Tag Archives: sociotechnical

Engagement: Why Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad

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Engagement is a goal for many organizations. In the January 2018 issue of Forbes, it’s described as a hallmark of successful business, a cultural cornerstone that reduces the risk of turnover while enhancing product quality, process quality, and customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, the same story also cites a Gallup poll from 2017 that found only 32% of workers are engaged — “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.” The majority are disengaged, a problem that management consultant and bestselling author Tom Peters has also noted.

When developing strategies for engagement, though, it’s important to remember that engagement, too, can go wrong. Enthusiasm for sports teams or political parties can become so driven by passion that judgment is clouded, and intense engagement in online social groups communities of practice can devolve into anger and name calling. Trolls on Twitter, for example, are highly engaged — but this is clearly not the kind of behavior organizations would ideally like to model or promote.

Cult members are also typically highly committed and engaged — in the most extreme cases, this engagement can be life-or-death. Heaven’s Gate in 1997, and Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Guyana in 1978, are two of the more tragic examples.

How can an organization protect against “bad engagement”? Evan Czaplicki (creator of the programming language Elm) reflected on this problem in the open source software development community in this amazing hour captured on YouTube. For years, open source has been plagued by highly engaged community members who interact with one another unconstructively, ultimately damaging the feelings of trust and cohesion that would help community members meet their goals.

Some of his recommendations to promote “good engagement” by steering away from the bad include:

  • Limiting the number of characters people have to respond with
  • Limiting the types of interactions that are possible, e.g. upvoting or downvoting content
  • Making it possible for people to express intent with their statements or comments
  • Helping people identify and communicate their priorities as part of the exchange (e.g. simplicity vs. extensibility, freedom vs. community building)

For more hints and tips, be sure to check out Evan’s presentation.

 

Additional Reading:

Czaplicki, E. (2018, September 27-28). The Hard Parts of Open Source. Strange Loop Conference. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA&t=3s

Kappel, M. (2018, January 4). How To Establish A Culture Of Employee Engagement. Forbes. Available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2018/01/04/how-to-establish-a-culture-of-employee-engagement/#6ddb58de8dc4

 

Too Much Engagement Can Be Bad

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Engagement is a goal for many organizations. Sometimes this means customer engagement — other times, employee engagement — typically, both.

In the January 2018 issue of Forbes, engagement is described as a hallmark of successful business, a cultural cornerstone that reduces the risk of turnover while enhancing product quality, process quality, and customer satisfaction.

Unfortunately, the same story also cites a Gallup poll from 2017. It found only 32% of workers are engaged — “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.” The majority are disengaged, a problem that management consultant and bestselling author Tom Peters has also noted.

When developing strategies for engagement, though, it’s important to remember that engagement can go wrong. Enthusiasm for sports teams or political parties can become so driven by passion that judgment is clouded. Intense participation in online social groups or communities of practice can devolve into anger and name calling. Trolls on Twitter, for example, are highly engaged — but this is clearly not the kind of behavior organizations would ideally like to model or promote.

Cult members are also typically highly committed and engaged — in the most extreme cases, this engagement can be life-or-death. Heaven’s Gate in 1997 — and Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Guyana in 1978 — are two of the more tragic examples.

How can an organization protect against “bad engagement”? Evan Czaplicki (creator of the programming language Elm) reflected on this problem in the open source software development community in this amazing hour captured on YouTube. For years, open source has been plagued by highly engaged community members who beat each other up online, scare away new contributors, and ultimately damage the trust and cohesion that would help community members meet their goals.

Some of Czaplicki’s recommendations to promote “good engagement”  include:

  • Limiting the number of characters people have to respond to each other with using text
  • Limiting the types of interactions that are possible, e.g. upvoting or downvoting content
  • Making it possible for people to express intent with their statements or comments
  • Helping people identify and communicate priorities (e.g. simplicity vs. extensibility, freedom vs. community building)

For more hints and tips, be sure to check out Evan’s presentation. THE WHOLE HOUR IS WONDERFUL. Do it now.

Additional Reading:

Czaplicki, E. (2018, September 27-28). The Hard Parts of Open Source. Strange Loop Conference. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA&t=3s

Kappel, M. (2018, January 4). How To Establish A Culture Of Employee Engagement. Forbes. Available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2018/01/04/how-to-establish-a-culture-of-employee-engagement/#6ddb58de8dc4

Radziwill, N. The Key to Engagement is Narrative.

Leadership – No Pushing Required

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Brene Brown on leadership

When I was younger, I felt like I was pretty smart. Then I turned 23, was thrown into the fast-faced world of helping CxOs try to straighten out their wayward enterprise software implementations, and realized just how little I knew. My turning point came around 6pm on a hot, sticky, smelly evening on Staten Island in a conference room where a director named Mike Davis was yelling at a bunch of us youngster consultants. I thought he was mad at us, but in retrospect, it’s pretty clear that he just wanted something simple, and no matter how clearly he explained it, no one could hear him. Not even me, not even when I was being smart.

The customer was asking for some kind of functionality that didn’t make sense to me. It seemed excessive and unwieldy. I knew a better way to do it. So when Mike asked us to tell him, step by step, what user scenario we would be implementing… I told him THE RIGHT WAY. After about five attempts, he blew up. He didn’t want “the right way” — he wanted “the way that would work.” The way that would draw the most potential out of those people working on those processes. The way that would make people feel the most engaged, the most in control of their own destiny, the way that they were used to doing (with maybe a couple of small tweaks to lead them in a direction of greater efficiency). He knew them, and he knew that. He was being a leader.

Now I’m in my 40s and I have a much better view of everything I don’t know. (A lot of that used to be invisible to me.) It makes me both happier (for the perspective it brings) and unhappier (because I can see so many of the intellectual greenfields and curiosities that I’ll never get to spend time in — and know that more will crop up every year). I’m limited by the expiration date on this body I’m in, something that never used to cross my mind.

One of the things I’ve learned is that the best things emerge when groups of people with diverse skills (and maybe complementary interests) get together, drive out fear, and drive out preconceived notions about what’s “right” or “best”. When something amazing sprouts up, it’s not because it was your idea (or because it turned out “right”). It’s because the ground was tilled in such a way that a group of people felt comfortable bringing their own ideas into the light, making them better together, and being open to their own emergent truths.

I used to think leadership was about coming up with the BEST, RIGHT IDEA — and then pushing for it. This week, I got to see someone else pushing really hard for her “best, most right, more right than anyone else’s” idea. But it’s only hers. She’s intent on steamrolling over everyone around her to get what she wants. She’s going to be really lonely when the time comes to implement it… because even if someone starts out with her, they’ll leave when they realize there’s no creative expression in it for them, no room for them to explore their own interests and boundaries.  I feel sorry for her, but I’m not in a position to point it out. Especially since she’s older than me. Hasn’t she seen this kind of thing fail before? Probably, but she’s about to try again. Maybe she thinks she didn’t push hard enough last time.

Leadership is about creating spaces where other people can find purpose and meaning.  No pushing required.

Thanks to @maryconger who posted the image on Twitter earlier today. Also thanks to Mike Davis, wherever you are. If you stumble across this on the web one day, thanks for waking me up in 2000. It’s made the 18 years thereafter much more productive.

Happy 10th Birthday!

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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?
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

What Protests and Revolutions Reveal About Innovation

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The following book review will appear in an issue of the Quality Management Journal later this year:

The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution.   2016.  Micah White.  Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Alfred A. Knopf Publishing.  317 pages.

You may wonder why I’m reviewing a book written by the creator of the Occupy movement for an audience of academics and practitioners who care about quality and continuous improvement in organizations, many of which are trying to not only sustain themselves but also (in many cases) to make a profit. The answer is simple: by understanding how modern social movements are catalyzed by decentralized (and often autonomous) interactive media, we will be better able to achieve some goals we are very familiar with. These include 1) capturing the rapidly changing “Voice of the Customer” and, in particular, gaining access to its silent or hidden aspects, 2) promoting deep engagement, not just in work but in the human spirit, and 3) gaining insights into how innovation can be catalyzed and sustained in a truly democratic organization.

This book is packed with meticulously researched cases, and deeply reflective analysis. As a result, is not an easy read, but experiencing its modern insights in terms of the historical context it presents is highly rewarding. Organized into three sections, it starts by describing the events leading up to the Occupy movement, the experience of being a part of it, and why the author feels Occupy fell short of its objectives. The second section covers several examples of protests, from ancient history to modern times, and extracts the most important strategic insight from each event. Next, a unified theory of revolution is presented that reconciles the unexpected, the emotional, and the systematic aspects of large-scale change.

The third section speaks directly to innovation. Some of the book’s most powerful messages, the principles of revolution, are presented in Chapter 14. “Understanding the principles behind revolution,” this chapter begins, “allows for unending tactical innovation that shifts the paradigms of activism, creates new forms of protest, and gives the people a sudden power over their rulers.” If we consider that we are often “ruled” by the status quo, then these principles provide insight into how we can break free: short sprints, breaking patterns, emphasizing spirit, presenting constraints, breaking scripts, transposing known tactics to new environmental contexts, and proposing ideas from the edge. The end result is a masterful work that describes how to hear, and mobilize, the collective will.

 

Reviewed by

Dr. Nicole M. Radziwill

 

Free Speech in the Internet of Things (IoT)

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Image Credit: from "Reclaim Democracy" at http://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/

IF YOUR TOASTER COULD TALK, IT WOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH. Image Credit: from “Reclaim Democracy” at http://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/

By the end of 2016, Gartner estimates that over 6.4 BILLION “things” will be connected to one another in the nascent Internet of Things (IoT). As innovation yields new products, services, and capabilities that leverage this ecosystem, we will need new conceptual models to ensure quality and support continuous improvement in this environment.

I wasn’t thinking about quality or IoT this morning… but instead, was trying to understand why so many people on Twitter and Facebook are linking Justice Scalia’s recent death to Citizens United. (I’d heard of Citizens United, but quite frankly, thought it was a soccer team. Embarrassing, I know.) I was surprised to find out that instead, Citizens United is a conservative U.S. political organization best known for its role in the 2010 Supreme Court Case Citizens United v. FEC.

That case removed many restrictions on political spending. With the “super-rich donating more than ever before to individual campaigns plus the ‘enormous’ chasm in wealth has given the super-rich the power to steer the economic and political direction of the United States and undermine its democracy.” Interesting, sure… but what’s more interesting to me is that the Citizens United case, according to this source, 

  • Strengthened First Amendment protection for corporations, 
  • Affirmed that Money = Speech, and
  • Affirmed that Non-Persons have the right to free speech.

The article goes on to state that “if your underpants could talk, they would be protected by free speech.”

Not too long ago, a statement like this would just be silly. But today, with immersive IoT looming, this isn’t too far-fetched. 

  • What will the world look (and feel) like when everything you interact with has a “voice”?
  • How will the “Voice of the Customer” be heard when all of that customer’s stuff ALSO has a voice?
  • What IS the “Voice of the Customer” in a world like this?

3 Steps to Creating an Innovative Performance Culture

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

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

Want to leapfrog over your competitors by designing an extremely high-performance culture for your organization? If so, I have the secret formula.

It starts here: in his August post to ASQ’s View From the Q blog, guest blogger James Lawther asks:

What are your DOs and DON’Ts of creating a performance culture?

Citing Deming and Drucker, and noting how so many organizations rely on a “carrots and sticks” approach to performance management, he converges on the following recommendation: “The way to create a high performance culture is to seek out poor performance, embrace it and fix it, not punish it.” I think, though, that this is not a new approach… rather than improving upon poor performance, why don’t we seek out truly amazing performance and then just make more of it? These three steps will help you do it:

  • Eliminate power relationships. Power is poison! It creates and cultivates fear (which, according to Deming, we need to drive out). Unfortunately, our educational system and our economy are firmly steeped in power relationships… so we’re not accustomed to truly cooperative relationships. (In fact, being reliant on the income from our jobs shoehorns us into power relationships before we even begin working.) Holacracy is one approach that some organizations are trying out, but there are many possibilities for shifting from organizational structures that are designed around power and control, versus those that are designed to stimulate interest, creativity, and true collaboration.
  • Create systems to help everyone find (and share) their unique skills, talents, and gifts. This is the key to both engagement and high performance — and this isn’t a one-shot deal. These skills, talents, and gifts are extremely dependent on the organizational context, the external environment, and a person’s current interests… and all of these change over time!
  • Create systems to help people become stewards of their own performance. Accenture and Google have both recently given up performance reviews… and Deming has always warned about them! Unless we’re managing our own performance, and the process and outcomes are meaningful to us individually, we’ll just be dragged down by another power relationship.

Quality professionals are great at designing and setting up systems to achieve performance goals! Now, we have an innovation challenge: adopt the new philosophy, design quality systems that substitute community in place of power and control, and use our sophisticated and capable information systems to give people agency over their own performance.

“Creative teamwork utterly depends on true communication and is thus very seriously hindered by the presence of power relationships. The open-source community, effectively free of such power relationships, is teaching us by contrast how dreadfully much they cost in bugs, in lowered productivity, and in lost opportunities.” — E. S. Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar

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