Often the secret to success lies in up-front preparation.  Here are ten things you can do to help assure that when the project is done, it will have the effective results your leadership team is looking for.

1) Talk to the Stakeholders

Identify the folks who live with the pain and pay the price because of it.  Talk to them about what they’d like to see as a result of the project.  If they feel like you took the time to genuinely listen to them about their struggle, they’ll do everything they can to support your team and give you the resources you’ll need to carry out your objectives.

2) Get the Right People

If your team has people who already have other projects they are involved in, be honest with your boss and tell him or her that it’s unrealistic to pick the same people over and over for project teams.  Pick people who know about the process where the PAIN is.  These subject matter experts will be much more efficient and effective in leading you to the real causes of the PAIN.  Find the people who really care about the quality of their work.

Find people willing and able to work together in a cohesive manner, on a common goal.

3) Be Ready to Lead

Leadership is about walking the talk.  You’ll have to behave in a way that demonstrates the qualities you seek from your team.  Clearly communicate expectations, leverage the unique qualities of each team member and give them the tools they need to succeed.

4) Define the Business Process Involved

Of the hundreds of processes, inputs, outputs and deliverables in your organization, which one is the focus of the team? 

5) What is The Scope of the Project?

Where does your focus begin and end.  What things are in the scope and what things are out of scope?  Defining this up=front keeps ideas and tasks that come up along the way from derailing your team from the main objective.

6) Make a Project Charter

A Charter is a game plan for your project.  It includes Project Title,

Team Members, Enablers, Challenges, Milestones, Customers and their

Critical to Quality Characteristics (CTQs). What product or service characteristics does the customer (internal or external) really care about?

7) Current State of the Process

How is the process now performing, based on the measures and metrics available?  Are there measures and metrics available?  This may end up being part of your team’s deliverables. Look at cost metrics, quality metrics and delivery metrics.

Map it out with pencil and paper.  You don’t need a lot of technology to get a few process knowledge experts in a room with some sandwiches and a few hours to see how you do the work you do.

A Problem Statement

A problem well define is half solved.  The problem statement should describe the PAON associated with the poor-performing process.  It includes who receives the output of the process, what performance is expected from the process, what performance do you now see from the process, what is the extent of the poor performance.

Don’t use the Problem Statement to identify pre-determined solutions or root causes.  Don’t include the names of people working in the process or steps your team will take to solve the problem.

9) Go Gather Data

Even though there is an intuitive, qualitative sense of where the PAIN is, it’s best to quantify the issue.  Here is an example of a problem statement, after some data is gathered:

The number of ICT failures of the ABC Engine Control on line 3 increased significantly in Q1 of 2009.  The average failure rate in Q4 of 2008 was 3.34%.  The average failure rate YTD is 8.12%.  Every one of these failures requires rework and the root cause of some of the ne failures has not been found at test.

10) A Business Case

Here we define the financial impact of the process problem. Don’t be afraid to sit down with your comptroller and hash out an estimated cost of what the process problem represents to your organization.  You may have to haggle a little over pay rates, direct or indirect terms, annual salaries, but it will get you talking to someone who will benefit from the improvements your team makes. 

You’re making him look better to the boss, so remind him of that and leverage it in getting the answers you need to make your team a financial solution, not a nuisance.

Estimate the cost of a failure, the quantity of failure and predict what it’s costing the firm to manage the problem.  Make an educated guess about how much of this issue your team can attack and call that the cost-avoidance your team can achieve. 

Can your team solve half of the problem, a third of it?  You probably won’t find the cause of the entire issue, so be conservative.  It’s better to delight your management team and exceed expectations by underestimating how much of the issue you can solve.  There are always hard-to-assign causes in every process.  Focus on improvement, not perfection.

When you’re ready and you’ve done your homework, kick off your project. You won’t be entirely in control of everything but you’ve done a great deal to make it work.  Accept the unexpected along the way and have fun.  Embrace the chance to develop some new skills. Good Luck!

Mike Weekes runs Whataboutquality.com, a Florida-based business process improvement firm.  He can be reached at info@whataboutquality.com or on the web at http://www.whataboutquality.com.  His business improvement blog is at http://www.whataboutquality.wordpress.com/

BUSINESS PROCESS HEALTH SURVEY

WHATABOUTQUALITY.COM

In a recent poll, conducted by Whataboutquality.com of 89 partner organizations representing a diverse mix of service, product, profit, non-profit, geographic regions, employee count, revenue, income, several interesting results were revealed.

Trends / Indications

The first fact that was clear: we are indeed a service society, with 40% of the participants represent purely service and the entire balance of firms representing both product and service provision.

The next unfortunate result is that more than 75% of all organizations surveyed have confirmed that the economic downturn is affecting their bottom-line profitability, and 50% of all firms reporting said those negative effects were significant.

When respondents were asked what few key characteristics defined quality, in the eyes of their customer, the most popular response was:  the product or service met my requirements.  The next two most popular responses were:  it worked like I expected and it was a good value, worth what I paid for it. 

These three characteristics represented how 80% of customers define quality.

When asked how the respondent would describe the quality of their service, the predominant response was: best in class.  Obviously firms believe their offerings to be superior in quality.  All responses were at least: above average.  No firm believes there to be issues with the quality of their service or products.

When asked if there was room for improvement in their operating costs, 60% of those responding said yes, and 40% said they felt their costs were under control.

40% of the firms surveyed said they were struggling to maintain income and 20% said they were profitable, but concerned. 

Overall, Delivery and pricing were not as important or as much a concern or issue as Quality.

Actual Data

Do you offer product(s), service(s) or both?

40%  services

60%  both

How much is the economic downturn affecting business?

50%  significantly

25% slightly

25%  none

How would you define QUALITY in the eyes of your customer?

40%  met my requirements

20%  good value

20%  it worked like I expected

10%  competent staff

5%   on time delivery

5%   competitive price

As far as the QUALITY of your product or service, would your customers describe your QUALITY as:

60% best in class

40% above average

As far as the DELIVERY of your product or service, would your customers describe your ON-TIME DELIVERY as:

40%  best in class

20%  above average

20%  average

20%  unimportant / n/a

As far as the COST of doing business, would your Owner / Management Team describe your COST of doing business as:

40%  above average

60%  opportunity for improvement

As far as the PRICE of our products or services, would your Customer describe your PRICES for products or services as:

80%  above average

20% average

How would your describe your firm’s financial performance (INCOME) situation?

40%  struggling

20%  profitable but concerned

40%  profitable, not concerned

If you’re ready to regain profit through quality and business process improvement contact Mike Weekes at WhatAboutQuality.com today.

on the web at http://www.whataboutquality.com

get our latest book, EVERYTHING IS A PROCESS

CONTACT US at info@whataboutquality.com or call us at 941 356 9434.

It might be the failure to fulfill an order, to deliver on time, setting the customer back from meeting their obligation of their customer, downstream of our relationship.

It is often a cost issue that is out of control, eating up our profit margin, which was small in the first place in order to offer our service or product at a competitive price.

With any of these challenges, it comes down to the one simple truth:  there is really one, correct way to run the process in order to get the desired result:  some thing, delivered on-time, for a fair price, which works like it’s supposed to, satisfying the customer.

After sitting down and properly defining the problem, it’s typical to go out and gather some data about how we do the work we do.  This is often seen as “unnecessary” or a “waste of time” by the experts in the crowd, since they’re sure of what’s wrong and why. 

That path, following the experts may very well be why we’re in this fix in the first place.

It’s what we’re absolutely sure of that is the real problem.  Without data, you’re just a person with an opinion.

So, you gather your data, taking a shot at characterizing the current, baseline performance level of a key process and now what?  Let’s analyze it!

Two tools I use to cut to the quick and find the precious few of the many factors causing our troubles are the Pareto Chart and the Fishbone chart.

The Pareto is just a fancy name for taking all the instances where a particular method, machine, role (not person), measure or even environmental factor caused a problem or an unanticipated outcome and sorting these potential causes in decreasing order from most-frequent to least-frequent.

By the way, it is seldom a person who is at the root cause of an issue, contrary to popular belief.  Don’t look for causes like “Frank”, “Mrs. Smith” or “Accounting”.   People want to do a good job, for the most part, but they seldom get all the tools, information, materials and encouragement they need to do the job right.  If you take the time to select the right people for the job and give them the tools they need, it’s usually another area at the root of your process quality issues.  Seek to understand what tools they need.

For example, let’s assume we work for a real estate agent and we gather data on why a potential client left our firm and went to the competition.  Suppose we sample 100 cases of actual reasons why customers left.

reason / cause	occurrence
lack of quick response	42
insufficient choices	33
poor location	7
lack of listening	2
other	16

Note a few things about this data.

Our biggest issue was lack of quick response.  That represented a whopping 42% of our problem.  If we were to find what caused that issue, we would be well on our way to retaining customers and beating the competition.

Note how just two issues are at the heart of more than half of the problem!  Lack or response and insufficient choices represent more than 70% of your problems.  That gives you an area to focus on, to prioritize your few resources that are available among all the daily fire-fighting.

A Pareto is just a graphical representation of the above data in a bar chart format.  You could easily use MS Excel to derive the chart.

The Fishbone, or cause-effect diagram represents the five typical areas which are at the root of the causes mentioned above.  Let’s say we assess whether the lack of quick response was due to man / operator, machine, method, measure or metric, environment or some other factor.

A quick brainstorm between the people who own the process, the “subject matter experts might reveal that the top two reasons why team members fail to respond quickly enough to customer requests might be traced to

1) lack of training in customer service and

2) failure to distribute blackberry devices to all employees.  

If action is taken to remedy these two issues, it could improve responsiveness to the customer by more than 50%, resulting in the elimination of half the biggest root causes of our lack of revenue and thus profit.

An example of a fishbone or cause-effect diagram:

The analysis was pretty simple.  In a matter of days, not weeks or months, an organization can sit down, gather some simple data, look at potential causes and reveal to themselves some simple, straight-forward action thy can take to regain their competitive edge.

So, what is the kind of data you and your team need to collect to see your current situation?

What are the big issues – the critical few, stealing your revenue and competitive edge?

What’s causing those issues?

What action can you take to remedy the issues, making the process run more effectively, delighting, not merely satisfying your customer?

Share your questions, concerns and insight with Whataboutquality.com.

We’ll tailor our web log content around your pain points, so we effectively deliver the solutions you need to stay competitive, especially in these challenging times.

You don’t have to get caught in analysis paralysis in order to see how you do the work you do, as well as those few causes of your biggest issues!

You do however have to stop what you’re doing long enough to take the first step!

Read the latest book from Mike Weekes and Whataboutquality,

EVERYTHING IS A PROCESS

Available at http://www.whataboutqualitycom

Every organization is really a set of key processes working together in order to deliver the product or service to satisfy the customer.

These key processes are just a set of activities, which work together to deliver the end result.

If we map out these processes, their activities, the relationships between activities we can begin to see opportunities for improvement.

So what tools do we need in order to map out a process?

How about some sharp pencils and a big piece of paper and some people who know how the work is done?  YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?

IT HAS TO BE MORE COMPLEX THAN THAT!

Not really…

Let’s suppose you are a manager of a real estate firm.  

I don’t know much about real estate other than sometimes I need to buy a home or sell a home, but I can imagine some challenges a Realtor might have:

How do I get the people looking to buy or sell a house to buy it or sell it through me and my firm?

How do I find or sell a home for someone quicker than how long it takes me to do it now?

How do I get someone to come back to me to buy their next home, now that they used me once?

How do I help someone buy or sell their home and do it so it costs me less to do it?

The first issue deals with what factors the customer considers critical in selecting a Realtor, a supplier, if you will.

The second issue deals with the cycle time to buy or sell a house.

The third issue deals with how much it costs to buy or sell a house.

In all three cases, the secret to solving the problem, addressing the issue is an understanding of the process behind the business.  

How does the way we do business, the way we process the work influence whether customer selects out firm, how long it will take to find the solution to their problem or how much it costs to find that same solution.

So, you’ve got your paper, your pencils and your process experts in a room. Now what?

Let’s start at the end:  hand the keys to the new home-owner.  What activity happened before that one?  Maybe it’s complete closing.  OK, now we’re on a roll.

All you have to do is keep going back up the process flow until you get to the initial step in the process.  This might be receiving a call from a prospective customer.

Your mission:  to fill in the series of steps between receive call and deliver keys.  There might be ten steps in the process or there might be 95 steps.  

What you want to do is “walk along the process” and capture the main activity involved.

Next, you’ll see how this series of steps or activities in a number of internal suppliers delivering things to internal customers.  Each supplier must meet each customer’s needs, in a certain way for each step o work effectively; to deliver achieve the correct “output” if you will.

If you look at how long it takes to go from beginning to end of the process, you may find the average is eight weeks, plus or minus three weeks.

If you look at each step in the process you may find that there is only six hours of real, value-added work involved.  If you add up the twenty steps in the process that they take a total of six hours of time spent turning all those little inputs into outputs along the way.

So, if it takes you eight weeks to perform six hours of a value-added process, how much room is there for improvement?  In a perfect world, you would receive a call from a customer at 9:00 am and turn the keys to their new home over to them at 5:00 pm.  

BUT THE WORLD IS NOT PERFECT is it?  So, what would be a reasonable goal?  Maybe five or six weeks instead of eight weeks?  

How much would you save, per house sold if you sold a house in five weeks instead of eight weeks?

Another approach is to look at those steps in the process and see where the bottlenecks are.  Where is there know pain in the process?  What steps take the longest and why?  

What steps cause you the most problems? By just addressing one r two major problems in your process flow, you may be able to fix almost half of the problem.

Even if it cost you several thousand dollars to fix the big issues, that probably would help you avoid the thousands of dollars you are loosing each day by not fixing the problems.

THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT IS HUGE!

Whether you want to do more with less people or you want to do more with the same team, business process improvement makes economic sense.

It’s all about looking at the way you do the work you do.

Mapping out your key process is the first step toward you goal of being an efficient, effective, competitive organization?

Would you rather delight your customer or merely satisfy them, most of the time.

How long does it take you to deliver the products or services you offer?

What or where are the steps or activities in your key processes which cause the pain and keep you from performing competitively?

How would mapping out the process help you see where the issues are?

We welcome your input. Send us your questions or concerns and we’ll reply with tips, tools and techniques to address your needs.

Reply to this posting or contact Mike at Whataboutquality.com and take the first step in your business process improvement journey.

For all the tips…Get the book…

Everything Is A Process

Success means having the courage to take the first step.

http://www.whataboutquality.com or info@whataboutquality.com

Please add this blogto your favorites and help us tailor our solutions to help make your organization as competitive as it can be.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

If you give people the tools they need to do the job, they’ll get it done right.

Focus on progress, not perfection.

A lot of companies promise to deliver you value, to give you the best price and quality service…but how do they measure that?  If they do measure that, how do they know that’s a good measure of the thing they are measuring?  Is it valid?

It all starts with the thing, the product or service they are delivering to you, or that you are delivering to someone else.  Let’s call this the output.

One really good measure is HOW MANY OF THE THINGS WE DELIVERED ACTUALLY WORKED like our customer expected?

I once asked a guy why he bought a particular brand of machinery that I was thinking of buying.  He said, simply, “Because they work.”

I felt a little stupid, and then I thought some more about it and it’s really true.  We just want the things we buy to work, when we need them.  If things and services worked when you needed them, if they were effective, 100% of the time, I wouldn’t be writing this blog.

There would be little to talk about, except perhaps reducing the cost to deliver the product or service, but people don’t seem to mind spending a little more if they can rely on the product or service they are paying for.

Oh, I digress, let’s get back to measurement.

When the product or service does NOT meet the customer’s requirements, we call that a defect.  Defect is kind of a dirty word in our society.  It’s an abusive term a cruel high-schooler might call a fellow student in the cafeteria after they drop their tray, but defect is really a word we need to use to begin to talk about improvement.

You have to talk about what’s going wrong, if you are to improve your organization.  If the culture is uncomfortable talking about what’s not going right, there is a challenge.

Try to make improvement about the process and not the people.  If it’s about the process we can move from blame to a more open discussion about how to address why something is not working right.

If we measure how often our business process makes a defect, we can begin to characterize our starting point in the improvement journey.

We can also look at how often we have a defective output, if you will, in terms of quality, schedule and cost.

An example of a quality defect might be getting your Grand Slam Breakfast without the bacon.  A cost example would be that the breakfast had to be made a second time because the eggs came out over-easy instead of over medium.  A delivery example would be if the breakfast got there ten minutes late.

You can imagine, in an organization how many thousands or millions of opportunities there are to get it right over the course of a week, a month or a year.

Let’s use a fast food example to move closer to something we can measure, so we can improve it.  Suppose you pull up to your favorite drive-thru for breakfast.  Let’s suppose you’d like your meal within five minutes of the time you place the order.

If it takes the team to get your order to you three minutes, plus or minus a minute, you’re all set.  Not only do they vary in their performance hardly at all, but even when they take longer than average, you are satisfied.

The problem happens when they either take too long, on average, to deliver your meal or the time they take varies too much.  We call this variation the enemy in the quality improvement arena.

If we take the average amount of time it takes as well as the range of time it takes to prepare the meal we have a starting point.  In the next web log we will look at the process behind the numbers to see where there may be opportunities to shorten the process time and/or remove some of this nasty variation.

I was in a local coffee shop recently, with laptop, business cards, cell phone all around me and I needed a refill.  There are three kinds of refills: free, discount and full price.

I love free…we all love free.  Discount is a nice compromise.  I’m showing my loyalty by coming back and you’re rewarding that with a little reduction on my cost.  Terrific!

But full price?  It seems you know what you’re worth, but I’m not sure I agree.  Sure, I’ll pay it, it’s only something like $2.10, so no big deal…but hey…I did just get a cup 45 minutes ago and I also bought one of those $2.50 danishes, so…what’s the deal?

Anyway…I digress.

So  I get my refill, with just the right amount of half-n-half, sugar and it’s all stirred to a perfect homogeneous blend, take my first sip and…Oh no…It’s remarkably weaker than the original cup.

I think, well, it’s me, so I take a confirmation sip, and…No, it’s not me, this is definitely weaker.  I’ve got several choices:   I can do nothing and sip my coffee, abandon the coffee, which may be a healthier choice…but wait a minute; I just paid for a refill! No, I’m going over to the counter to express my dissatisfaction, tactfully, but assertively.

I say,”Uh, my refill was really weaker.”  The woman behind the counter says,” that’s weird.” 

“Uh huh”, I reply.  “”Can we try that again?” I ask.  She looks at me like I just told her her adorable daughter is ugly as sin.

She takes my cup and says, “I just made a new batch, let me warm that up for you”.  “Wait”, I reply, “I’d like a new cup, not just a warm up”.

She rolls her eyes like I just told her she is not going to get that new stimulus package as promised.  She walks over to the sink, dumps out the weak refill and says, well, I can’t imagine what went wrong,  I mean,  I do it the same way every time!”

I just stand there, waiting for her merciful action to refill my cup, which did not meet my original requirements, patiently.

Has my attitude toward the establishment changed in any way?  Did she make me feel any differently about the place?  Does it influence my choice to come back?  Maybe.

This is an example of a story where the voice of the customer really comes into play.  A few key points:

Who is the customer and what is really important to them?

What is the problem, in terms of the customer?

How do we measure the problem?

Where in the process does the problem occur?

What inputs to the process, things it needs to work right and deliver the desired outcome were present or missing?

In the case of making a good cup of coffee, a lot of factors go into making it come out right.  In the above example, the outcome apparently changed, so something in the process changed.

There are several factors or characteristics in the product or service you supply to your customer.  There are quality characteristics, cost characteristics and delivery characteristics.

A perfect cup of coffee would be free, delivered immediately and be the most wonderful cup of coffee you ever tasted, delighting you, not merely satisfying you.

You might be able to make the best tasting cup of coffee in the world, but if it costs you $5.00 to make it or if it takes you twenty minutes to make it, you might not sell too many of them.

Being a competitive organization means tuning into those characteristics in your product or service that your customer considers critical. 

Find out what those critical-to-quality (CTQ) characteristics are and people will start paying attention to you, over the competition.  Offer it at a fair price and deliver it on-time and they will start coming to you in drives.

If you can delight your customer, first, deliver within a reasonable time and keep costs down, you will be well on your way to a competitive situation.

In troubling economic times, when sales are down, the only way to stay in business is to get lean.  We’ll look at that in the next post.

In the meantime, ask yourself:

Who is my customer?

What characteristics are critical to them?

How do I build processes which avoid problems, in their perspective?

How do I exceed their expectations and still make a buck?

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER!

I used to hike the White Mountains with a guy named Bill that I worked with at Raytheon.  He went up there every weekend in the summer and skiied Killington every weekend of winter. 

Bill was a good guy to know.  I didn’t have time to plan my diet and wellness program with a friend like him.  I was too busy burning calories to do that.

By having a mentor to help encourage me to go up there and pick out “easier” 4000 foot peaks to climb,  at first, Icould make my way into hiking, one hike at a time.

It was a process:  check the weather, get there early, dress properly, get good shoes, bring the layers, water and nutrition needed and take one step at a time.

We’d drive up to a trail head at 6:00 am, check our stuff and start hiking.

Another key to success: take breaks along the way to assess how things are going, ask yourself if you want to stick with the original goal, modify if required and take more steps.

I noticed that I could handle the chore as long as  I focused on the journey, not so much the end point, the peak. Along with breaks, it was also key that we would stop along the way, when we would reach an outlook or shoulder of the mountain to appreciate reaching that milestone. All I had to concern myself with was my place on the trail and the next trail marker, yards ahead, at any point along the way.

I noticed that if we reached yet another milestone,  I could begin to imagine reaching the next one, with recovery.

Eventually, the last milestone was the peek.  It usually followed reaching the tree line, where tall trees gave way to smaller shrubs, then just rocks with moss and liken. As  Irealized I was close to the end,  ifound new reason and energy to make the last leg.

The world at the top of the Presidential Range was like the surface of the moon.  The reward was reaching this new place, this new state, mentally as well as physically. It was like being in the clouds. All my worries and concerns were 4,000 feet below me now.

I wanted to stay there for hours, but there was the time of day, weather and other factors to consider, like the two hour ride home, without falling alseep.

The business process improvement journey is similar to becomming a hiker in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  You learn, prepare, ask, make mistakes (hopefully not serious, catastrophic mistakes) learn, improve and achieve.

The journey starts out by seeing where you are; the trail head if you will.  It means taking a look at the map, seeing what’s required for that day and being honest about whether you are prepared.  Then it’s about taking one step at a time, hiking the trail and assessing along the way.

Some days you reach the peek, some days you don’t, but you end the day stronger, smarted and closer to your vision of the future than when you woke up.

What are some of the business-related mountains you’d like to climb?  What do you need to bring with you?  Are you up to the journey?  What are the milestones along the way?

Feel free to reply with your thoughts, feelings, questions, concerns and comments.  Whether it’s meeting your customer’s requirements or getting out there and facing a new challenge, I’d like to hear from you!

Mike Weekes, http://www.whataboutquality.com

Here you will learn tools and methods to reduce the cost of delivering your services and products as well as how to deliver them more effectively.

Times are tough; there is no doubt about it.  More than ever, your team has to improve just to survive.

Improvement is a process. 

This web log will deliver daily doses of tips, tools and methods to help you look at the way you do the work you do, measure performance, analyze the causes of your issues and improve key processes by eliminating those causes of your issues.

We welcome your postings, replies, questions, concerns and comments.  Your input, as leaders of organizations will help us focus our information and solutions.

Through a dialog, we together will reveal and take advantage of theses opportunities in your business process to help you deliver your products and services and satisfy your customers more effectively and efficiently.

Our job is to provide an environment where you are encouraged to share your ideas so we can take an improvement journey together.

Our goal is twofold:  1) to develop a much better sense of where the issues are in your organization and 2) facilitate a systematic, effective process to achieve a competitive level of performance, even in the most challenging economic times.

Let the journey begin!