I vowed that I would never think someone was totally stupid if they were asking (what I thought was) a simple question. I hope my coworkers and staff members feel that I’ve followed through on this.

(It reminds me of another time in that same course. We did a lot of multivariate calculus and differential equations, and the professor kept referring to “zed,” but for the life of me I couldn’t find the “zed symbol” in any of the equations. And none of my books would tell me what the “zed symbol” looked like. I’ll leave this joke as an exercise for the reader.)

The California Zephyr, Amtrak train 6 out of Denver, stopped for about 5 minutes this morning at the tiny little station of Osceola, Iowa. It was just enough time for me to turn my wireless on, surf around for an unsecured network with a good signal, and check my email, the weather radar, and this morning’s news – all before we quickly chugged out of town and the connection dropped. But it was all the time I needed to get a few critical things done that I don’t typically do on my Blackberry. (Thank you, Belkin_51_Wireless of Osceola!) I told Ron how happy I was to be able to do this, and he mentioned that this was a good example of why he’s thinking about unsecuring his personal network – so he can contribute to this pool of “random acts of kindness”.

Sharing wireless is a perfect example of doing something for personal good (installing a wireless network in your house) which can also contribute to the good of society (making the network unsecured so strangers can use it when they’re passing through). Like any other sociotechnical system described by Brian Whitworth, for a “free wireless for all” system to be sustainable, you’d like for those strangers to be good citizens who don’t commit anti-social acts of sabotage in response to your generosity. Cybersecurity experts might have a fit thinking about such risky behavior (as you can tell, I’m not one of them and so haven’t thought through these implications at all).

I don’t mind if my neighbors use my wireless network. In fact, sometimes (when my router has been down) I’ve even used theirs to Google for information so I can get my system up and running again. (Thanks Steve). Without this emergency capability, I would have been sunk.

OK – so a wireless sharing strategy is not technically free wireless for all. Many people would still be paying for their connections. But people who would pay for internet access anyway can help bridge the digital divide, even if that divide is caused not by socioeconomic differences, but spatial differences – like one person just being away from their home turf for a little while. The big loser here would be the service providers (because a group of neighbors could even negotiate to split the cost of monthly service). But what’s more important – broadening access to information, or padding the profit margins? Of course the answer to this question is relative, but in an atmosphere of economic crisis, now is the time to start brainstorming solutions in terms of non-traditional variables other than money.

Today’s Washington Post includes an article on “How We Can Restore Confidence” in our economy. Confidence, after all, is one of the energetic drivers of the economy – without it, spending grinds to a halt, and the delicate equilibrium of economic flow is jeopardized. The author, Charles T. Munger, reflects on the reasons for the meltdown:

Many contributors to our over-the-top boom, which led to the gross bust, are known. They include insufficient controls over morality and prudence in banks and investment banks; undesirable conduct among investment banks; greatly expanded financial leverage, aided by direct or implied use of government credit; and extreme excess, sometimes amounting to fraud, in the promotion of consumer credit. Unsound accounting was widespread.

How did we, as a society, collectively allow these things to happen? Because many people were motivated by the huge profit potentials associated with real estate speculation, new financial instruments, and expanded financial leverage. This motivation towards self-interest, according to sociotechnical researcher Brian Whitworth of Massey University in New Zealand, tends to destabilize society by breaking down institutions and other systems intended to promote social order.In “A Social Environment Model of Socio-Technical Performance” he explains why [with my annotations in brackets]:

“While traditional technology like word processing supports individual competence, socio-technical systems support some sort of community synergy and have defenses against anti-social defection” [that is, acting against the interests of the group in a detrimental way (e.g. violation of human dignity, theft, cheating)]. “The social environment model suggests that people in society recognize both [social good and self-interest], and [tend to]combine them by anchoring one and applying the other. Anchoring social good then applying self-interest explains the highly profitable market trade systems of the last century, where individuals seek profit under social good laws. However contented individuals could anchor individual good, and then seek community benefit [through their positive, pro-social, individual contributions; Whitworth suggests that systems like online troubleshooting boards exemplify this approach because individuals have no incentive other than "good citizenship" to help others]. The latter is proposed to underlie the surprising successes of socio-technical systems.“

“Anchoring social good” is an intended outcome of public policy, which seeks to curb acts against society by instituting punishments. “Anchoring individual good” and seeking to apply one’s personal motivations for the greater good is a defining characteristic of successful socio-technical systems (like Amazon and eBay). The latter is aided by effective community policing where people take it upon themselves to enforce the rules of “good citizenship”.

This leads me to ask: what’s the socio-technically inspired public policy equivalent that might help us rectify the global financial crisis? I don’t have any good answers, but I think this research provides an interesting backdrop to analyze the situation against.

Why measure? Because measurement compels behavior. I’ve written about this previously in my article on the Trash Guy, but now Google is taking note:

”Studies show that being able to see your energy usage makes it easier to reduce it.”

This is the driver for their new Google PowerMeter project, which envisions a future where access to energy informatics is through your desktop. The project, an initiative of Google.org (the philanthropic research arm of Google), provides this as their pitch:

“How much does it cost to leave your TV on all day? What about turning your air conditioning 1 degree cooler? Which uses more power every month — your fridge or your dishwasher? Is your household more or less energy efficient than similar homes in your neighborhood? … At Google we’re committed to helping enable a future where access to personal energy information helps everyone make smarter energy choices. To get started, we’re working on a tool called Google PowerMeter which will show consumers their electricity consumption in near real-time in a secure iGoogle Gadget. We think PowerMeter will offer more useful and actionable feedback than complicated monthly paper bills that provide little detail on consumption or how to save energy.”

I like it. I’ve always wanted to have a simple way to monitor my home energy usage that doesn’t require me to buy an expensive device like the Black & Decker EM100B Energy Saver Series Power Monitor- that probably doesn’t give me the granularity of information I’m looking for anyway.