How Can We Perform Better?

In the current economic downturn, a lot of organizations are doing more with less. Fewer people. Less money. Same ambitious goals. Businesses have been slow to hire because of the higher productivity of the people they’ve retained.

If you’ve seen your organization’s strategic plan, you have a good idea what its goals are and some ideas about how you can help achieve them. At the same time, you’re probably busy enough not to be looking for more work. So how do you make your job more interesting and your role in the organization more valuable without burning yourself out with the effort?

The answer is to work more efficiently, and the way to do that is through process thinking. A smart question you can ask is, ‘What’s the process?’ The question gets people thinking about flaws in the process rather than blaming people for errors. Inevitably, focusing on the process triggers questions about what can be done to fix it.

If your organization has formal approaches to process management and improvement, you should learn what they are and how you can use them. If your organization doesn’t have formal approaches, or if it has them but reserves them for sanctioned process management/improvement teams, you will benefit from learning and applying some basics of process thinking.

The first is to understand what a process entails, which is captured in this SIPOC …

The 3 P’s: Starting Points for Integrating Baldrige

Where do you start? You want to make your organization more competitive, better able to meet customer needs, less inclined to mistakes, but you’ve been doing things the same way for years and you’re not sure where to begin.

When I get this question, I suggest starting with one or more of the 3 P’s: processes, people, or planning.

Start with Processes. The Baldrige model is a process model because the work of an organization is done through processes. Organizations that haven’t taken a formal approach to process management usually spend way too much time firefighting because their processes are out of control, or they blame people when their processes fail. Neither is a prescription for long-term success.

You can develop a process orientation by first identifying your key work processes, which Baldrige defines as your most important internal value creation processes. If you’re not sure where to start, look at what products and/or services you provide to your customers and figure out the internal steps that design, produce, and deliver those products and services. Then consider the support processes that make these customer-driven processes possible, such as your key processes in sales, marketing, finance, human resources, IT, etc. Once you’ve identified your value creation processes, assign a process owner responsible for each, usually a senior leader with the authority to allocate resources and remove obstacles. Form process improvement teams …

Xerox Corporation

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Joseph M. Juran’s book, The Architect of Quality (2004).  In this piece, he is reflecting on particularly interesting past clients that he had worked with, specifically Xerox.  Xerox was a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient in 1989, then again in 1997, and is still going strong today.

Xerox Corporation

Xerox produced and marketed the first xerographic copier, a machine that outperformed every copying process then in existence.  The patents gave the company a monopoly and enabled it to grow in sales and profits at a rate seldom matched in financial history.

Prior to the 1980s, my contacts with Xerox were brief.  Some Xerox managers had attended my courses.  On at least one occasion (1963), I conducted a five-day training course for managers and engineers at the company offices in Rochester, New York.  Then, in the early 1980s I was drawn into a most serious problem—Xerox’s sales were hemorrhaging, and the reason was poor quality.

The Xerox machines were seriously failure-prone, and there were other quality problems as well.  Xerox’s chief response had been to create a field service force to restore service, but the customers were not satisfied; they wanted no service interruptions.  The depth of this feeling was not known to the Xerox senior managers.  Their “instrument panel” kept them up to date on their dazzling financial results but did …

Planning or Replanning Cross-Functional Processes

The need for effective planning, management, and improvement of cross-functional processes usually arises for multiple reasons in most organizations. These can include long cycle times, budget overruns, product failures, excessive process defects, dissatisfied customers (both internal and external), no knowledge of how to do things differently, experiencing the “cross-functional dilemma,” and lastly, a leader who sees the need for change.

Through a vast collection of knowledge and reported experiences of successful replanning efforts, some common elements of effective change strategies can be deduced. These include a desire for change, knowledge of how to plan/replan a cross functional process, understanding of the underlying cultural elements which prevent change, and understanding of the differences between sequential versus concurrent process models.

At the heart of the problem for most organizations is the phenomenon of the “Cross-Functional Dilemma.” This dilemma is characterized in the healthcare-related graphic below.

As you can see from this graphic, the dilemma stems from the organization creating a functional organization structure and processes with functional goals. In this case, the dilemma arises as management does not realize that the organization operates mainly through its cross-functional processes. Typically then, we find that there is no effective planning or planning mechanism for these critical cross-functional processes, lack of management infrastructure, or any knowledge of process performance. Sub-optimization within the organization will be the result as each department attempts to do the best …