BLOGRIGE

What Makes a "Superfactory?"

Posted by Bob Hunt

Ah! Manufacturing!  I love to read what others are saying about what makes a manufacturing organization a good one these days - very different in many respects than when I first worked the factory floor 28 years ago. 

I read some very interesting comments in a Linked In group called "Superfactory" that identify those elements of performance excellence in high performing manufacturing organizations. If you are in manufacturing, or any other organization pursuing performance excellence, there is some very good stuff here.  Common themes for a superfactory are:

• all roads lead to the customer
• workforce engagement, characterized by "shiny eyes" and low turnover
• minimal inventory
• preventive maintenance
• knowledge management
• continuous improvement
• lots of "issues" for the right reasons

That last one is kinda curious, isn't it?  The commentor, James Sanfield, infers that even superfactories have problems because circumstances always change - it's how we respond to them that differentiates the "super" organizations. He suggests these six examples can be found in superfactories:

1. Hardly any inventory - because of 1 piece flow and virtually no buffers (an almost empty factory)
2. Problems - Visual management showing where the process has failed and how it is being fixed
3. Non-productive staff - People scratching their heads - solving another problem
4. Stopped production lines - Alarms, bells and stopped lines - being attended to and resolved
5. Idle people / machines being run at less than their capacity - suboptimisation subordinated to the constraint (the only part of the factory being used to almost it's capacity)
6. Managers with sleeves rolled up helping - not directing

Predictably, several of the aforementioned superfactory common themes, ie., customer focus, workforce engagement and knowledge management are "Categories" contained in the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, not to mention the cross cutting theme of continuous improvement.  

The Baldrige criteria do not presume to prescribe that all factories must adhere to the six examples listed, but what do you think?

What a Long Strategic Trip It's Been . . .

Posted by Jeff "Dire Wolf" Lucas

I would have bet dollars to doughnuts that I would not have a chance to construct a blog post that contained both the phrases "The Grateful Dead" and "The Baldrige Criteria", but I was wrong!

Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead, Story by Joshua Green in this month's Atlantic describes the pending release of the Grateful Dead archives at UC Santa Cruz.  Scholars in fields like musicology, sociology, and popular history have been chomping at the bit to get their hands on this treasure trove, but, according to Barry Barnes, business professor at Nova Southeastern University, management scholars will have plenty to contemplate as well.

I had always heard that the Dead were not only one of the most profitable acts in rock and roll history, but that they were also an incredible marketing machine with business chops that one would not expect from such counter culture icons.  For example, the Dead decided very early on not to crack down on fans taping their shows.  They knew that although they were giving away potential sales, the buzz that would be created by getting their music into many hands through tape sharing would repay them many times over, and besides, anyone engaged enough to want to tape a show was probably going to be spending money on other Dead related products and merchandise -- think an early freemium model.  

What I did not know, however, was that they were early implementers of some of our key Baldrige concepts.  Barnes states that the Dead "were masters of creating and delivering superior customer value". He describes their attention to customer focus as including an intense focus on their most loyal fans; establishing a telephone hotline to alert them to touring opportunities prior to public announcements, and holding some of the best seats for them.  While this now seems commonplace, such attention to customers was not a staple of corporate America in the late 60's and 70's. Barnes terms their attitude one of "strategic improvisation".

I highly recommend this short article (it happens to be in the same issue as Don Peck's chilling take on the recession that everyone is going to be talking about), and would like to hear about other sources of Baldrige-like wisdom from unlikely sources . . . or your favorite Dead performance.  I have to go with "Cassidy" from the 1976 Oakland Coliseum show.

Surprising Statistics: Has Workforce Engagement Declined with the Economy?

Posted by Pamela Wong

During difficult economic times, when people are being laid off, struggling to meet goals and quotas, and fearing the worst, most people might expect workforce engagement to decline…a lot! The Criteria for Performance Excellence defines engagement as “the extent of workforce commitment, both emotional and intellectual, to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organization. … An engaged workforce benefits from trusting relationships, a safe and cooperative environment, good communication and information flow, empowerment, and performance accountability.” It is often trust, cooperation, communication, and empowerment that are the first to disappear when things get difficult.

According to recently-released research by Gallup, workforce engagement stayed surprisingly stable through the deepening recession in 2008 and 2009. By tracking a large sample of employees, the organization found only a 1% change in overall engagement: from 31% in July 2008 to 30% in March 2009. What might explain this unexpected outcome?

Gallup surveyed Americans on a broad range of measures of employee engagement, and although overall engagement changed little, Gallup found that specific elements of engagement changed more. These include increased worry and stress, decreased time socializing, and rising obesity. In addition, “This likely has to do with the fact that engagement is based on very local, everyday, worker experiences,” says James K. Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist of workplace management and well being, in the Gallup Management Journal. “Engagement can serve as an anchor during troubled times.”  

I recently had the opportunity to speak with leaders of Los Alamos National Bank, a 2000 Baldrige Award recipient. They are happy to report that their workforce’s engagement, too, has remained stable. Workforce members are grateful to be employed, and they recognize that customers are more stressed, less trusting of the industry, and feeling economic pressures. It’s become more challenging to serve them. In response, Los Alamos National Bank is providing its workforce with training on factors affecting its customers. It is also stepping up training on its products, so that employees are prepared to answer customers’ increased questions and are equipped to “hold their hands” as they serve them.

I’d like to hear how your organization is faring through these difficult times. What are you doing to support the engagement of your workforce?

Be Your Own "Undercover Boss"

Posted by Barbara Fischer

I, and others, including Steve Tobak were fascinated by Waste Management President and COO Larry O’Donnell’s appearance on the TV show “Undercover Boss” following the Super Bowl earlier this month. If you missed it, the premise is a CEO goes undercover as a new employee in several roles throughout his organization in an attempt to learn more about his organization. And did he? You bet!

In an interview  reported in Tobak’s The Corner Office, O’Donnell says  his motivation was to assess employee engagement and to transform the company “from a place where people just show up to collect a paycheck to a company where they feel appreciated, they feel recognized, they feel like they have a voice and they become engaged in helping you solve the problem.”

The undercover angle makes a great story. But is this approach practical for most leaders? No, certainly not, although we all want to look for best practices and improvement opportunities within our own organizations. Baldrige can help by use of a couple tools: Are We Making Progress? and Are We Making Progress As Leaders? 

These automated and adaptable companion surveys allow you to see both your employee’s perspectives as well as your leadership team’s perspectives on a short series of questions related to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence . You will likely see some differences in a number of key areas, including perspectives on whether senior leaders live and breathe the organization’s values, and whether leadership proactively enables employees (and the organization as a whole) to succeed.  These differences may lead you to select which Criteria Categories to focus on first within your own organization to make an impact now. (O'Donnell could have discovered something about employee engagement from the questions on the tools about Baldrige Category 5: Workforce Focus.) So, why wait? You may just uncover some insights of your own!

What's Baldrige Got to Do with STEM Education?

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

 

I'm back and today I am concerned about the future of US science and technology. We must succeed in these arenas for the economic sustainability and competitiveness of the US. We are falling behind in the development of the next generation of scientists and engineers, not to mention a technologically literate society. I think Baldrige concepts can help!

"Education in science, technology, engineering, and math - collectively known as the STEM disciplines - is key to our nation's ability to prepare our youth with the skills and knowledge to succeed in jobs in the 21st century." This is the conclusion drawn in a September, 2009 report issued by the American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF). The results of the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) show that the US is not in the top ten listing of countries for success in math and science education. Americans are under-performing in STEM areas, even compared to less developed countries. Among the 57 countries participating in the 2006 Program for International Student Achievement (PISA), the US ranked 32nd in math literacy and 23rd in science literacy.

 

The AYPF recommends that we define STEM as a pipeline issue and that we increase collaboration across systems and sectors.  So how does this relate to Baldrige? What if there was a Baldrige-like award for STEM education in K-12 schools? Baldrige-like means criteria for identifying characteristics of role model STEM education efforts, recognized by their learning processes and educational outcomes; award recipients with a requirement to share their strategies; knowledge sharing mechanisms to replicate successful strategies; and a Presidential award to call attention to the role model schools and school systems. I think the concept has real possibilities. Let me know what you think!

Quality and Patient Safety

Posted by Zara Brunner

What a relief to learn that health quality leaders still rank quality/patient safety as their number one priority in the HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey 2010.  While I'm not a health care expert, I am a customer and knowing this is reassuring. 

The top four categories and the percentage rankings from the Survey are: quality/patient safety (65%), patient experience/patient satisfaction (54%), cost reduction (29%), and reimbursement (23%).

Rulon Stacey, President and CEO of 2008 Baldrige Award recipient Poudre Valley Health System, explains in the HealthLeaders Media interview how his organization has not only weathered the financial storm, but was prepared for it.  That's what can happen when leaders and organizations follow and apply the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence-- when quality increases and performance improves, costs can go down. It's no coincidence that the Baldrige Criteria ask how senior leaders create a sustainable organization, followed by how senior leaders create and promote a culture of patient safety.  Learn more about Poudre Valley's journey in the video below.

So what would you rank as the number one priority for health care organizations right now?

 

Drive, Autonomy, and Public Schools

Posted by Jeff Lucas

Last Friday, before the Snowpocalypse, I was taking the Metro to an education forum in downtown D.C. and I took the opportunity to finish up the first part of Drive, the latest book by Daniel Pink, current "It-Boy" of the Applied Behavioral Sciences (bet you didn't know there was such a thing!).  

I find his work and message quite compelling, and I originally thought this post was going to be about how some of his points are relatively provocative in a Baldrige sense.  For example:

"Indeed, just consider the very notion of 'empowerment.'  It presumes that the organization has the power and benevolently ladles some of it into the waiting bowls of grateful employees."

But when I arrived at the event, the release of the American Youth Policy Forum's Success at Every Step: How 23 Programs Support Youth on the Path to College and Beyond (also an excellent publication and one deserving of a post all on its own), I was struck by the structural barriers presented by our traditional public school model in terms of harnessing the Motivation 3.0 that Pink advocates for.

As a case in point, Drive describes Autonomy as one of the prerequisites for activating Motivation 3.0 and lists four elements that workers, engaged in relatively complex tasks, require autonomy over:  Task, Time, Technique, and Team.  I don't think there is much debate over the complexity faced by teachers charged with leading diverse groups of students to high levels of learning, but when I think about how much autonomy they have over the four elements I think the reality is that they have almost none.  Later in the book, Pink describes some concrete techniques for educators, but to my mind they are really more student-centered (re-evaluating homework, allowing students to select a challenging problem and then solve it, DIY report cards).  I am not sure they address the workforce based structural barriers presented by our current system of a teacher in front of 30 students for 180 days a year for 12 (or more or less) years. 

I believe Mr. Pink has been brought in to speak to staff in some of our local school systems here in the D.C. area recently.  I would love to know what his message with regard to organizing the educational work system might be, or what our savvy readers think about how we might harness Motivation 3.0 to improve educational outcomes. 

I hope to follow up on the themes from this book in another post soon -- what might the concept of Mastery have to inform the development of Baldrige Examiners . . . 

Bob Galvin -- Baldrige and Six Sigma Champion

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

I have only met Bob Galvin, former CEO of Motorola, a few times in my life, but each time he has left a lasting impression and shared pearls of wisdom I will always remember. Like the meeting at Mayo Clinic in the mid-1990's when he helped some very influential health care leaders understand the benefits of and support the establishment of a Baldrige in Health Care category. He called quality and Baldrige, "the leading edge of uncommon sense". A simple statement that has been one of my guides ever since.

Very recently, he was honored as the second inductee into the Six Sigma Hall of Fame. Motorola's use of six sigma as a process improvement tool was a key to Motorola's receipt of one of the first Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards in 1988. Then, as now, the use of six sigma for process improvement is very compatible with the use of the Baldrige Criteria as an overall framework for an organization's management system. Surviving in today's competitive environment requires ever-improving processes and process results linked to a strategic and leadership system that guides overall enterprise decisions and results. Baldrige provides that system.

How have you used six sigma or other process tools as a component of an overall integrated management system? How has your organization combined these tools with a Baldrige approach to overall enterprise management?

Baldrige Core Values: Organizational Learning + Agility = Learning Agility. What's That?

Posted by Bob Hunt

Wow! Talk about conceptual alignment!  I read a blog today that helps me tie together the Baldrige core values of Organizational and Personal Learning, and Agility.  The blog, entitled, "Thriving in the New Normal:  The Five Factors of Learning Agility," reprinted from an article by Timothy R. Clark and Conrad Gottfredson, positions 'Learning Agility' as a critically important organizational competency for sustaining competitiveness in today's world.  They define learning agility as, "the ability of an organization to learn at or above the speed of change - to sustain competitiveness."  Clark and Gottfredson say that moving an organization toward higher levels of learning agility is among the most important of leadership’s challenges today, and that putting systems in place to facilitate learning agility is key.  They also say that "those systems must be aligned and integrated in an efficient and intuitive way to accommodate performance..."  Okay Baldrige geeks, does this language sound familiar to you?  I knew there was a good reason that learning is referenced in so many places in the Baldrige Criteria.  In organizations seeking competitive advantage, this may be one of the few ways left to do so.

 

They also say that there are five ways you can promote or hinder learning agility in an organization:

 

1.  Intelligence Function— The capacity of an organization to survey and interpret its entire business ecosystem, including the internal competitive environment and the external competitive environment. The intelligence function interprets information and feeds the strategy function, which feeds the learning function.

 

2.  Learning Mindset—The prevailing assumptions, beliefs, and dispositions relating to the way people learn.

 

3.  Leadership Behavior—The dominant patterns of leadership within an organization.

 

4.  Organizational Support—The processes, systems, structures, and other forms of support that organizations provide to help employees in their formal and informal learning and execution activities.

 

5.  Learning Technology—The forms of technology employed to enable learning at individual and organizational levels.

If you read this article you will be amazed at its alignment with the Baldrige Criteria.  Tell me, is focusing on 'learning agility' a good use of resources in your organization? 

Snowpocalypse of 2010 (a.k.a. The Importance of Projections)

Posted by Bob Fangmeyer

Being a bit of a Baldrige geek, I have an unwelcomed tendancy to apply Baldrige concepts and principles at home. So yesterday morning, while lying in bed listening to the 40th inch of snow fall in the past 5 days, my wife suggested, somewhat sarcastically, that my blog post should be about the snowpocalypse we've been experiencing in the DC area. Of course she thought she was being cute, thinking there was no way I could somehow connect Baldrige to the extremely unusual weather. After 20 years of marriage and 13 years with Baldrige, I'd think she would know better. 

The snow storms of the past few days have been history-making. Never before has the DC area seen so much snowfall in such a short period of time. In fact, we have already exceeded the all-time snow totals for the entire season. Yet no one should have been unprepared. The forecasters did an outstanding job informing everyone of what to expect.

In the Baldrige Criteria, we emphasize the importance of focusing on the future and being prepared-- having plans,  processes, and resources in place that will allow your organization to weather any storm and even predict some of them. Yet all organizations are faced with limited resources. You cannot be fully prepared, fully staffed, and fully funded for every possible situation; only those that are likely or those that must be avoided at all costs.

What a difference knowing what to expect makes. Imagine the impact of these storms if the best information available was Al Roker telling us "Expect snow this weekend." Reliable predictions of the outcomes are absolutely imperative if you are to be properly prepared. Reliable predictions, however, are not easy to come by. It takes a lot of valid data about your environment, your operations, and your past and present outcomes before you can realistically begin to project future performance, much less predict the impact of a change to one of those elements.

For these reasons, the Baldrige scoring guidelines ask for performance projections, but only expects them from organizations that have demonstrated a fairly high level of maturity in the design, implementation, and improvement of their processes and in the tracking and use of organizational performance measures. It's kind of like comparing today's computer-based weather models to the prognostic abilities of a typical 19th century explorer. He would be able to tell you "A storm's a brewin'-- snow by nightfall", but with data and systems developed over many years, we can know days in advance how much snow to expect, when it will fall, where it will fall, how fast it will fall, when it will stop, how strong the winds will be, and what the temperature will be-- all valuable information for ensuring the various components of the system work in an integrated manner to enable everyone to weather the storm.

OK- so now I want to hear from you- do projections matter? Usually, they are different than goals. How do you use the two in tandem? Or do you just make them up so you can look good?