Quality and Innovation

Andrew Grove’s political commentary today in the Washington Post (“Mr. President, Time to Rein in the Chaos”) was interesting to me not because of the opinions presented, but because of his unorthodox suggestion: successful change management can emerge when leaders deliberately allow pain, then rescue the masses once the pain has become too unbearable:

I have found that to succeed, an organization must travel through two phases: first, a period of chaotic experimentation in which intense discussion is allowed, even encouraged, by those in charge. In time, when the chaos becomes unbearable, the leadership reins in chaos with a firm hand. The first phase serves to expose the needs and options, the potential and pitfalls. The organization and its leaders learn a lot going through this phase. But frustration also builds, and eventually the cry is heard: Make a decision — any decision — but make it now. The time comes for the leadership to end the chaos and commit to a path.

We have gone through months of chaos experimenting with ways to introduce stability in our financial system. The goals were to allow the financial institutions to do their jobs and to develop confidence in them. I believe by now, the people are eager for the administration to rein in chaos. But this is not happening.

Would you, as a manager, take this kind of approach if you knew it would effect the change you wanted?

The ethical implications of this strategy are remarkable to me. First, put yourself in the frame of mind where you’re thinking about organizational change management – adopting a new software package, or reorganizing the hierarchy. Change like this is tough, and often results in mental and emotional pain as people adjust to the new state of the workplace – not physical pain, but definitely pain in the sense of its official definition. But is it appropriate to allow this pain in order to achieve benefits – both for those who have “suffered” and the organization as a whole?

I have no answers to offer – but think that this dilemma might be illuminated further by understanding the ethical standards for pain management and research that have already been explored by the medical community.

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 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 best definition for technology that I’ve found comes from the dictionary:

• Technology - The sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)

The phrase “social groups” acknowledges that people are a critical part of developing and
applying technology. “Provide themselves” indicates that technology is closely linked to the context
in which it is used, and deals with artifacts that people or systems create. “Material objects” implies
tangible artifacts or outcomes (e.g. processes, products, tools). And because civilization is defined as
an “advanced state of human society,” technology, therefore, is concerned with advancing human capabilities.

Using this definition as a baseline, note that quality systems (e.g. ISO 9000, CMMI, even David Allen’s GTD!) are technologies, and social networks are a foundational concept for both quality and innovation to take root.

Technology management is the combination of science, engineering and management knowledge and practice, with technology as the central means of wealth and value creation. (Khalil, 2000) This definition can nicely coexist with any of the historical definitions of management covered in a previous post.

Kearns et al. (2005) has attempted to make the connections between general management and technology management more explicit, by developing a model to describe the spheres of influence of the technology manager. The “Six Facets Model” illustrates that technology management is an integrative, multidisciplinary field, focused on effective problem solving:

• Product and Process Integration through systems thinking, quality management system development, and benchmarking (for example)
• Evaluation (at the organizational, technical and personal levels)
• Planning (including strategic plans, work plans, and environmental assessment)
• Implementation of quality systems, documentation systems, organizational processes, software, project execution, project planning and control
• Change Management involving both management and leadership of change
• Training and Engagement to cultivate individual and organizational capabilities, and promote workforce development

Additionally, in all of these areas, technology managers must remember that communications and networking have been identified as important mechanisms for actively implementing change.

There are also alternatives to the Kearns Six Facet Model that you can read about here.

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Kearns, M.B. et al. (2005). The six facets model: technology management in the effective implementation of change. International Journal of Innovation & Technology Management, 2, 77-100.
Khalil, T. (2000). Management of technology: competitiveness and wealth creation.

The ISO 8402 standard defines quality as “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear upon its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs.”

It is a static definition, fixed in time, and considers only those characteristics that meet stated and implied needs now. It addresses the needs of the customers (e.g. inclusion of certain features) as well as the stakeholders (e.g. financial, schedule and resource constraints). This definition attends to the specified needs that are embodied in requirements, specifications documents, and standards (including quality management systems), while acknowledging that an equally important body of needs might be unstated or implied. This suggests that the process of needs identification extends well beyond simply capturing and responding to the audible “voice of the customer”.

The word “totality” suggests that quality is more than just characteristics; it is also the design, implementation, and interaction of those characteristics with the individual, implying a much richer context for the practice of quality problem solving. Because utility is the ability to satisfy needs, this definition can even be abbreviated as “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its utility.”

This definition easily accommodates the notion of innovation when the time dimension is added: innovation becomes the totality of characteristics needed to satisfy future utility.

What is quality? There are a myriad of ways to define quality, which is one reason why the study or pursuit of quality can feel so nebulous at times. For example, quality can be considered:

• Zero defects (Crosby)
• Conformance to requirements (Crosby)
• Fitness for use (Juran)
• Best for customer conditions (Feigenbaum)

Hunt (1992) provides an overview of the defintions of quality. This considers the definitions above a little more thematically:

• Transcendent (you know it when you see it)
• Product-based (defect-free, or presence of required/positive attributes)
• User-based (customer defines needs)
• Manufacturing-based (conformance)
• Value-based (“best for customer conditions”)

Despite the range of definitions, the goals underlying the pursuit of quality and continuous improvement are the same: achieving conformity, reducing variation, eliminating waste and rework, eliminating non-value-adding activity, preventing human error, preventing defects, improving productivity, and increasing efficiency and effectiveness (Okes & Westcott, 2000).

Only one definition seems to capture all of the others, though. ISO 8402 defines quality as “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs.” An entity can be any technology – a product, a process, or a system. “Characteristics” covers both the attributes of that technology and the processes that produced it. “Stated and implied” needs acknowledges that customers will have needs, but other stakeholders can have needs too (you, your boss, your shareholders, your company). If “you know quality when you see it,” that means that something is meeting your stated and implied needs – your spoken and unspoken specifications. Even if you can’t define what you mean by quality, when quality is achieved, your implied needs will be met.

As much as the ISO 8402 definition of quality really appeals to me, there is still one framework for understanding quality that’s even more comprehensive and elegant! It’s Mitra’s Model.

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Hunt, V.D. (1992) Quality in America: How to Implement a Competitive Quality Program. Mc-Graw Hill.

Okes, D. & Westcott, R. (2000). The Certified Quality Manager Handbook. Milwaukee: Quality Press.