Quality out in the open

Over the last couple of weeks I've written about a recent disagreement between me and the organizational hierarchy of ASQ (American Society for Quality), and about what that disagreement can tell us about organizational behavior generally. (See specifically this post and then this one.) The situation has not really improved—not yet, at any rate—and I'll get to that in a minute. But I want to stop first to talk about an important principle that this whole discussion has brought to light.

The principle is transparency. As much as possible, manage your business out in the open. When it comes to Quality in your products or services, manage that out in the open too. (Incidentally, I make this very point with respect to process management in an article I posted just five years ago.)

Obviously this doesn't mean telling your competitors all your trade secrets. It doesn't mean exposing any information that you are legally required to keep confidential. 

But transparency generates trust. If you are open and honest with your employees, or your customers, or the public, then they will be inclined to trust you because they can see that you aren't double-dealing.

By the same token, if you are sly or silent or secretive—if you hide things—you encourage people to distrust you. They will all think, What are you doing that is so bad that you have to hide it from me? And their imaginations will conjure up pictures far worse than anything you are really doing! So you'll do better to own up to whatever it is, rather than let them imagine something horrible.

Transparency and justice

I spent my high school years at the Webb School of California. Like all private schools, it had rules. The students were teenagers, so perhaps it is not surprising that some of them challenged those rules. Once in a while, a student was expelled. 

Stephen and Ann Longley
in the 1970s.

Ongoing disciplinary actions were always kept confidential, of course. But as soon as the boy had left campus, the Headmaster (Stephen Longley, back in those days) addressed the school. Keeping the story simple and trans­parent, he told us what the student had done, and that he had been asked to leave. He was clear and to the point, with no needless detail to muddy the picture.

The impact of this honesty and clarity was enormous. In the first place we all knew that we wouldn't be seeing Fred or Herman around campus any more, and we all knew why. But there was more than that. We knew that Fred or Herman had been removed for violating an objective rule, not because someone took a subjective dislike to him. We understood that if we did the same thing he had done, we would be expelled the same way he was. But we also understood that if we didn't break the rules, we were safe. The objectivity of the rules secured us. And the relentless clarity of the communication promised justice.   

Failure to communicate

Does that mean we should just let it all hang out? Not really, because that is rarely an effective way to communicate. (Note that Stephen Longley's announcements were very focused.)

This is the mistake I made in my most recent exchange with ASQ. In last week's article, I told you that some administrator deleted one of my posts from the myASQ discussion forum on August 6, and then it took them another six days to send me an email explaining why. By the time I got that email (August 12), I was so full-to-bursting with things I wanted to say that I dumped all of it into my reply the same day. But that just meant that my email back to the administrators was full of sound and fury. Perhaps it is not surprising that they set my account to a status where everything I post is automatically queued for moderation. (Most people can post directly with no delay.) I don't know if this status will expire one day, but it was still in place yesterday (August 19). 

What I meant to say ....

Naturally I don't like being on permanent-moderation status, but I recognize that it's partly my own fault for not communicating with ASQ more clearly. But what I meant to tell them was what I am saying here and now, about the virtue of transparency.

The whole disagreement started back when I wrote about some minor mistakes in the roll-out of an updated election procedure. Very bland stuff. Someone in the administration might have felt attacked by the criticism, and in any event asked that it be deleted. The person who wrote me suggested that I take up the issue privately inside the administration.

What I wanted to explain is this:

• If my login doesn't work, that's a personal problem.
• But if a general procedure doesn't work, it already affects everybody.
• That means that people are already talking about it.
• Once people are already talking about it—and they are, today—the only way to silence them is to make the whole thing very public. If you try to suppress the discussion, people will imagine horrible things, far worse than reality.

I failed to make these points because I buried them under a lot of useless bombastic noise. But I am convinced that they are true.

Robert Townsend on secrecy

One of the best management books I have ever read is Robert Townsend's Up the Organization. Find a copy and read it. Here's what he says about secrecy.

Secrecy is totally bad. It defeats the crusade for justice, which doesn't flourish in the dark.

Did you ever ask yourself why there's a private payroll? Or why all wages and salaries aren't posted on the bulletin board? According to the lore of the free-enterprise system money is really a scorecard. So why aren't the scores posted?*

Of course the company would have a revulsion (or a revolution) if everybody had to look squarely at a list showing the salaries of the president and his nephew, who are paid four times what they're worth, and the salaries of Izzy, Derek, and Susie, who are making a third of what they're worth.

In the case of most marketing or new product planning, secrecy is sinister. It defeats your loyal opposition and protects you from your best friends when you need them most. Secrecy implies either:

1. What I'm doing is so horrible I don't dare tell you.
   or
2. I don't trust you (any more).

__________

* I'm not suggesting that you should post salaries. For one thing, it would over-emphasize the importance of money. But you shouldn't tolerate a situation in which you're ashamed to post them. Like you are. 

           

Can you report bad news?

Quality professionals have to report bad news. It's part of the job.

That's why many organizations make Quality report directly to the CEO or General Manager, instead of tucking the department under Operations or Engineering. It's not that Quality's headcount or budget are so large that they have to be managed at that level. The idea is that Quality has to report the true state of things, without the risk that someone will hide the news.

"The widgets coming off Line 2 are defective, and if we ship them we risk a $2-million recall in the next six months."

"The prototype Mark IV Fantabulator still fails five of its fouteen critical tests and leaks radiation all over the user."

"The packaging machine in Logistics is out of alignment again, even though they just fixed it last week."

These are things the organization needs to know, even though they might embarrass someone. And it is Quality's job to speak up.

Or is it?

Last week I wrote about some hiccups recently as ASQ rolled out an updated procedure for electing officers in the geographical Sections. On the whole it wasn't a dramatic topic. Then after I posted the article here, I wrote a notification to post in myASQ, which is ASQ's in-house social media platform. I started with a brief and—I hoped—non-threatening introduction:

Was anybody else as confused as I was by the roll-out of the new procedure for electing Section officers? We heard that there were changes coming, but my Section (at least) didn't get specific information until we had already missed some deadlines. I don't know if anyone else had the same experience. But is there a chance that the organization could do a Lessons Learned analysis on this roll-out, in order to make future ones go better?

I talk about it in a little more detail here:....

Then I gave a link to last week's article. In other words, I tried to keep it as bland and professional as I could, in the hopes of starting some kind of discussion about what went on.

Within fifteen minutes, an administrator deleted my post.

I post a lot on myASQ, and this is the second time I've had a post deleted. The first time was just about a year ago, when I posted an article critical of the Board of Directors. That time, the removed post was a link to this article here; and I discussed its removal very briefly in this one here. In a nutshell, last year's post was taken down ostensibly for violating the myASQ Terms of Service; but in fact it didn't violate the Terms of Service that were current when I posted it. Those Terms were updated 24 hours later, specifically to forbid any discussion of the things I was talking about.*

This time around? I got an email yesterday from ASQ HQ, six days after the post went down, with a partial explanation. The heart of it is a reminder that myASQ is the wrong forum for complaints about procedures that aren't working. The email suggested that I contact this office or that officer instead.

Public or private?

In principle it makes sense to specify that this channel is only for this kind of communication, but in this case I wonder. If I contact an office or an officer, the ensuing discussion will be private. But when the topic is a failed procedure—and a procedure that affects many people—I think the communication really has to be public.

The point is that people are already discussing the issue. When I asked, "Was anybody else as confused as I was?" it was a rhetorical question. I'd already talked to people in other Sections who had the exact same experiences and the exact same questions. So in a sense I was asking my questions on their behalf as well. In my reply to the email from HQ, I tried to make the point that a lot of people in the Society are already whispering in the corners about this very topic. If ASQ came out and addressed it publicly, they would silence a lot of whispering. And they would give members a renewed confidence in ASQ as an organization. It would be a win all the way around.

Of course—I tried to reassure the officer who wrote to me—discussing the issue publicly never means naming names! No one expects the Society to say "It's all the fault of John Jones and Fred Smith." But it is always possible to say "A Member misunderstood the procedure and therefore did X; then an Administrator followed up using the wrong template and did Y. We are currently investigating how to error-proof the process so that it is impossible to make those mistakes again." And, as I say, it would boost confidence to do so.

I don't know if I was persuasive or not. I guess we'll see.

Where do we report bad news?

Ultimately that's the important question: Where do we report bad news?

• We have to report it somewhere, because that's what we Quality professionals do.
• ASQ has urged us for years to channel all our communications into myASQ, so my first guess is that that's where we should report administrative failures like this one. 
• On the other hand, if myASQ is the wrong place to report bad news, then that's fine too—so long as we know what channel to use instead. And for practical reasons, it should be a more-or-less public channel, one that other people can consult. Is there another channel inside ASQ with these features? Or how about LinkedIn? Facebook? The New York Times? 

I'm ready to use any of them, so just let me know. 

__________

* Yes, I downloaded copies of the Terms of Service document—with date stamps—before and after, just to be sure.

           

Management by travel

Last week I wrote about Florida Power and Light learning Total Quality Control from Kansai Electric in Japan, and I mentioned that "FPL and Kansai set up an extensive program of travel and visitation, so that personnel from each company could build personal contacts with their counterparts." It was a single bullet-point in an article largely about other things, so many readers might have missed it. But the technique is a powerful one.

Years ago, I worked for a Bosch subsidiary called ETAS. ETAS had run as an ambitious startup for some years by then. They were beginning to expand, with sales and development offices outside of Germany. But they wanted to preserve the unique company culture that had brought them their early success. Now, culture requires communication, and the most effective communication is always in-person. Nothing else replaces being there. So the company made a strategic decision for several years to invest in business travel.

This meant that the office in California where I worked had regular visitors—from the other ETAS office in America, and from the home office in Germany. We had workshops to bring together our engineers with their counterparts from other product lines. Likewise for the sales force; likewise for the customer service team. The global Process Owners for each of the business processes in our Quality Management System visited regularly to check how the systems were working for us. Nor was the travel all in one direction: there were events held in Germany by this department or that one, and our people were regularly invited—expected—to attend.

The organizational structure was international, as well. For some years my immediate supervisor sat in Germany. (I was still in California, so we were separated by nine time zones.) Three key positions in our office's management structure were filled by ETAS personnel who relocated from Germany. On the other hand, ETAS's Global Director for Operations and Finance was an American. International conference calls were routine, and so was the travel.

Not my passport. I downloaded this
picture from Wikipedia.
But you get the idea.

One of my topics in the Quality department was internal audits. The ETAS program assumed that for each internal audit there should be at least one auditor from somewhere else, to avoid the risk that a local auditor might get jaded by familiarity and stop seeing nonconformities. So I routinely led audits in our other American office, and in Germany; and we routinely invited my German colleagues to come audit in California. I didn't realize quite how routine the travel had become until one day the Passport Control officer in the Stuttgart Airport had to search for a blank page to stamp and finally told me, "You come here a lot."     

So did it work? Yes! It worked very well.

The net result of all this travel is that we really were able to work with our colleagues from other offices and other countries as if they were just down the hall. It was not unusual for me to chat with one of our engineers and hear him casually reference recent conversations with our German top management—referring to them by first name. We discussed common concerns, asked and gave support on common projects, all as if we were working in the same building. Of course there were occasional misunderstandings arising from imperfect translation or differing legal backgrounds; but they were easily managed, because we had built up friendship and familiarity by working together.

Ultimately, as the company continued to mature, we got to the point where it was no longer as critical as it had once been to reinforce the cultural framework; and we no longer poured quite so much money into travel. The savings certainly made a difference: there is no question that our travel-based management strategy had been very expensive. At the same time, it is also unarguable that it helped tie together a collection of far-flung offices into a single operating unit. 

Do I recommend the same strategy for every company? Well of course it depends. Not every company has multiple offices in different countries; of the companies that do, not all of those need their offices to work together seamlessly. As a result, many companies don't need anything like this approach. And I'm sure that some companies which might otherwise benefit from it, can't afford it. If the margins in your industry are too narrow, that limits what options are available to you. 

But it is still true that the best communication takes place in-person. It is still true that no electronic tool ever quite takes the place of being there. That's what makes travel and visitation such powerful tools for building a culture and binding a company together. 

           

Managing critical issues

We've talked before about problem-solving (see for example this post here), but what do you do when everything comes unglued at once—when a problem hits the fan, and suddenly you are fielding calls from reporters and attorneys when you haven't even gotten all the facts yet? Yes, you need a robust problem-solving protocol, but at the same time you need so much more than that! You need to manage the news cycle, because a careless or unguarded comment can turn public opinion implacably against you or ruin your chances in court, even though you haven't finished your investigation yet so you really don't know what happened!  

A few weeks ago, I attended a very thorough presentation on exactly this topic. The speakers were Shubhada Sahasrabudhe and Shalabh Tandon of QuRIuS Consulting LLC, the talk was sponsored by the ASQ Phoenix Section (704), and you can find a link to the YouTube video at the bottom of this post. The overall message is based on their recent book, Don't Panic, Pivot: Managing Critical Issues to Prevent Crises, and it is well worth your time and attention.

The authors start by explaining that a critical issue is not the same as a crisis, though it may cause a crisis if it is not addressed in a timely way. Major disasters can be caused by a succession of seemingly-trivial errors that were ignored, rather than set right; and the authors look at specific examples in some detail, including the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. In each case, there were small signs in advance that something wasn't quite right. Based on this insight, they define a critical issue as follows: 

• An issue is any unresolved event that disrupts or hampers the normal operation, and that fails to meet the published or agreed-upon specifications.
• An issue is critical if it has time-sensitive impact (financial, safety, functional, etc.).
• And if not addressed urgently, a critical issue can become a crisis.  

Why does it matter? Well of course nobody wants to cause a catastrophic oil spill, or to destroy a major bridge. But the authors are careful to point out that the consequences of such a crisis affect multiple dimensions. Even if you momentarily set aside humanitarian concerns to take a cold-blooded look at the organization's own interests, a disaster hurts the organization in at least three areas: it damages operational efficiency, it can be ruinously expensive, and it soils the brand. (Regarding this last point, I have friends who check their travel plans to make sure they are not flying on Boeing planes, ever since the door blew out of Alaska Airlines 1282.*) So it is clearly in the organization's interest—even its narrowest self-interest—to watch for critical issues and correct them.

How do you do it? The authors sketch a method that looks, in broad outline, a lot like the protocol for handling an 8D. But there are a couple of critical additions.** 

1. Right at the beginning, in D2 (State the problem), evaluate whether this issue is critical. Make sure you understand the severity of the consequences, in case the issue blows up.
2. Then, during the impact assessment (typically also part of D2), make sure you address all relevant impacts: to operations, to finances, to stakeholders, and to your brand.
3. During D3 (Contain the problem), it is not enough to prevent the problem from spreading. You also have to contain the brand damage by making whatever public statements are necessary and appropriate, consistent with what you know at this point. Never speculate in public! Stick to the known facts, and promise you will come back with the full story when you have it. 
4. As you proceed through D4 (Find the root cause) and D5 (Define corrective action), validate your corrections before implementing them. Make sure that they address all affected stakeholders, and that they do not inadvertently cause further harm!

Perhaps the biggest change is that the authors break out Communication as a separate step between D6 (Implement corrective actions) and D7 (Assess risks and learn lessons). This addition confirms the point that harm to the brand can be as damaging as harm to customers or other stakeholders. And the authors give clear advice for all communication: make it timely, make it clear and unambiguous, and make it consistent. All of these points are important, but it is easy to overlook the last one. Or rather, it's easy, but don't overlook it! If you say one thing today and then backtrack tomorrow, people will think you are hiding something and assume the worst.

Finally, the authors break D7 (Assess risks and learn lessons) into two parts, because there is so much important work that has to be done there. On the one hand, they insist on the critical importance of a detailed After Action Review. But then you also have to implement Preventive Measures so that the problem can never, ever happen again. Both steps are important, so they list them separately to make sure neither gets shortchanged.

After all this, there's still a lot in their presentation that I haven't even touched. A single blogpost can do only so much. But check out the YouTube video below; if that inspires you, check out their book. There's a lot of detail here, and a lot of process to follow. But if you ever have to deal with a "critical issue"—even once!—you will be grateful to have a defined process that helps you keep your head amid the tumult. And of course implementing a system will be cheaper than trying to wing it, possibly by orders of magnitude. It's good to be prepared, and these authors can help prepare you.  

__________

* See also this post and the ones following.

** When I worked for Bosch, we had a similar procedure for similar circumstances. But this one is published, and to my knowledge the Bosch procedure has not been published yet. So I am happy to discuss this procedure.  

           

Communication at Hogwarts

We all know that communication is important, but sometimes we overlook how hard it can be. Of course in formal contexts—and we in the Quality business often focus on those—we rely on written documentation: contracts, product specifications, and the like. But there is also a kind of intangible Quality in the workplace, and no written job description can ever cover all the subtleties of chatting over coffee.

So I was delighted to attend a webinar a couple days ago that articulated the different strategies people use to com­mu­nicate (especially in the workplace), and that suggested ways to make that communication better. The webinar was sponsored by the St. Louis Section of ASQ. The speaker was Tom Brown, of Serve2Lead. And the title was "When Intent Meets Impact: Improving Communication to Strengthen Quality Culture."

The core of Brown's talk was based on the TRACOM® Social Style™ model of human interaction.This model states that each of us naturally gravitates to one of four different modes when we try to communicate, and that over a suffi­ciently large population the four modes are more or less evenly distributed. (To be clear, any of us can use any of the four modes, depending on context. But the model says that one will always feel more natural than the others. An added complication is that when we are put under stress, we shift modes in predictable ways.) The key consequence is that three out of every four people you talk to prefer to communicate differently than you do! If we are not careful, this can make for a lot of misunderstanding.

What are these four modes? They break down along two axes: an assertiveness scale, that stretches between those who prefer to Ask and those who prefer to Tell; and a responsiveness scale that stretches between those who focus on Tasks and those who focus on People. Plotting these two axes on the same page gives us four quadrants, which are the four modes that Brown discussed. For convenience, the model gives them names: Driver, Analytical, Amiable, and Expressive.

Strengths of the four modes

After he explained this table, Brown introduced a fun digression. He asked each of us to rate ourselves on which mode was most natural for us, and then to report back to the group. Even though the modes show up with about equal frequency in a "large-enough" population, our results showed that 57% of the people attending the webinar saw themselves as Analyticals. Brown—who sees himself as an Expressive and whose presentation was consistently enthusiastic, humorous, and energetic—said he wasn't a bit surprised. The webinar was sponsored by ASQ, so he argued that the large number of Quality professionals in attendance must have tipped the balance.*

Of course it's not all roses. Each of these modes has its corresponding weaknesses as well, which frustrate those who communicate in some other way. So, for example, Drivers can be decisive, tough, and efficient—and these are all strengths. But at the same time, they can come across as autocratic, overbearing, and insensitive—and these qualities can, depending on context, impede their ability to get cooperation from their colleagues. A listing of weaknesses looks like this:

Weaknesses of the four modes

What are we supposed to do with this information? In the first place, just be aware of it! Understand how you communicate, and how your listeners communicate as well. Then if there is a mismatch, be aware of how they are likely to misunderstand you, and of how your normal approach is likely to frustrate them. When you see that you are starting to annoy them, redirect yourself in a more productive way. Brown calls this "Moving to the Middle." He says that the key is to do less of whatever it is you normally do too much of, so that you cause less stress for people who communicate in fundamentally different ways.

How to move to the middle

There was much more to the talk, including a lengthy discussion of how someone native to one of the modes will react under stress. It turns out that he shifts to each of the other modes in turn, in a predictable pattern, as the stress continues to mount. But I can't possibly reproduce the whole webinar here, with all of Brown's insights. If this sounds useful to you, there are always sources online. Or drop Brown a note on his website. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. 

I titled this blog post "Communications at Hogwarts." So what does any of this have to do with Hogwarts?

Hogwarts, as you probably remember, is a private, boarding school for young wizards, created by J. K. Rowling for her Harry Potter series of novels. The students at Hogwarts are sorted into four Houses, based on their personal character, habits, and preferences. The four Houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, and Wikipedia summarizes their characteristics as follows: "Gryffindor values courage, nerve, and chivalry.... Hufflepuff values hard work, patience, justice, and loyalty.... Ravenclaw values intelligence, learning, wisdom, and wit.... [And] Slytherin values ambition, cunning, leadership, and resourcefulness."

But are these not the very social types we have been discussing? 

• Gryffindors are energetic and visionary, promoters and natural leaders. So are Expressives.
• Hufflepuffs care about justice and loyalty, and about working together for a common achievement. So do Amiables.
• Ravenclaws care about precision and accuracy, clarity and data. So do Analyticals.
• And Slytherins want to win. Just like Drivers.

Of course I don't mean the parallels too seriously. But they may be a handy way to remember the elements of the TRACOM model.

__________

* I didn't offer a category for myself when he asked us, because I ran out of time through overthinking the question. In retrospect, maybe the fact that I was overthinking it should have given me my first clue. 😀    

      

The placebo effect in Quality

I have long argued that Quality means getting what you want. But people want all kinds of things. And sometimes a person's "wants" don't make a lot of sense. Are all these things still Quality?

• 
  A friend of mine recently overheard a conversation in a grocery store. A customer was buying baking soda. She couldn't find the expensive commercial brand she wanted, so she reluctantly settled for the cheaper commercial brand instead. She flatly refused to buy the store brand. But baking soda is a pure chemical—sodium bicarbonate, or NaHCO₃. It's the same chemical, regardless of the packaging.
• Years ago, when my dad was a boy, the local grocer in his town told him a story. This man sold coffee, which he ordered in huge sacks and then poured into little paper bags sealed with tape for retail sale. The bags came in two sizes: 8 ounces (sealed with green tape) and 12 ounces (sealed with blue tape). But then he priced the smaller bags so that they cost more than the larger bags. It was the same coffee, and he never claimed they were different! But some customers always bought blue, and others always bought green. Once a customer who always bought green let him know that the shelf was empty. He told her, "Well, I get my next shipment tomorrow. But in the meantime I do still have some of the blue coffee, if you would like to try it." She answered, "No, I tried that once and it just doesn't compare. I guess I'll come back tomorrow, when you've got your shipment in." 
• 
  For years, IBM repairmen famously wore suits with white shirts and ties, and they carried their tools in attaché cases. John Molloy tells the story* that this uniform was established when computers were still large and expensive, and had not been widely adopted. The stereotype among companies that were just starting to buy computers was that they were unreliable and always breaking down. So IBM dressed their repairmen to look absolutely reliable, to persuade customers that the computers themselves were just as good. 

What do these stories tell us? They tell us that customer perceptions of Quality can be influenced by factors other than the objective content of the product or service itself. Presentation, expectation, packaging, and even price—all these contribute to the customer experience, and therefore to the customer's ultimate judgement (positive or negative) about the product or service.

So does that mean that we can stop worrying about making our products any good? Can we sell defective products and still call them "Quality" so long as the packaging is shiny enough?

No, of course not. If you sell defective products that break as soon as they're out of the box, your customers will catch on quickly enough. Then they'll tell their friends, and your reputation will be in tatters. Understanding the placebo effect is no excuse for sloppy workmanship.

What it does mean is that you can't stop with the product itself. Precisely because customers evaluate the presentation and packaging and the rest as part of their total experience, you have to take care with those things too, so that the total customer experience is as good as possible. 

• If you are selling a product, make it easy to use and attractive to look at. 
• If you are selling a service, make it transparent to the customer. 
• Either way, make sure your advertising sets accurate expectations so that the customer isn't surprised later. 
• Since you are selling the sizzle as well as the steak, ensure that the sizzle is appetizing even while you also ensure that the steak is nutritious.

When you take as many pains with the presentation as you do with the content, you signal to your customer right away that she is in good hands. You encourage her peace of mind. And peace of mind, as Robert Pirsig points out, is the heart of Quality.

"Peace of mind isn't at all superficial .... It's the whole thing. That which produces it is good [work]; that which disturbs it is poor [work].... The ultimate test's always your own serenity."**  

__________

* I read this years ago and have lost the reference. So it is possible that I may misremember details of the story, since I can't check it. But I believe it is true in broad outline.  

** Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1974, 1999), p. 165.    

       

Quality in management

Last week, I raised the question whether Quality has anything to say about how an organization manages its people and resources internally. To ground the discussion in a concrete example, I referenced a dispute that is currently under way inside the American Society for Quality (ASQ) about funding and budgetary priorities; but honestly I could have picked any number of other companies instead. There's nothing special about the ASQ controversy. From my point of view, really, there were only two benefits to writing about this example: first, I'm a member of ASQ so I happen to know about it (because the topic is unfolding around me in real time); and second, the critical details are already available in public so I could discuss them without violating anyone's confidentiality. (If you check last week's article, you will find footnotes with URL links for all of the substantive data.)

Remember the real question

On the other hand, it's never very useful just to write that "XYZ Corp. did a bad thing." What are the rest of us supposed to do with that? The useful thing is to write information that we can take back to improve our own work. And that brings us back to the original question: Does Quality have anything to say about how an organization manages its people and resources internally?

Last week I took the wrong approach, by checking what ISO 9000:2015 says in the Quality Management Principles. Oh, the information in there is sound enough! But it's all just recommendations, and it's mostly stuff we've heard before. So it's easy to imagine someone in an organization's management saying: 

Look, I believe in providing Quality to our customers. But when it comes to all that talk about "internal transparency" and "treating your employees with respect," I just don't have the time. I want to Ship Product and Make Money; and all that touchy-feely stuff about employee relations and being a Nice Guy—that's all a luxury. Get to work and get your job done. End of story!

Is he wrong?

Getting to work is fine, but he's wrong to call human relations a luxury. But ISO 9000 isn't the best place to see it. Let's back up and remember what Quality is about.

The Quality perspective

Quality means getting what you want, but there are a lot of ways to do that. Critically, Quality is not built in the abstract from a set of axioms or natural laws: there's no set of rules that unfailingly give you Quality. If anything, Quality is more like a giant Lessons Learned exercise, where we cobble together useful techniques by analyzing one failure after another and figuring out what it takes to make sure those failures never happen again. But since there are many different kinds of failures, there are many different Quality techniques—so many that it can be hard to summarize them all.

Still, there are general points that they all have in common. One of them is that if you want some assembly (like a tractor or a stamping machine) to continue to work well, you have to understand the components that go into it and how they are assembled. What kinds of failures are normal for these components? Does this material rust or corrode? Does that material bend or warp? Do these gears need regular cleaning and oiling, or is it better to leave them alone? All of these are normal questions that any Quality Technician responsible for a large machine would consider on a daily basis.

And here is the critical point. The organization itself is a kind of large machine, and its components are human beings! Quality requires that we understand the failure modes of our machines, to prevent breakdowns. Therefore Quality also requires that we understand the failure modes of our fellow human beings, to prevent organizational dysfunction. 

Failure modes

What do we know about human beings, that relates to their possible failure modes in organizations? We know a lot, and there's no way I can summarize it all in a single blog post. But let me list a few facts that I hope we can agree on.

• People are capable of free will.
• People are capable of independent judgement.
• People are capable of rational thought.
• People work together naturally in groups.
• People want to feel respected, and are sensitive to slights. (See research on disrespect, e.g. here.)
• People are, on the whole, more fearful of loss than covetous of gain. (See, e.g., the research on Loss aversion.)

Already, even these six points entail consequences for the management of any organization.

• Because people have free will, they must (at some level) want to be part of an organization, or they will simply walk away. (I discuss this point in more detail in this post back in the spring.)
• Because people have independent judgement, they choose whether to stay with your organization based on their own criteria, and not yours. In fact, different members of the organization might have different criteria from each other.
• Because people are capable of rational thought, you can give them reasons to stay with your organization and expect them to listen. But the reasons you give them should make sense. Also, because people can see with their own eyes, the reasons you give them should match what they can see for themselves—i.e., the reasons should be true. If you give your people reasons that are visibly false, the risk is that they will stop believing you even if you later tell the truth. Also, as I have discussed before, the easiest way to make people think that something is the case is to make sure it really is the case.
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  Because people work together naturally in groups—Aristotle called us "πολιτικὰ ζῷα" or "political animals" [Politics 1.1253a]—your people probably want to work for you, by default. And people regularly accept some kind of authority over their work, without chafing at it. But they will not accept just whatever authority you feel like exercising. While a willingness to work together is natural, so is the deep-seated expectation of justice. It is true that people sometimes disagree around the edges about what constitutes justice. But nobody who has a choice will remain part of a community without it.
• Because people are sensitive to loss, be careful before you take things away from them. Of course sometimes you have no choice. Sometimes there are good reasons. But in that case, it is important to counter-balance the loss by giving them something else in exchange. At the very least, you have to explain what you are doing and why. This shows them respect (and people want respect); it also offers them the truth (and people want the truth).

Notice what this means. I have not said one word about Being a Nice Guy. But a small collection of known facts about human behavior (and human failure modes) has already shown us that—if we want to prevent the organizational machine from breaking down—management has got to offer the rank and file respect, truth, transparency, and justice.

This isn't soft-heartedness or soft-headedness. This is just preventive maintenance. And preventive maintenance is one of the fundamental Quality disciplines.

If you are interested, I can use next week's post to review how ASQ has handled its current controversy, in light of these points. Let me know what you think.       

       

Keep your customers informed!

Mistakes are a fact of life. Even with a very good Quality system, things still go wrong: accidents happen, and people do foolish things. Therefore every Quality system has to spell out (among other things) how to respond when something bad happens. "How to respond" typically includes several elements: containing the problem, finding the root cause, implementing corrective actions, and so on. But there's another element that can be just as important, but that is often overlooked: Let your customers know what's going on!

A friend of mine drives a Kia Soul. She's had it for years. Last fall, Kia notified her that her car was subject to a recall. According to the official documentation (NHTSA campaign number 23V652000): 

"The Hydraulic Electronic Control Unit (HECU) may experience an electrical short, which can result in an engine compartment fire while parked or driving.... Owners are advised to park outside and away from structures until the recall repair is complete."

So far, so good. Kia discovered a risk and proactively notified customers so they are aware of it. And of course Kia explained that they will repair the vehicles free of charge. 

What the notice did not contain was an estimated date that the fix would be available. And as the months went on, all my friend heard was more silence. From time to time she called her local dealership, but they were as much in the dark as she was.

To be clear, I can imagine reasons why Kia might have found it hard to give a precise date right at the beginning. And if the issue were comparatively minor—if, say, they were offering a new design of floor mats or steering wheel covers—there would be no reason to handle the communications with urgency. But when you have just told your customers there's a chance that their car will unexpectedly burst into flame, it's probably a good idea to keep them well-informed and up-to-date on when they can expect the fix to be available.

Let your customers know what's going on.

The good news is that—according to the NHTSA website—letters finally started going out late this spring and into the summer that the fix was available. They were staged according to model type, and my friend's model came at the very end of the line. So she still has to make arrangements with her local dealership. But it's progress.