The No Tool Zone

Working with a new company that has the right attitude going into the effort, one can only be optimistic.  The management is begging to be challenged, it is encouraged.  However, I am caught in a world between realism and hope.  There will be a roller coaster ride of emotion for my new client – management and workers alike.

Many prospective customers struggle with what the Vanguard Method (tVM) is about and try to fit it into their existing paradigm.  This makes the conversation awkward as the expectation of many is that I do process improvement . . . and I don’t.  Managers with this thinking want to do things better, tVM is about doing better things.  This is one of several reasons why improvement is so dramatic for those executives that understand that this means them too – when it comes to change.

Executives become participants by design.  Other improvement efforts embrace “sponsorship” and “support” which to me is completely lame and leaves too much improvement on the table – not empirical, but something like 30 – 40%.  Sustainability improves dramatically when executives understand – they are less likely to undo the good things.

The reality is that too few executives want to be challenged.  Ego and position in hierarchy play a role in this thinking.  Executives making the big money should have the answers in their mind and being challenged is – therefore, viewed as confrontational.  Nothing wrong with confrontation, but only when it is invited in.

Most people that know about the Vanguard Method know they will be challenged when we are invited in, the reputation of our successful work with clients often precedes us.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the Vanguard Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

The funny thing about change is that management wants all the change, but doesn’t want to change themselves.

The biggest hurdles to improvement are management.  This is not referencing how to do things better to the front-line . . . it is management by itself.  The problem is in the mirror.

Recent events have allowed me to take inventory of management hurdles.  So let’s take a look:

Politics. To survive large bureaucratic service organizations (all of them), you have to look good all the time.  A silver-tongue (another word for BS) goes a long way when compared to knowledge.  “Didn’t he say that well” does not overcome the lack of facts and evidence in the communication.

Navigating the politics has usually gotten folks in management positions.  Inevitably why we have so many dopes in management.  Looking good does not mean performing well.  In fact, it is a red flag.

Me, get my hands dirty? Closely related to the political hurdle are management that prefer the comfort of their office or being away from the office.  Meetings can kill lots of time too.  Asking management to be in the work to get knowledge and/or evidence usually gets that deer in the headlight look – who me?  The higher up, the more difficult as the egos are bigger.

It begs the question, did people get into management because they didn’t want to do real work?  The shuffling of papers and dictates from the mountain do not really help create value, they create more waste.

The management factory. All those people that management hires to help with the politics and looking good.  You hear words and phrases like “best practice,”  “governance” and “plans.”  Scores of people hired to help build the plans and others ensure that the front-line is following their mandates.  All add no value and waste precious resources.

The front-line folks are either frustrated by or aspire to be in the management factory.  Because creating value for customers just isn’t cool.  Making front-line employees do stupid things is much more fun.  Costly, but fun.

Hierarchy. No one and I mean no one talks to the boss until all the boxes are ticked.  A front-line employee reaching out to a CEO or an executive is not allowed.  There is an open door policy, but of course all the boxes must be ticked.  You will grow old navigating the hierarchy.  If you are lucky enough you may be granted 5 minutes with the big cheese as long as you keep to the script.

All of these things create dysfunctional organizations.  As pathetic as they are, they are in all organizations in varying degrees.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the Vanguard Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

As other governments look for examples to get out of their current mess, they should not be looking to the US or UK for guidance.  The UK expenditures have tripled in health care and doubled in local authorities.  The US has performed no better . . . . health care (Medicaid and Medicare), social programs, social security and just about every program run by government in the US is run so poorly that we have a tremendous deficit.

But our biggest deficit in the US is one of thinking.

You see ideology which breeds emotion and foolish decisions rules the day in the US.  Republicans want less government, and a balanced budget.  Democrats want more programs to be added to help people (i.e., more government), and more stimulus.  The two parties are at such odds that they can’t get anything done and everybody is mad.  Independents hold their nose and vote.

The problem in the US is ideology of both parties blinded by huge assumptions and biases.  At each others’ throats day in and day out.  Either side trying to keep power or trying to get it.  No agreement on anything – gridlock, frustration and irate voters.  Ideological stupidity reigns in the US.

Because of the extremes of both parties there learning has been lost to spinning – the art of failures being twisted to be a good thing.  Attack and counterattacks rather than coming together to solve problems.

What about evidence?

No one actually looks for evidence that would be foolish.  US Government systems are too complex, they require ideology.  And so the pendulum swings between the ideologies of left and right . . . Democrat and Republican.  Stalemate.

Evidence of what works and doesn’t work can be found but you have to look without bias and ideology.  It does require actually putting petty party differences aside, rolling up the sleeves and getting in the work – together as Americans.

On September 11, 2001 I drove to work from Randolph, New Jersey to Morris Plains.  A clear day and on those clear days you could see the Twin Towers rising from the City.  Later that day, all I could see was smoke of what remained.  Maybe we didn’t come together enough as Americans . . .

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the Vanguard Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

Back in 1931, during the Great Depression, many other countries thought the end of capitalism had come.  They looked to communism and socialism as the failed attempt at capitalism seemed imminent as the Depression dragged on. Hitler rose to power in Germany and Stalin in Russia.

In the past 50 years, the US has managed to:

• Shed its manufacturing jobs with a combination of thirst for profit (outsourcing) and being out-competed by a country with few natural resources, but better method – Japan.
• Ruined its world standing with risky loans from US banks (no matter who is to blame)
• Increased the government deficit to the point that we have lost the coveted AAA credit rating and stand to lose the dollar as the currency of choice for the world
• Running an unemployment rate of over 9% with the reality is the real number is much larger
• Compromise whole organizations by executives maximizing corporate profits through manipulation to increase their personal balance sheets

Most of this has happened in more recent history and certainly isn’t a comprehensive list.  W. Edwards Deming told us that the peak for the US was 1968 and been in decline ever since.  All is not lost, but a wake-up call anyone?

Today’s turmoil with budget deficits and high unemployment rates leaves many questions about where the United States is heading.  It made me begin to question what capitalism is.  So, I looked up a definition:

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
Source: Dictionary.com

Somehow profits has been bastardized into meaning that if my own individual balance sheet is better off – that is profit.  Executives and investors get a bulk of the profit because that is who should profit in a capitalist system.  Somehow we have left the worker behind in favor of the other groups.  Aren’t the people that DO the work important?  What about the work itself?

Seems to me that making the work and the worker relevant again would be a good thing.  This has less to do with trickle down economics and more to do with greater profit.  And can we start making things again?  Products and services create value, shifting money around does little to improve our standing – the results are obvious.  Investment banking has become gambling.

Naturally a reset on how we design and manage work needs to happen and soon.  US businesses using industrialized design and economy of scale thinking for manufacturing and business will continue the slide Deming warned us about 30 years ago.  Little has changed . . . and in fact entropy has taken over and the decline accelerating.

Capitalism is still the best thing that is going, but some of the “add-ons” to the definition of capitalism or how they have been played out need evaluation.  The principles are there, but the details need rewritten.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the Vanguard Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

W. Edwards Deming’s Chain Reaction is simple:

1. Improve Quality
2. Costs Decrease (by removal of waste and sub-optimization)
3. Productivity Improves
4. Capture the Market with Better Quality and Lower Price
5. Stay in Business
6. Provide Jobs and More Jobs

I have seen the “Chain Reaction” changed to “return on investment” from “provide jobs and more jobs.”  Rather self-serving to manipulate Deming’s thoughts.  The aim was to create jobs – a higher purpose.

Looking at the larger system called the US economy, there is great benefit to providing more jobs.  Less people in the welfare systems means less government spend and less government debt.  Something that has had our attention for the last two weeks.  An expensive system is the welfare system when over 9% of people are unemployed.

Private organizations are hoarding cash and are helping create a deteriorating economy in a Catch 22 – an attempt to protect themselves only worsens their condition.  More people go on the unemployment line meaning less people to spend money on products and services and then these same unemployed have to go through a welfare system wrought with waste that adds to the budget deficit.

We need a reset on corporate purpose.  A broader system is at stake than just our personal or corporate balance sheets.  Optimizing the American system will take a different approach.  The “me first” mentality has proven less than optimal.  Dr. Deming’s Chain Reaction is looking more brilliant everyday.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the Vanguard Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

ROI is often asked for by management to justify investments in technology or other investments.  Dead trees and time to present such mandatory reviews waste more resources then the alleged returns that organizations actually get . . . this means more hot air and manure than actual benefit.

Beautiful presentation . . . but most of these “dog and pony” shows have so little knowledge contained within them.  The only ROI really gained is to the vendor and not the customer of such efforts.

ROI comes from doing things that customers value.  This requires experimentation with method to deliver service, some of this requires technology – no doubt.  However, there is opportunity just in the design of the work and too many times technology gets in the way.

Instead massive plans and PowerPoints are put together to PROVE that ROI can be achieved.  Proof without evidence is the result.  Rarely, is a knowledge present or an experiment done that actually shows the change of method leads to ROI.

Baffle them with BS, rather than dazzle them with brilliance.

Embracing work and those that do the work that customers value just isn’t cool . . . but it is profitable.  In fact, it is extremely profitable.  The problem is that this thinking represents a management paradox to our current mindset about business improvement.  In the end it is a much better to ROI.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

An excellent post by Simon Caulkin called Not Customers but Commodities got my attention.  It illustrates how customers are being treated like commodities.  Technology, standardization or a combination of the two have left us feeling . . . shorted in the service we receive.

Efficiency has replaced sanity and customers feel it.  Service organizations (public and private) have looked to their own bottom-line to “hit the numbers.”  Meanwhile service to customers has deteriorated either rapidly or slowly, but does entropy.

Managers without fortitude or knowledge claim they are trying to balance profit and good service.  The result is disastrous and preposterous.  The false assumption is that there is a trade-off between good service and costs.  The “zero-sum game” as I call it.

The truth is there isn’t a trade-off.

Good service delivered the way a customer wants it always costs less.  Less handling and more revenue.  Oh, and less marketing to service customers that don’t need to be convinced of your good service – because you are delivering it.

Absorbing variety in a technology, best practice, rules, scripted and standardized world is very difficult and the customers are left out of the equation.  Like a product that is cheap but only lasts a few days, service is done in the cheapest manner at the expense of the customer.

The examples are many, like a contact center geared to answer calls that add revenue but put customers through the gauntlet when they have a problem.  In an attempt to avoid costs, service organizations add costs.  IVRs to navigate and back offices to negotiate . . . in a word it sucks.

The good news – for now- is that all your competition stinks too.  Customers are mired in mediocrity or less and yearn for someone to actually stand out.

However, given the service systems companies have designed business improvement seems so far away. Managing costs over rules good service.  If only service companies and governments understood that serving customers ineffectively is at the root of the causes of costs.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

A salient question for executives . . . “would an employee recognize you?”  Are you ever seen in the work or do you live in that ivory tower with an “open door policy?”

Many times sitting with executives in meetings I amazed about what is discussed.  Financials and targets of course is a topic, but the wild assumptions made in meetings are certainly not based in knowledge.  Challenge the hierarchy and you stand to get knocked down.  Remember, executives don’t like their thinking challenged.

Here lies one of the biggest obstacles to improvement.

Certainly ego plays a role.  Salary sometimes carries perceived knowledge.  “He makes a lot of money, he must be really smart.”  Not really.  In fact, too many executives have so little knowledge about what matters to customers.  When you ask them about such things, the responses turn to lagging measures of financials and targets.  Occasionally, you might find some survey that might help an organization understand how well they did, but nothing on what matters to customers.

Why?

Because that can only be done by getting your hands dirty in the work.  Ask an executive and they will do almost anything to avoid the work.  Excuses vary:

• That’s below my pay grade
• Too busy with meetings or any number of other “important things”
• Golf outing
• Vendor boondoggle
• Working from home
• I’d just get in the way (very telling)
• I need to be a visionary at my level
• I understand the work I came from the front-line (it hasn’t changed?)

I could come up with more, but maybe self-reflection would be a better method.

If executives are going to make decisions that will effect  the work of many, shouldn’t they really have knowledge about what is being changed?  Relying on vendors or “people I trust” just won’t cut the mustard anymore.  They need to be engaged before a plan is put together and the ball starts rolling down the hill to the point of no return.

I have learned that understanding your organization a system is not a spectator sport.  It requires engagement and understanding of the real problems – not the ones an executive has a tendency to make assumptions about that aren’t there.  Hiring “good people” is not enough unless you are willing to let them make the decisions without executive meddling.

Making decisions based on knowledge sometimes takes longer then making a snap decision, but the reverse is far more costly when the decisions you make are wrong, damaging or only addressing the symptoms and not causes.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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Michael Barone, a Fox News Channel contributor, recently wrote an article called Who’s to Blame for Union Woes? This article is somewhat accurate as he points out that unions still operate as if Frederick Taylor thinking still dominates businesses and government.  The problem Michael Barone misses is that Tayloristic thinking still dominates management thinking too!

Manufacturing and service still follow the premise of Frederick Taylor that the functional separation of work is a good thing.  You don’t have to look far for the evidence . . . functionally separated sales, operations, front, offices, middle offices, back offices, etc. sewn together by entrapping technology that seals in the waste.

Management is responsible for the design of the work.  And with management focused on costs by outsourcing, sharing services and reducing unit costs we have lost our competitive position in the US.  The management paradox is that a focus on costs always increases them making us less competitive as other countries create value.  Unions may have embraced yesteryear thinking of Tayloristic thinking, but it is management that continues the outdated design.

Unions were created by management taking advantage of workers.  First for working conditions and later for reducing salaries while executive salaries have sky-rocketed.  This management thinking has created a gap where in order to get more profit in the private sector we have to milk the worker . . . the ones that actually do the work and create value for customers.

Undercover Boss (TV show) provides evidence that executives and management don’t know much about the work and make decisions, plans and projects without knowledge.  Management making decisions without knowledge creates much waste and poor decisions like the banking crisis.  Management with incentives and no knowledge are destined to create poor work designs and decisions.

I do agree with Michael Barone that unions have “clung to an adversarial model,” but that model is perpetuated by management.  If workers mindsets are to change to create a better tomorrow than so does managements.  The bottom-line is that management must change too.  We need to embrace the worker to help to solve tomorrow’s problems, not persist to call them “the problem.”

If union membership is down to 6% as Mr. Barone says, then when they are all gone . . . what will management’s excuse be?

Join me for the International Deming Conference in New York City on March 21 – 22.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

I love it when talking to groups when someone says “well, this just common sense.”  I often wonder about the paradox this presents because if it (what ever “it” is) was so logical why aren’t we already doing it?  Does this mean that we were then doing some activity we knew wasn’t common sense on purpose?

Cost overruns in technology projects have led information technology departments and companies to add to costs to implementing technology and somehow manage to charge customers for the privilege.  When IT projects first started to miss target dates and budgets we got project managers, business analysts, scoping, business requirements, etc. to help manage costs.  The reality is these things added to costs and customers get less value work done.

Customers now have the added benefit of paying for a “good IT project manager” to see a project through.  This project manager mostly harasses the developers for dates of completion, disrupts the flow, and the customer pays.  I am often shocked when an IT project is completed and the software doesn’t work, scope was managed over value, but the customer says you managed that project well.  I have to believe this is because of the face-to-face relationship between the project manager and customer, easy to blame the operations people on the customer side and the developers on the IT side.

The problem really is all the buffers we have created in IT to keep the developers (the ones who can create value) and users (the ones that understand the problem or need) separated.  We here things like we are trying to keep the costs down and have a less expensive resource interpret the requirements and the expensive resource (developer) can code.  Except for those multitude of calls back and forth for clarifications that the developer has to do to get information that will help them.

So, by developing plans with robust dates to be sure that costs and schedules aren’t missed.  The problem winds up being that IT customers get less for what they pay in information technology for all the Gantt charts and business requirements.  Common sense has left us.

Leave me a comment. . . share your opinion!  Click on comments below.

Make the new decade a profitable and rewarding one, start a new path here.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about how to get started at tripp@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

Tripp Babbitt is a columnist (Quality Digest, PSNews and IQPC), speaker, and consultant to private and public service industry.