‘Their Work’ Versus ‘My Work’

When you work in an organization or within a team, you can think of it as ‘doing the work for someone’. For the company. For the manager. For the client.

Or you can think of it as ‘doing your work’. There is a big difference.

Our work is a way to express ourselves. A programmer expresses himself through code. A dancer through her dance. A writer through her words. A leader through his actions. In that sense, our work is our statement. It carries out stamp. It tells something about us.

When you say, “I am doing my work”, you make it personal. It is only when you take the work personally that you can stamp it with excellence. Thinking that you do the work for someone else, you generally do it for the sake of doing it. Simply getting through it. It does more harm to you than you can possibly think of, in a long run.

So, the next time you ship your deliverable to someone (a client, your boss, your peers), think about the statement that your work makes. The stamp it carries.

This Monday, you have a choice. To stamp your work with ‘mediocrity’ or with ‘excellence’. This choice and how it is exercised consciously everyday determines your future and the difference you will make to the organization, team and society.

- - - - -

Stay tuned to QAspire Blog: Subscribe via RSS or Email, Connect via Facebook or Follow us on Twitter

Managing Results by Defining “Deliverables” Early On

As professionals, we all are responsible for shipping stuff to our customers (internal or external). The stuff that we ship is commonly referred to as a “deliverable”.

As a manager, it helps if you can clearly define what deliverable means. The first step to get something right first time is to define it accurately in the beginning.

You can ask your team member to perform a task or you can ask them to complete a deliverable (complete with all product and process requirements). Defining a deliverable clarifies purpose and sets expectations on “why” rather than “what”. Most of the times, in quest of “what”, “why” is missed out. Clearly defining deliverables for all your team members helps them gain additional clarity and accomplishing things first time right.

I believe that most people want to do a great job, but they don’t know how to do it. Defining/assigning a complete deliverable instead of tasks can really help you in tapping full potential of your people and ensure that they are effective in whatever they do. When you review progress, you can review the accurate status of a deliverable (results), if it is defined early on. Monitoring deliverables is far less daunting than monitoring tasks.

Johanna Rothman says, “Discuss Results, Not Tasks”. Deliverables define the results you are seeking.

Have you ever experienced a situation where all your tasks were accomplished, but the final deliverable was not qualitative? If yes, you will exactly know what “defining a deliverable” really means!

Have a Wonderful Wednesday!

Note: My book ‘#QUALITYtweet – 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project’ explores the people, process and leadership aspects to build a constantly improving organization culture. Check it out if you haven’t already!

Bonus: QAspire Blog was recently featured on Community of Program and Project Managers (PPM Community). Check out the feature.

Innovation, Quality & Entrepreneurship at Akshaya Patra

Akshaya Patra Foundation in India is a shining example of how social entrepreneurship combined  with power of innovation can make a HUGE difference.

First, some background information. Akshaya Patra is an Indian NGO that provides mid day meals to about 1.2 million children across India on all school days. These meals act as an incentive for these kids to come to the school and study. Even more amazing is the fact that for one kid, the cost of a nutritious mid day meal for one full year is only Rs. 600 (or ~$13). How do they achieve this sort of scale at such low cost? I wondered too, till I visited one of their kitchens in Ahmedabad recently.

• Innovation in Delivery: Kitchens are specially designed to meet the scale and quality requirements. They use technology to cook more food in less time. When we visited the kitchen, it was no less than a highly advanced factory with machines for everything including grain cleaning, cutting the vegetables, preparing the chapatti (breads), boiling the rice and loading the containers. These machines cook food that meets the defined nutrition requirements and taste. Many of these machines are indigenously modified to meet their unique requirement.
• Focus on Quality: When we went into the office, I could see some well defined checklists. On further inquiry, we found that their kitchen was ISO 22000 (Food Safety) Certified. They collect some key metrics including cost per meal and constantly look for ways to optimize it. They have built their own standard for supply chain right from procuring raw material to delivery of these meals in schools across. Truly remarkable!
• Entrepreneurship: Akshaya Patra’s mission is “No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger” and that is no small one. But after visiting Akshaya Patra, I can only say one thing: If you really want to do something, you always find ways to do it. At the core of entrepreneurship is the ability to see a gap and more importantly, do something about it. Their website says,

“The surest way to break out of the cycle of poverty is through education. Education can significantly improve the quality of life of a family for generations to come. When the basic needs of a child, such as food are not met, education often becomes the last priority. The meal is an incentive for them to continue their education. It helps reduce the dropout rate to an enormous extent and increases classroom attendance.”

For many children who are beneficiaries of these meals, it is probably the one and only meal that they get in the day. President Obama lauded their efforts and recently, Akshaya Patra was also featured at Harvard Business Blogs.

Akshaya Patra is a great example of how entrepreneurial spirit combined with focus on innovation and quality can overcome all roadblocks and bring about a big difference to our society and our future.

Friday High-Five: Posts I Loved Reading Last Week

Friday again - time to share some of the most profound posts that I loved reading last week. These brilliant posts hit the point and leave us with some excellent lessons. A big high-five to these amazing folks.

• Six Thoughts About Middle Management - by Lisa Haneberg
  Lisa says, “Management is a social act. Conversations are your currency to generate excellence and bring out the best in others. Erode relationships, erode results.”
  
• 10 Things: Addressed And Your Awesome Potential Will Be Unleashed- by NICHOLAS BATE
  Professor Bate says, “Believe in Yourself. You don’t have to be liked by everybody to do great things, to live the Life you wish, to change the world. AGREE THAT WITH YOURSELF.”
  
• How to Discuss an Employee Performance Problem - by Dan McCarthy
  Dan reminds us, “Knowing how to sit down with an employee and have an effective conversation about a performance problem is one of the hardest things for any manager to do, new or experienced, and should never be taken for granted.” He also offers practical tips to handle a performance problem.
  
• Three Years of CO - by Kurt Harden
  Cultural Offering blog completed three years and Kurt ruminates on the journey so far. He says, “That is the deal that is blogging. You take a shot at it. Put some thoughts down. Words to sentences to paragraphs, all to hone your skills - writing, reading, thinking. Sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss. But over time there are more hits than misses.”
  
• The performance value of total concentration - by Tim Sanders
  Tim Sanders posted a small and important reminder that working on one thing with total concentration has tremendous performance value. He also reminds that we can’t excel at all things at a time. Must read if you are struggling with your productivity.

Have a Fantastic Friday and a refreshing weekend!

The Pursuit of Getting It “First Time Right” (FTR)

Building quality involves cost. You spend efforts and energy on preventing the errors (prevention cost) and then checking your work (appraisal cost). These are positive costs, or rather investments that ensure that you get it right the first time.

The cost of rework when you or customer identifies a LOT of defects(internal/external failure costs) is huge and highly damaging too. It can have a direct impact on your business bottom lines.

So how do you maximize your possibility of getting it first time right when you deal with projects? Here are three most important things I could think of:

• Clarity: In projects (or in any initiative), when you shoot in the dark, the bullet comes back to kill you. Most projects fail because of lack of clarity. Project team needs to be clear of the purpose, business need, specific requirements of the customer and other implicit expectations. Clarity also demands a clear visibility in process, setting up right rituals, monitoring practices and responsibilities of the project team. Clarity means openness in communication.
• Discipline: Execution demands discipline to do right things consistently. It demands emotional labor. The plans you established needs to be followed. When you decide to review early and often, you should. Discipline, in simplest terms, is your ability to fill the gap between what you know and what you actually do. 
• Constant Improvement: You planned, you did and then you also reviewed. Based on your experiences, you should be able to improvise your processes. Change the tracks for better efficiency. Inculcate better habits. Fine tuning and alignment that happens in this phase not only helps you in this project, but also in subsequent ones.

I do not undermine the need to make mistakes and learn from them. When we research or try to innovate, we essentially do that with the objective of learning. But what about applying our lessons well? We can always get that right the first time, only if we decide to!

P.S: On a second thought, you can only innovate when you don’t have to worry about doing the routine stuff right. That is where processes and FTR approach can really help.

In Pursuit Of “Customer Delight”: Getting The Basics Right

A lot of companies have the phrase “delighting our customers” in their well-crafted mission statements and quality policies. I see “customer delight” as a cherry, with the cake being “solving their problems and meeting the expectations” – so when we say “cherry on top of the cake”, the cake has to be right. Customers don’t get delighted by cherries alone, or by cherries on wrong cakes.

Here is the thing. To be able to reach a state where you “delight” your customers, you have to first “know and meet” customer’s basic expectations consistently. That is the core of your business – the reason why your customers come to you. Your products/services have to first meet the basic criteria of delivering the value that client is seeking.

So when you think of delighting your customer, think of the basics first.

• Does your product/service meet the core expectation of the customer? Does it solve their problems? To what extent?
• Do you have a method to accurately identify customer’s real/unique expectations? Their unique context?
• Do you have right set of processes, people and technology that will help you deliver up to customer’s expectations consistently?
• What is missing and how can you scale up to ensure consistency of delivery? What are the gaps that need to be filled?

Once you have these basics right, your efforts and investment on delighting your customers through various innovative and inclusive programs will yield the right returns. Right cherry on the right kind of cake is a delightful combo! Isn’t it?

Customer’s loyalty and further, advocacy only comes when you know how to deliver the basics right. Merely trying to delight customers when your core offering does not solve their real problems is an effort in vain. It may only help you keep a customer for now, but not on a long run.

- - - - -

Stay tuned to QAspire Blog: Subscribe via RSS, Connect via Facebook or Follow us on Twitter

Metrics: Are They Mapped With Your Business Objectives?

You can measure almost anything in your business, but if those metrics don’t serve a real business objectives, they are just numbers with no real meaning. Measurement is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I have seen extreme cases where organizations either measure so much or they don’t measure anything at all. Both extremes are dangerous, because it de-focuses people from doing the right things.

A lot of business leaders. quality consultants and improvement experts are obsessed with fancy metrics that may not have direct relevance to the business objectives. Whether measuring a project or a business, here are a five steps to map your metrics with your business objectives:

• Know your goals: Identify what are your strategic, tactical and operational goals. Understanding your business challenges and goals is the first most important step. If you don’t know why you are measuring something, you will get numbers and you won’t know what to do with them. It won’t help.
• Identify metrics: What metrics can effectively help you meet your goals? For example, if you reduce your defect rates, you can keep your customers happy. Reducing overrun on your project can have direct impact on your bottom lines. You get the point.
• Identify impact: Some metrics directly impact the goal, while others may have an indirect impact. Identify whether identified measurement has direct or indirect impact. A great way to do this is to draw a two dimensional table with business objectives horizontally and measurements vertically. Map the impact and you will have a great view of your business goals and impact of those metrics.
• Establish operational procedures: You can now establish processes and methods to collect the data, frequency and consolidation mechanism. This is also a great way to ensure that all your operational processes are aligned to perform in a way that it satisfies at least one or more business objectives.
• Don’t forget the “invisibles”: My earlier post “The Invisibles in Business Performance” touched upon one of Deming’s seven deadly diseases - “Running a company on visible figures alone” and listed out some areas of your business that cannot be measured, but can have direct impact on your business. Striking balance between managing these invisible aspects, managing by visible numbers and focusing on people seems to be the optimal route to manage the business.

As I mentioned in my earlier post - “With visible figures alone, a business is run. By managing the invisibles together with the visible figures, a high performance, sustainable and scalable organization is built.”

- - - - -

Note: My book ‘#QUALITYtweet – 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project’ explores the people, process and leadership aspects to build a constantly improving organization culture. Check it out if you haven’t already!

Bonus: Read my post (How to) Have a Great Monday! – and have a wonderful start into the week!

The ‘Invisibles’ in Business Performance

In world of quality and management, W. Edwards Deming is widely famous for “Deming’s 14 points” and “Seven Deadly Diseases”. One of these deadly disease according to Deming is “Running a company on visible figures alone”.

Whether manufacturing or knowledge industry, primary goal of business is to generate value. However, in knowledge world, where the raw material is human brain, how this value is generated matters. Deming opined that everything that is critical for business performance may not be measurable.

However, planning for and managing these invisibles makes all the difference in an organization’s performance – more so in service and knowledge oriented world.

So, apart from visible figures (top line, bottom line, productivity, defect rates etc) what are the invisibles that play a huge role in determining performance of a business? Here are a few I could think of:

• Organization’s vision and values (and the extent to which  values are lived)
• Stories people tell each other at water coolers (organization’s culture)
• Employee’s actual engagement levels
• People’s alignment to organization’s vision and values
• What customers/people say (and to what extent do they really mean it)?
• Existence of invisible functional/departmental barriers
• Knowledge, skills and attitude of professionals
• Actual empowerment to people/managers/leaders in making things happen
• Top Leadership’s viewpoints and mental barriers (short term v/s long term)
• Knowledge versus application gap (and tapping discretionary effort of people)
• Actual training effectiveness (and to what extent it improved business outcomes)
• Innovation effectiveness and dynamic changes in the economy/market forces.

It is said – “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” But what really counts can always be managed.

In my view, there is a difference between “running a business” and “building a high performance organization”. In both cases, generating revenue and profit margins are equally important. But with visible figures alone, a business is run. By managing the invisibles together with the visible figures, a high performance, sustainable and scalable organization is built.

Quality & Improvement: From “Experience” to “Advocacy”

Consider the following scenario:

You go to a new restaurant for the first time. You evaluate quality of food and quality of service. Your first visit was about experimenting with a new place and getting an experience.

A few weeks later, you go there again. You get a similar or a better experience this time. They have added a few new items to their menu. Service is better too. You loved their Italian Pizza. You now believe and trust that this restaurant is really good.

The third visit a few months later, you again get a similar or better experience. New recipes on the offer. The service staff is even more cordial. The ambience, decor has improved. You again ordered their specialized Italian Pizza. After this visit, you are now a “loyal” customer. Every time you want to eat that special Pizza, you visit the same restaurant.

Beyond this point, you start advocating this restaurant to your friends for specialized Italian Pizza. You recommend their food, service, ambience and overall quality. You become an evangelist.

Now think about your organization. How many customers are still experiencing you. How many of them really believe in you. How many customers are loyal? Do they advocate your services to others?

A common mistake organizations commit is to deliver great experience first time and then take the customer for granted. The moment there is someone else who is better and delivers a higher quality experience, a customer is lost!

So, quality is a moving target – each time a customer comes back to you, you need to deliver similar or better quality (of products, services and experience), you need to demonstrate improvement, care enough about them, stay on top of market trends and keep changing the rules of the game (innovation). When you consistently focus on delivering value, your customers move higher up in the value pyramid from “experience” to ‘belief & trust” to “loyalty” to “advocacy”.

Delivering great experiences through people, processes and leadership comes with a cost, but that cost is far less than the cost of losing a customer and then acquiring a new one all over again.

Note: My book ‘#QUALITYtweet – 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project’ explores the people, process and leadership aspects to build a constantly improving organization culture. Check it out if you haven’t already!

5 Ideas To Ensure That Lessons are ‘Really’ Learned

Have you ever experienced the following?

You complete a project and then do a small ‘post-mortem / retrospective analysis’ of what went well and what did not. You then document these lessons in a nice looking template and share it with all stakeholders before getting onto the next project. Next project looks exciting in the beginning and then, same set of challenges are encountered. “Lessons-Learned” often end up being “Lessons-Documented-In-Last-Project-That-Are-Going-To-Show-Up-Again”.

All improvement depends on lessons you document and what you, as a leader, do about it. If you are a business leader, project leader or an improvement expert, here are five practical things you can do to ensure that lessons are really learned.

• Assign Responsibility: If you have a quality group, great! If you don’t, you can assign the role of improvement expert to any senior member in your team. Mandate should be to improve the process and implement the improvements. Project Managers are best candidates since they deal with these challenges day in and day out.
• Focus on “actions”: Once documented, identify a set of immediate actions to be taken to ensure that these lessons go into practice. Compile a central action log that contains lessons from all the projects / retrospectives. Assign responsibility for each action and have a deadline. Track the progress from time to time.
• Maintain a central log of lessons learned: Unless lessons are visible, they don’t go into practice. One idea is to maintain a central log of all lessons learned, actions and resulting improvements. This is also a great way to track improvements.
• Revisit them: It is easy to get back to your project challenges and forget the lessons learned. Revisit them from time to time. Have monthly update meetings, publish these on your intranet, create easy to view lists of Do’s and Don’ts – whatever! But make sure that lessons learned are visible to people.
• “Lessons Learned” as inputs to Process Improvement: Convert each lesson into a process. Get the buy-in from teams and then train everyone. This is also a great way to ensure that your quality system evolves with challenges you face in your context.

Lessons are only ‘learned’ when they find their way into the future projects as positive experiences. Challenges help us grow – only when we face new challenges each time and learn how to tackle the ‘old monsters’. Unless we do that, repeating challenges will only wear you and your team out!

Lessons then, are not learned, but just documented. Not fun – I am sure you’ll agree!