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How to Become a Successful Change Leader

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Nicole Radziwill 2 comments

For this month’s Influential Voices Roundtable, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) asks: “In today’s current climate, transformation is a common term and transformative efforts are a regular occurrence. Although these efforts are common, according to Harvard Business Review two-thirds of large-scale transformation efforts fail. Research has proven that effective leadership is crucial for a change initiative to be successful. How can an individual become a successful Change Leader?“

Change is hard only because maintaining status quo is easy. Doing things even a little differently requires cognitive energy! Because most people are pretty busy, there has to be a clear payoff to invest that extra energy in changing, even if the change is simple.

Becoming a successful change leader means helping people find the reasons to invest that energy on their own. First, find the source of resistance (if there is one) and do what you can to remove it. Second, try co-creation instead of feedback to build solutions. Here’s what I mean.

Find Sources of Resistance

In 1983, information systems researcher M. Lynne Markus wanted to figure out why certain software implementations, “designed at great cost of time and money, are abandoned or excessively overhauled because they were unenthusiastically received by their intended users.” Nearly 40 years later, enterprises still occasionally run into the same issue, even though Software as a Service (SaaS) models can (to some extent) reduce this risk.

Before her research started, she found these themes associated with resistance (they will probably feel familiar to you even today):

By studying failed software implementations in finance, she uncovered three main sources for the resistance. So as a change leader, start out by figuring out if they resonate, and then apply one of the remedies on the right:

As you might imagine, this third category (the “political version of interaction theory”) is the most difficult to solve. If a new process or system threatens someone’s power or position, they are unlikely to admit it, it may be difficult to detect, and it will take some deep counseling to get to the root cause and solve it.

Co-Creation Over Feedback

Imagine this: a process in your organization is about to change, and someone comes to you with a step-by-step outline of the new proposed process. “I’d like to get your feedback on this,” he says.

That’s nice, right? Isn’t that exactly what’s needed to ensure smooth management of change? You’ll give your feedback, and then when it’s time to adopt the process, it will go great – right?

In short, NO.

For change to be smooth and effective, people have to feel like they’re part of the process of developing the solution. Although people might feel slightly more comfortable if they’re asked for their thoughts on a proposal, the resultant solution is not theirs — in fact, their feedback might not even be incorporated into it. There’s no “skin in the game.”

In contrast, think about a scenario where you get an email or an invitation to a meeting. “We need to create a new process to decide which of our leads we’ll follow up on, and evaluate whether we made the right decision. We’d like it to achieve [the following goals]. We have to deal with [X, Y and Z] boundary conditions, which we can’t change due to [some factors that are well articulated and understandable].”

You go to the meeting, and two hours later all the stakeholders in the room have co-created a solution. What’s going to happen when it’s time for that process to be implemented? That’s right — little or no resistance. Why would anyone resist a change that they thought up themselves?

Satisficing

Find the resistance, cast it out, and co-create solutions. But don’t forget the most important step: recognizing that perfection is not always perfect. (For quality professionals, this one can be kind of tough to accept at times.)

What this means is: in situations where change is needed, sometimes it’s better to adopt processes or practices that are easier or more accessible for the people who do them. Processes that are less efficient can sometimes be better than processes that are more efficient, if the difference has to do with ease of learning or ease of execution. Following these tips will help you help others take some of the pain out of change.

Markus, M. L. (1983). Power, politics, and MIS implementation.  Communications of the ACM, 26(6), 430-444. Available from http://130.18.86.27/faculty/warkentin/papers/Markus1983_CACM266_PowerPoliticsMIS.pdf

The Connected, Intelligent, Automated Industry 4.0 Supply Chain

Posted on March 16, 2019 by Nicole Radziwill 3 comments

ASQ’s March Influential Voices Roundtable asks this question: “Investopedia defines end-to-end supply chain (or ‘digital supply chain’) as a process that refers to the practice of including and analyzing each and every point in a company’s supply chain – from sourcing and ordering raw materials to the point where the good reaches the end consumer. Implementing this practice can increase process speed, reduce waste, and decrease costs.

In your experience, what are some best practices for planning and implementing this style of supply chain to ensure success?“

Supply chains are the lifeblood of any business, impacting everything from the quality, delivery, and costs of a business’s products and services to customer service and satisfaction to ultimately profitability and return on assets.
Stank, T., Scott, S. & Hazen, B. (2018, April). A SAVVY GUIDE TO THE DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN: HOW TO EVALUATE AND LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY TO BUILD A SUPPLY CHAIN FOR THE DIGITAL AGE. Whitepaper, Haslam School of Business, University of Tennessee.

Industry 4.0 enabling technologies like affordable sensors, more ubiquitous internet connectivity and 5G networks, and reliable software packages for developing intelligent systems have started fueling a profound digital transformation of supply chains. Although the transformation will be a gradual evolution, spanning years (and perhaps decades), the changes will reduce or eliminate key pain points:

Connected: Lack of visibility keeps 84% of Chief Supply Chain Officers up at night. More sources of data and enhanced connectedness to information will alleviate this issue.
Intelligent: 87% of Chief Supply Chain Officers say that managing supply chain disruptions proactively is a huge challenge. Intelligent algorithms and prescriptive analytics can make this more actionable.
Automated: 80% of all data that could enable supply chain visibility and traceability is “dark” or siloed. Automated discovery, aggregation, and processing will ensure that knowledge can be formed from data and information.

Since the transformation is just getting started, best practices are few and far between — but recommendations do exist. Stank et al. (2018) created a digital supply chain maturity rubric, with highest levels that reflect what they consider recommended practices. I like these suggestions because they span technical systems and management systems:

Gather structured and unstructured data from customers, suppliers, and the market using sensors and crowdsourcing (presumably including social media)
Use AI & ML to “enable descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive insights simultaneously” and support continuous learning
Digitize all systems that touch the supply chain: strategy, planning, sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, collaboration, and customer service
Add value by improving efficiency, visibility, security, trust, authenticity, accessibility, customization, customer satisfaction, and financial performance
Use just-in-time training to build new capabilities for developing the smart supply chain

One drawback of these suggestions is that they provide general (rather than targeted) guidance.

A second recommendation is to plan initiatives that align with your level of digital supply chain maturity. Soosay & Kannusamy (2018) studied 360 firms in the Australian food industry and found four different stages. They are:

Stage 1 – Computerization and connectivity. Sharing data across they supply chain ecosystem requires that it be stored in locations that are accessible by partners. Cloud-based systems are one option. Make sure authentication and verification are carefully implemented.
Stage 2 – Visibility and transparency. Adding new sensors and making that data accessible provides new visibility into the supply chain. Key enabling technologies include GPS, time-temperature integrators and data loggers.
Stage 3 – Predictive capability. Access to real-time data from supply chain partners will increase the reliability and resilience of the entire network. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and radio frequency (RFID) tagging are enablers at this stage.
Stage 4 – Adaptability and self-learning. At this stage, partners plan and execute the supply chain collaboratively. Through Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), responsibility for replenishment can even be directly assumed by the supplier.

Traceability is also gaining prominence as a key issue, and permissioned blockchains provide one way to make this happen with sensor data and transaction data. Recently, the IBM Food Trust has demonstrated the practical value provided by the Hyperledger blockchain infrastructure for this purpose. Their prototypes have helped to identify supply chain bottlenecks that might not otherwise have been detected.

What should you do in your organization? Any way to enhance information sharing between members of the supply chain ecosystem — or more effectively synthesize and interpret it — should help your organization shift towards the end-to-end vision. Look for opportunities in both categories.

References for Connected, Intelligent, Automated stats:

IBM. (2018, February). Global Chief Supply Chain Officer Study. Available from this URL

Geriant, J. (2015, October). The Changing Face of Supply Chain Risk Management. SCM World.

IBM & IDC. (2017, March). The Thinking Supply Chain. Available from this URL

Quality 4.0 in Basic Terms (Interview)

Posted on October 17, 2018 by Nicole Radziwill Leave a comment

On October 12th I dialed in to Quality Digest Live to chat with Dirk Dusharne, Editor-in-Chief of Quality Digest, about Quality 4.0 and my webinar on the topic which was held yesterday (October 16).

Check out my 13-minute interview here, starting at 14:05! It answers two questions:

What is Quality 4.0 – in really basic terms that are easy to remember?
How can we use these emerging technologies to support engagement and collaboration?

You can also read more about the topic here on the Intelex Community, or come to ASQ’s Quality 4.0 Summit in Dallas next month where I’ll be sharing more information along with other Quality 4.0 leaders like Jim Duarte of LJDUARTE and Associates and Dan Jacob of LNS Research.

Quality 4.0: Reveal Hidden Insights with Data Sci & Machine Learning (Webinar)

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Nicole Radziwill Leave a comment

What’s Quality 4.0, why is it important, and how can you use it to gain competitive advantage? Did you know you can benefit from Quality 4.0 even if you’re not a manufacturing organization? That’s right. I’ll tell you more next week.

Sign up for my 50-minute webinar at 2pm ET on Tuesday, October 16, 2018 — hosted by Dirk Dusharme and Mike Richman at Quality Digest. This won’t be your traditional “futures” talk to let you know about all of the exciting technology on the horizon… I’ve actually been doing and teaching data science, and applying machine learning to practical problems in quality improvement, for over a decade.

Come to this webinar if:

You have a LOT of data and you don’t know where to begin
You’re kind of behind… you still use paper and Excel and you’re hoping you don’t miss the opportunities here
You’re a data scientist and you want to find out about quality and process improvement
You’re a quality professional and you want to find out more about data science
You’re a quality engineer and you want some professional preparation for what’s on the horizon
You want to be sure you get on our Quality 4.0 mailing list to receive valuable information assets for the next couple years to help you identify and capture opportunities

Register Here! See you on Tuesday. If you can’t make it, we’ll also be at the ASQ Quality 4.0 Summit in Dallas next month sharing more information about the convergence of quality and Big Data.

Happy 10th Birthday!

Posted on October 11, 2018 by Nicole Radziwill One comment

10 years ago today, this blog published its first post: “How Do I Do a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Project?” Looking back, it seems like a pretty simple place to have started. I didn’t know whether it would even be useful to anyone, but I was committed to making my personal PDSA cycles high-impact: I was going to export things I learned, or things I found valuable. (As it turns out, many people did appreciate the early posts even though it would take a few years for that to become evident!)

Since then, hundreds more have followed to help people understand more about quality and process improvement in theory and in practice. I started writing because I was in the middle of my PhD dissertation in the Quality Systems program at Indiana State, and I was discovering so many interesting nuggets of information that I wanted to share those with the world – particularly practitioners, who might not have lots of time (or even interest) in sifting through the research. In addition, I was using data science (and some machine learning, although at the time, it was much more difficult to implement) to explore quality-related problems, and could see the earliest signs that this new paradigm for problem solving might help fuel data-driven decision making in the workplace… if only we could make the advanced techniques easy for people in busy jobs to use and apply.

We’re not there yet, but as ASQ and other organizations recognize Quality 4.0 as a focus area, we’re much closer. As a result, I’ve made it my mission to help bring insights from research to practitioners, to make these new innovations real. If you are developing or demonstrating any new innovative techniques that relate to making people, processes, or products better, easier, faster, or less expensive — or reducing risks and building individual and organizational capabilities — let me know!

I’ve also learned a lot in the past decade, most of which I’ve spent helping undergraduate students develop and refine their data-driven decision making skills, and more recently at Intelex (provider of integrated environment, health & safety, and quality management EHSQ software to enterprises and smaller organizations). Here are some of the big lessons:

People are complex. They have multidimensional lives, and work should support and enrich those lives. Any organization that cares about performance — internally and in the market — should examine how it can create complete and meaningful experiences. This applies not only to customers, but to employees and partners and suppliers. It also applies to anyone an organization has the power and potential to impact, no matter how small.
Everybody wants to do a good job (and be recognized for it). How can we create environments where each person is empowered to contribute in all the areas where they have talent and interest? How can these same environments be designed with empathy as a core capability?
Your data are your most valuable assets. It sounds trite, but data is becoming as valuable as warehouses, inventory, and equipment. I was involved in a project a few years ago where we digitized data that had been collected for three years — and by analyzing it, we uncovered improvement opportunities that when implemented, saved thousands of dollars a week. We would not have been able to do that if the data had remained scratched in pencil on thousands of sheets of well-worn legal paper.
Nothing beats domain expertise (especially where data science is concerned). I’ve analyzed terabytes of data over the past decade, and in many cases, the secrets are subtle. Any time you’re using data to make decisions, be sure to engage the people with practical, on-the-ground experience in the area you’re studying.
Self-awareness must be cultivated. The older you get, and the more experience you gain, the more you know what you don’t know. Many of my junior colleagues (and yours) haven’t reached this point yet, and will need some help from senior colleagues to gain this awareness. At the same time, those of you who are senior have valuable lessons to learn from your junior colleagues, too! Quality improvement is grounded in personal and organizational learning, and processes should help people help each other uncover blind spots and work through them — without fear.

Most of all, I discovered that what really matters is learning. We can spend time supporting human and organizational performance, developing and refining processes that have quality baked in, and making sure that products meet all their specifications. But what’s going on under the surface is more profound: people are learning about themselves, they are learning about how to transform inputs into outputs in a way that adds value, and they are learning about each other and their environment. Our processes just encapsulate that organizational knowledge that we develop as we learn.

Quality 4.0: Let’s Get Digital

Posted on October 1, 2018 by Nicole Radziwill 2 comments

Want to find out what Quality 4.0 really is — and start realizing the benefits for your organization? If so, check out the October 2018 issue of ASQ’s Quality Progress, where my new article (“Let’s Get Digital“) does just that.

Quality 4.0 asks how we can leverage connected, intelligent, automated (C-I-A) technologies to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction: “As connected, intelligent and automated systems are more widely adopted, we can once again expect a renaissance in quality tools and methods.” In addition, we’re working to bring this to the forefront of quality management and quality engineering practice at Intelex.

Quality 4.0 Evolution

The progression can be summarized through four themes. We’re in the “quality as discovery” stage today:

Quality as inspection: In the early days, quality assurance relied on inspecting bad quality out of items produced. Walter A. Shewhart’s methods for statistical process control (SPC) helped operators determine whether variation was due to random or special causes.
Quality as design: Next, more holistic methods emerged for designing quality in to processes. The goal is to prevent quality problems before they occur. These movements were inspired by W. Edwards Deming’s push to cease dependence on inspection, and Juran’s Quality by Design.
Quality as empowerment: By the 1990’s, organizations adopting TQM and Six Sigma advocated a holistic approach to quality. Quality is everyone’s responsibility and empowered individuals contribute to continuous improvement.
Quality as discovery: Because of emerging technologies, we’re at a new frontier. In an adaptive, intelligent environment, quality depends on how:
- quickly we can discover and aggregate new data sources,
- effectively we can discover root causes and
- how well we can discover new insights about ourselves, our products and our organizations.”

Where is Quality Management Headed?

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Nicole Radziwill One comment

Image Credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to

[This post is in response to ASQ’s February topic for the Influential Voices group, which asks: Where do you plan to take your career in 2016? What’s your view of careers in quality today—what challenges is this field facing? How can someone starting out in quality succeed?]

We are about to experience a paradigm shift in production, operations, and service: a shift that will have direct consequences on the principles and practice of design, development, and quality management. This “fourth industrial revolution” of cyber-physical systems will require more people in the workforce to understand quality principles associated with co-creation of value, and to develop novel business models. New technical skills will become critical for a greater segment of workers, including embedded software, artificial intelligence, data science, analytics, Big Data (and data quality), and even systems integration.

Over the past 20 years, we moved many aspects of our work and our lives online. And in the next 20 years, the boundaries between the physical world and the online world will blur — to a point where the distinction may become unnecessary.

Here is a vignette to illustrate the kinds of changes we can anticipate. Imagine the next generation FitBit, the personalized exercise assistant that keeps track of the number of steps you walk each day. As early as 2020, this device will not only automatically track your exercise patterns, but will also automatically integrate that information with your personal health records. Because diet strategies have recently been shown to be predominantly unfounded, and now researchers like Kevin Hall, Eran Elinav, and Eran Siegal know that the only truly effective diets are the ones that are customized to your body’s nutritional preferences [1], your FitBit and your health records will be able to talk to your food manager application to design the perfect diet for you (given your targets and objectives). Furthermore, to make it easy for you, your applications will also autonomously communicate with your refrigerator and pantry (to monitor how much food you have available), your local grocery store, and your calendar app so that food deliveries will show up when and only when you need to be restocked. You’re amazed that you’re spending less on food, less of it is going to waste, and you never have to wonder what you’re going to make for dinner. Your local grocery store is also greatly rewarded, not only for your loyalty, but because it can anticipate the demand from you and everyone else in your community – and create specials, promotions, and service strategies that are targeted to your needs (rather than just what the store guesses you need).

Although parts of this example may seem futuristic, the technologies are already in place. What is missing is our ability to link the technologies together using development processes that are effective and efficient – and in particular, coordinating and engaging the people who will help make it happen. This is a job for quality managers and others who study production and operations management

As the Internet of Things (IoT) and pervasive information become commonplace, the fundamental nature and character of how quality management principles are applied in practice will be forced to change. As Eric Schmidt, former Chairman of Google, explains: “the new age of artificial intelligence is beginning, and it’s a big deal.” [2] Here are some ways that this shift will impact researchers and practitioners interested in quality:

Strategic deployment of IoT technologies will help us simultaneously improve our use of enterprise assets, reduce waste, promote sustainability, and coordinate people and machines to more effectively meet strategic goals and operational targets.
Smart materials, embedded in our production and service ecosystems, will change our views of objects from inert and passive to embedded and engaged. For example, MIT has developed a “smart band-aid” that communicates with a wound, provides visual indicators of the healing process, and delivers medication as needed. [3] Software developers will need to know how to make this communication seamless and reliable in a variety of operations contexts.
Our technologies will be able to proactively anticipate the Voice of the Customer, enabling us to meet not only their stated and implied needs, but also their emergent needs and hard-to-express desires. Similarly, will the nature of customer satisfaction change as IoT becomes more pervasive?
Cloud and IoT-driven Analytics will make more information available for powerful decision-making (e.g. real-time weather analytics), but comes with its own set of challenges: how to find the data, how to assess data quality, and how to select and store data with likely future value to decision makers. This will be particularly challenging since analytics has not been a historical focus among quality managers. [4]
Smart, demand-driven supply chains (and supply networks) will leverage Big Data, and engage in automated planning, automatic adjustment to changing conditions or supply chain disruptions like war or extreme weather events, and self-regulation.
Smart manufacturing systems will implement real time communication between people, machines, materials, factories and warehouses, supply chain partners, and logistics partners using cloud computing. Production systems will adapt to demand as well as environmental factors, like the availability of resources and components. Sustainability will be a required core capability of all organizations that produce goods.
Cognitive manufacturing will implement manufacturing and service systems capable of perception, judgment, and improving quality autonomously – without the delays associated with human decision-making or the detection of issues.
Cybersecurity will be recognized as a critical component of all of the above. For most (if not all) of these next generation products and production systems, quality will not be possible without addressing information security.
The nature of quality assurance will also change, since products will continue to learn (and not necessarily meet their own quality requirements) after purchase or acquisition, until the consumer has used them for a while. In a December 2015 article I wrote for Software Quality Professional, I ask “How long is the learning process for this technology, and have [product engineers] designed test cases to accommodate that process after the product has been released? The testing process cannot find closure until the end of the ‘burn-in’ period when systems have fully learned about their surroundings.” [5]
We will need new theories for software quality practice in an era where embedded artificial intelligence and technological panpsychism (autonomous objects with awareness, perception, and judgment) are the norm.

How do we design quality into a broad, adaptive, dynamically evolving ecosystem of people, materials, objects, and processes? This is the extraordinarily complex and multifaceted question that we, as a community of academics and practitioners, must together address.

Just starting out in quality? My advice is to get a technical degree (science, math, or engineering) which will provide you with a solid foundation for understanding the new modes of production that are on the horizon. Industrial engineering, operations research, industrial design, and mechanical engineering are great fits for someone who wants a career in quality, as are statistics, data science, manufacturing engineering, and telecommunications. Cybersecurity and intelligence will become increasingly more central to quality management, so these are also good directions to take. Or, consider applying for an interdisciplinary program like JMU’s Integrated Science and Technology where I teach. We’re developing a new 21-credit sector right now where you can study EVERYTHING in the list above! Also, certifications are a plus, but in addition to completing training programs be sure to get formally certified by a professional organization to make sure that your credentials are widely recognized (e.g. through ASQ and ATMAE).

References

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/no-one-size-fits-all-diet-plan_564d605de4b00b7997f94272

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/09/15/what-eric-schmidt-gets-right-and-wrong-about-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence/

[3] http://news.mit.edu/2015/stretchable-hydrogel-electronics-1207

[4] Evans, J. R. (2015). Modern Analytics and the Future of Quality and Performance Excellence. The Quality Management Journal, 22(4), 6.

[5] Radziwill, N. M., Benton, M. C., Boadu, K., & Perdomo, W., 2015: A Case-Based Look at Integrating Social Context into Software Quality. Software Quality Professional, December.