Business Improvement or
Bringing Enjoyment back into Work!
If you remember what it was like when you looked forward to coming work, what happened to change that?
If work has always been a drudge, why are you still there?
If you are ‘having a ball’ at work then you must be one of a rare breed and we’d like to meet you!
………
There are fundamentally three reasons for being in business[1]:
1. To stay in business,
2. To provide employment,
3. To enjoy yourself!
Bringing Enjoyment back into Work!
If you remember what it was like when you looked forward to coming work, what happened to change that?
If work has always been a drudge, why are you still there?
If you are ‘having a ball’ at work then you must be one of a rare breed and we’d like to meet you!
………
There are fundamentally three reasons for being in business[1]:
1. To stay in business,
2. To provide employment,
3. To enjoy yourself!
Just trying to stay afloat is the preoccupation of too many businesses in the UK at the moment, so what chance is there of enjoying yourself?
Read on ………!
Remember ‘If you always do what you have always done you will always get what you have always got![2]’
So if you are struggling to stay afloat never mind enjoying yourself at work, something has to change, and that is what Business Improvement is all about viz.
‘improvement – the act of making or becoming better’[3]
‘improvement – the act of making or becoming better’[3]
There are fundamentally three reasons for being in business:
1. To stay in business,
2. To provide employment,
3. To enjoy yourself!
But ‘Before you can change what you do, you have to change what you think. And before you can change how you think, you have to change what you believe.[4]’
Now before you go and lie down because this appears to be getting far too deep, let’s look at some examples of the sort of beliefs that may have to change if you want your business to improve:
1. Good intentions are not enough
If you always do what you have always done you will always get what you have always got!You may have every intention of making things better, and you may be absolutely sincere in that wish, but people have been known to be absolutely and sincerely wrong e.g. the unfortunate BBC weatherman who assured the nation on 16 October 1987 that no hurricane was expected! If you want to improve your business, and even bring some enjoyment back, you need to have a goal(s), you need to make plans, and you need to consult with those inside and outside your organisation. Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to do everything yourself – either individually or as a company, in fact it’s better for your business if you don’t!
If you always do what you have always done you will always get what you have always got!You may have every intention of making things better, and you may be absolutely sincere in that wish, but people have been known to be absolutely and sincerely wrong e.g. the unfortunate BBC weatherman who assured the nation on 16 October 1987 that no hurricane was expected! If you want to improve your business, and even bring some enjoyment back, you need to have a goal(s), you need to make plans, and you need to consult with those inside and outside your organisation. Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to do everything yourself – either individually or as a company, in fact it’s better for your business if you don’t!
2. Competition kills cooperation
What we need is more
teamwork!It’s ironic that so much of the fabric of our society, at home, at school and at work, is built around competition and independence, when so much more can be achieved by cooperation and interdependence! Given that it is generally accepted that teams are a good idea because of the synergy[5] that occurs, it’s ironic that in many walks of life we have to fight tooth-and-nail (compete) to earn a place on the team, and then adopt the opposite attitude of trust and interdependence (cooperation) in order to stay on the team. In fact it’s not just ironic – it’s farcical! It’s even worse when we consider that our present-day society drums the idea of interdependence (cooperation) out of us from an early age. We compete for place in school, we compete for a place on the sports team, we compete for promotion, and we compete to have the best image ‘To keep up with the Jones’s’, as we say in Britain. And all the time we are repeating the mantra ‘What we need is more teamwork (cooperation)!’
What we need is more
teamwork!It’s ironic that so much of the fabric of our society, at home, at school and at work, is built around competition and independence, when so much more can be achieved by cooperation and interdependence! Given that it is generally accepted that teams are a good idea because of the synergy[5] that occurs, it’s ironic that in many walks of life we have to fight tooth-and-nail (compete) to earn a place on the team, and then adopt the opposite attitude of trust and interdependence (cooperation) in order to stay on the team. In fact it’s not just ironic – it’s farcical! It’s even worse when we consider that our present-day society drums the idea of interdependence (cooperation) out of us from an early age. We compete for place in school, we compete for a place on the sports team, we compete for promotion, and we compete to have the best image ‘To keep up with the Jones’s’, as we say in Britain. And all the time we are repeating the mantra ‘What we need is more teamwork (cooperation)!’
3. The Blame Culture
This arises out of the assumption that there is always someone at fault when things go wrong. It is also assumes that, when something goes wrong, all you have to do is find the culprit – an individual, a department or an organisation, punish the offender, and it won’t happen again!
In fact 95% of the time it’s not the people who are at fault[6]! So, for example, if written orders are always being sent out too late to enable prompt delivery by the supplier, then the problem is most likely with the process, not the Order Entry Clerk in Purchasing. And blaming the Order Entry Clerk and then punishing him/her will not have the slightest effect on the occurrence of the problem, especially when a little investigation may show that the Boss insists on seeing every written order before it goes out, in spite of not being there all the time!
But blaming/punishing the Clerk will have a major effect on their attitude to their boss in future when the boss is looking for a little extra help during a busy period, and on everyone else in the office who saw what was happening!
Thus a blame culture delivers a ‘Triple Whammy’ to the organisation:
1. not lonely does it prevent the real issues being addressed,
2. but it de-motivates the individual(s) concerned directly, and
3. reduces the willingness of the rest of the workforce to "go the extra mile".
This arises out of the assumption that there is always someone at fault when things go wrong. It is also assumes that, when something goes wrong, all you have to do is find the culprit – an individual, a department or an organisation, punish the offender, and it won’t happen again!
In fact 95% of the time it’s not the people who are at fault[6]! So, for example, if written orders are always being sent out too late to enable prompt delivery by the supplier, then the problem is most likely with the process, not the Order Entry Clerk in Purchasing. And blaming the Order Entry Clerk and then punishing him/her will not have the slightest effect on the occurrence of the problem, especially when a little investigation may show that the Boss insists on seeing every written order before it goes out, in spite of not being there all the time!
But blaming/punishing the Clerk will have a major effect on their attitude to their boss in future when the boss is looking for a little extra help during a busy period, and on everyone else in the office who saw what was happening!
Thus a blame culture delivers a ‘Triple Whammy’ to the organisation:
1. not lonely does it prevent the real issues being addressed,
2. but it de-motivates the individual(s) concerned directly, and
3. reduces the willingness of the rest of the workforce to "go the extra mile".
Before you can change what you do,
you have to change what you think.
you have to change what you think.
And before you can change how you think,
you have to change what you believe.Now let’s look at how changing your thinking on the above issues can improve your business:
you have to change what you believe.Now let’s look at how changing your thinking on the above issues can improve your business:
If the ‘Blame Culture’ is alive and well in your organisation then you will not have anything like the full cooperation of your workforce in running the business – they will be on ‘minimum cooperation’ mode i.e. doing the minimum required to ensure that they get paid! With their cooperation you will be able to improve things no end in the day-to-day running of the business, because these people know things about your business that you don’t know, and probably never will!
Consider the Sales Manager who, confronted with an increasing number of customer complaints, and assuming that it was the customer that was at fault (“Customers are always whining about something!”), called a meeting with his Sales Team to give them a pep-talk about dealing with awkward customers.
Imagine his surprise on being told that the majority of complaints were down to invoicing errors – wrong part number, wrong price, wrong quantity, etc. He thought he knew it all, he thought it was just the customer being awkward, he never considered the possibility of an error arising in-house!
But he soon recovered from his surprise when he realised that the errors came from Customer Service (he’d never really got on with the Supervisor there) and promptly went storming in the Supervisor’s office threatening dire consequences if the people responsible for all these errors weren’t disciplined or sacked immediately (the blame culture was live and kicking here!).
#Of course the Customer Service Supervisor then went and berated the IT Supervisor for putting the wrong data in the computer, etc, etc!
In this scenario, which is not fictitious, the people ‘on the ground’ had known of the problems for some time, but they had no means of bringing the issues to the attention of those in authority without getting caught up in the ‘politics’ of the office. It took someone from outside the office with some experience of dealing with type of issue to break the log-jam.
With the benefit of hindsight it is quite easy to see that the overall result of this culture was that income to the business was reduced over a period of time because invoices weren’t being paid because the invoices were incorrect.
So if that’s the problem – what about some answers?
a) Systems Thinking
For the purposes of this paper we will define a system as a collection of interdependent processes having a common overall purpose. And a process is defined as a subset of the system in which a selection of inputs are transformed into the desired output as illustrated below. This model applies equally to shop floor processes as it does to ‘office’ processes such as preparing and distributing the monthly sales report.
Process Model
Inputs
People
Materials
Machines
Method
Environment
Outputs
Product
or
Service
Transformation
Process
Diagrammatically we may represent a simple system as a series of processes thus:
Process
Process
Process
System Model
where the output of one process constitutes the input of the next process, etc. This conveniently demonstrates the interdependence of the processes in a given system, since bad output from one process will inevitably prevent the next process from producing good output i.e. The organisation as a whole suffers when the individual parts fail to cooperate.
Process Model
Inputs
People
Materials
Machines
Method
Environment
Outputs
Product
or
Service
Transformation
Process
Diagrammatically we may represent a simple system as a series of processes thus:
Process
Process
Process
System Model
where the output of one process constitutes the input of the next process, etc. This conveniently demonstrates the interdependence of the processes in a given system, since bad output from one process will inevitably prevent the next process from producing good output i.e. The organisation as a whole suffers when the individual parts fail to cooperate.
b) Let people learn from their mistakes
In our opening scenario we encountered the ‘blame culture’ where the ‘solution’ to the problem was in the hunt for, and subsequent punishment of, the guilty party. So what the individual learnt from this was:
q Don’t make mistakes,
q Don’t stick your neck out and
q At all costs cover your behind!
In our opening scenario we encountered the ‘blame culture’ where the ‘solution’ to the problem was in the hunt for, and subsequent punishment of, the guilty party. So what the individual learnt from this was:
q Don’t make mistakes,
q Don’t stick your neck out and
q At all costs cover your behind!
Consequently learning and innovation are stifled (see below).
StartThe Theory of Learning has quite different view on what are generally referred to as ’mistakes’. It goes something like this – it is only when you make ‘mistakes’ that you actually learn something you didn’t know before! Consider the illustration below:
In all circumstances of change there is a Theory (formal or informal) about how things will or should be. Based on that theory the Outcome or consequence of a situation can be Predicted e.g. it’s a cloudy today therefore it will rain later. The theory and the prediction are tested by Observation of what actually happens in an experiment, and then Reviewing or comparing the outcome or results with the prediction.
StartThe Theory of Learning has quite different view on what are generally referred to as ’mistakes’. It goes something like this – it is only when you make ‘mistakes’ that you actually learn something you didn’t know before! Consider the illustration below:
In all circumstances of change there is a Theory (formal or informal) about how things will or should be. Based on that theory the Outcome or consequence of a situation can be Predicted e.g. it’s a cloudy today therefore it will rain later. The theory and the prediction are tested by Observation of what actually happens in an experiment, and then Reviewing or comparing the outcome or results with the prediction.
If the ‘blame culture’ prevails, and the outcome fails to match the prediction, it’s time to take cover – retribution is at hand! On the other hand, if the outcome matches results there is due celebration, and what might be described as undeserved reward. But in either case the opportunity for further learning is ignored.
If the ’new culture’ prevails, it becomes apparent that learning only takes place when the outcome does not match our prediction.
So, if we can accept that many ‘mistakes’, although obviously not all, arise out of a lack of knowledge or understanding of a given situation or set of circumstances, then it is a short step to realising that many ‘mistakes’ actually present an opportunity to learn something new. And rather than castigating the individual concerned, they should be encouraged to take advantage of what they have learned to improve the way they carry out their allotted tasks.
Conclusion
"When I talk to so many friends in the remanufacturing industry, it seems as if the pressures have increased and the enjoyment gone. Mark is not from our industry, but the points he makes are totally valid. If you like the article I would recommend one of his in-house workshops". - Daniel Roberts
If the ’new culture’ prevails, it becomes apparent that learning only takes place when the outcome does not match our prediction.
So, if we can accept that many ‘mistakes’, although obviously not all, arise out of a lack of knowledge or understanding of a given situation or set of circumstances, then it is a short step to realising that many ‘mistakes’ actually present an opportunity to learn something new. And rather than castigating the individual concerned, they should be encouraged to take advantage of what they have learned to improve the way they carry out their allotted tasks.
Conclusion
"When I talk to so many friends in the remanufacturing industry, it seems as if the pressures have increased and the enjoyment gone. Mark is not from our industry, but the points he makes are totally valid. If you like the article I would recommend one of his in-house workshops". - Daniel Roberts
If you are struggling to stay afloat never mind enjoying yourself at work, something has to change, and that is what Business Improvement is all about viz.
‘improvement – the act of making or becoming better’
‘improvement – the act of making or becoming better’
But what has to change? The short answer is – you do!
Good intentions are not enough. Get help and make plans!
Competition kills cooperation! Try working together to solve problem.
Don’t just look for someone to blame when things go wrong – look beyond the people to the system and the processes.
-------------------------
Mark Owen
-------------------------
Mark Owen
This article is based a paper entitled ‘Bringing enjoyment back to work’ written by Mark E Owen and published in 2005. For copies of this paper in full, e-mail your request to: info@excelsis-enterprises.co.uk
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Mark began his career in the electronics industry in 1968 with International Computers and was subsequently employed in a variety of technical and management roles by Ferranti Computer Systems, Sperry Gyroscopes and Burroughs Machines. In 1983 he made a career change and joined the sales team of Du Pont Electronics (Europe) being responsible for UK, Ireland and Scandinavia and around $7million of sales.
His last appointment in industry, representing yet another change of career, was with the same company, Du Pont, when he joined the European Management Team to lead the implementation of the TQM initiative in Europe. This involved him as a member of the very select team of MBNQA Assessors appointed to operate within the corporation worldwide. It also involved him in the instigation of the European Quality Award (known in the UK as the Business Excellence Model), having to stand down as an Assessor when he became an independent consultant in 1992.
For the last twelve years Mark has been providing management consultancy and training, in both public and private sectors, on a broad range of quality management issues from Strategic Quality Planning to the implementation of ISO 9000. He has also been intimately involved in the development of an interactive software/hardware tool that facilitates the Self-Assessment process of the European/British Quality Award called ‘Maxim’®
In recognition of his valuable contribution to the understanding and promulgation of quality issues, he was appointed Fellow of the Institute of Quality Assurance in 2004.
[1] W Edwards Deming
[2] Anon
[3] Concise Oxford Dictionary
[4] Lloyd Dobyns & Clare Crawford
[5] Definition: synergy is found in a situation where the output is greater than the sum of the inputs.
[6] ‘The New Economics’ by W Edwards Deming
-------------------------
Mark began his career in the electronics industry in 1968 with International Computers and was subsequently employed in a variety of technical and management roles by Ferranti Computer Systems, Sperry Gyroscopes and Burroughs Machines. In 1983 he made a career change and joined the sales team of Du Pont Electronics (Europe) being responsible for UK, Ireland and Scandinavia and around $7million of sales.
His last appointment in industry, representing yet another change of career, was with the same company, Du Pont, when he joined the European Management Team to lead the implementation of the TQM initiative in Europe. This involved him as a member of the very select team of MBNQA Assessors appointed to operate within the corporation worldwide. It also involved him in the instigation of the European Quality Award (known in the UK as the Business Excellence Model), having to stand down as an Assessor when he became an independent consultant in 1992.
For the last twelve years Mark has been providing management consultancy and training, in both public and private sectors, on a broad range of quality management issues from Strategic Quality Planning to the implementation of ISO 9000. He has also been intimately involved in the development of an interactive software/hardware tool that facilitates the Self-Assessment process of the European/British Quality Award called ‘Maxim’®
In recognition of his valuable contribution to the understanding and promulgation of quality issues, he was appointed Fellow of the Institute of Quality Assurance in 2004.
[1] W Edwards Deming
[2] Anon
[3] Concise Oxford Dictionary
[4] Lloyd Dobyns & Clare Crawford
[5] Definition: synergy is found in a situation where the output is greater than the sum of the inputs.
[6] ‘The New Economics’ by W Edwards Deming
As published in Recylcer Trade Magazine Copyright 2007 - Mark Owen
For more information Contact daniel@incartek.com
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