#Management Chauvinist Sloths

September 28, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

There are pigs and then there are sloths.

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Pigs want to stuff themselves. Sloths want to avoid work. Management that want to avoid being involved in the work, have somehow become twisted in their glorification of their slothenly ways.

You hear all the excuses, like “I did that once in my career” or “I would just screw things up like that idiot CEO on Undercover Boss.” Such lamenting qualifies them for my new category of Management Chauvinist Sloth.

What kind of message are you sending to workers when you avoid the work? Hierarchy is more important than work that customers value. Get over yourself and your position . . . slothy management person.

I am engaged with a company that is finally putting it together. The pilot team has done some amazing things, but up until today management has done the equivalent of looking at themselves in the mirror . . . “do I still look pretty? I didn’t chip a nail being too close to the work did I?” Until today, illness forced workers from the pilot team and one contractor IT guy and one supervisor rolled up their sleeves and took on the work.

This is the shot heard round the world. Someone finally understands what is important to customers and it isn’t the $2 million toga party or 99 ways to manipulate this month’s financial numbers. It’s real and honest work that adds value that is lasting . . . even better, you won’t get jailed for doing it.

So, if you want to get in there and do the right thing, how about shedding the label of management chauvinist sloth. You will be amazed at how doing things that matter can be rewarding and morale boosting. Set an example, not a meeting.

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

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

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Systems Thinking and Management

The Oblivious Manager

September 26, 2010 Tripp Babbitt 3 Comments

For most managers that is what you represent . . . obliviousness. A missed opportunity to connect with the work and the worker happens every day. Too busy to be bothered with the goings-on that surround the business.

There are performance appraisals to write, targets to hit, activity numbers to report, and important decisions to be made. As you move up the hierarchy of the organization it gets worse and the more layers in management the more dysfunction. Lost in the quagmire of bureaucracy and compliance to the wishes of the manager above them.

The manager revels in the appeals to their authority where power becomes more important than knowledge. Workers keen to get ahead build rapport with the hierarchy in public, but in comraderie with the fellow worker laugh at the ignorance of manager’s thinking. Until, of course, the ignorance of management decisions wreaks havoc on the worker domain which happens with alarming frequency.

Entrapping technology, scripts, rules and more to dumb down the worker as these perceived misfits are incapable of directing their own work. Rules that keep the worker from giving a customer a $5 credit in fear of giving away the store. While managers smartly package away mortgages and almost put the economy into depression. The inequity of the situation would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

Often, I wonder had management been blessed with compassion and understanding, would their ever had been the need for unions. The barons of past generations were ruthless and set forth a poor example for the generations of managers that followed. It seems we have become less ruthless as time has passed. This recession with unemployment of 10% makes one wonder whether we are taking steps back as organizations show increasing profit at the expense of the unemployment rate.

If and/or when management discovers that knowledge is gained at the points of transaction with the workers and customers they may want to spend more time there. Spending more time in the work with the worker, managers can help clear the path to work that is efficient and effective. Awkard moments at the beginning, but both manager and worker benefit and as a result so does the customer.

Studying the needs of the customer, worker and manager can design a better system to service them. A happy ending for all.

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

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

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Outsourcing, Systems Thinking Concepts

Hilton #Fails the Customer

September 24, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

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At the risk of being thrown out of the Hilton like the Blackpool couple in the UK (they weren’t at a Hilton), I have to say that my experience at a Hilton Hotel has been less than optimal. Now they have to find me to kick me out. Here is the experience.

About four weeks ago, I started to stay at this unnamed Hilton. The company I am contracted with has an agreement with Hilton for a corporate rate with internet and breakfast. But after my first week, I discovered that I was charged for breakfast and internet. I was told that was the agreement at the front desk.

By the end of the second week, I was able to produce the email for the agreement.

By the third week, I had hoped all was in the past. I was wrong. That Friday I got my next bill under my door. All the same charges and that led me to the Manager on duty. I explained the problem and hoped for the best.

The following week upon my arrival the manager told me that all was taken care of and I thanked him. But Friday morning, I got my new bill with internet and parking charges. I didn’t have a car and the internet charges were mind boggling. The same manager worked the front desk and he corrected the items, but he was dealing with failure demand.

I ate breakfast after the incident and walked by the front desk. There was a long line of people waiting to get their charges adjusted. Failure demand at its finest. Hilton outsources their contact center, but fails to see the real causes of costs and the potential revenue costs. They just don’t show up in the financials.

I will continue to seek resolution and see if I can get the charges rectified. I will also see what kind of system conditions I kind find that are causing this system to fail.

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

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

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Systems Thinking Concepts

Growing the Bottom Line with the Front-Line

September 21, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

I have lamented much over the past month of the inability of management to break free of the chains that bind them. Hierarchy gives comfort to those that buy into such thinking and important decisions are too often made without knowledge. For management, assumptions rule. But for the worker that has long been lost in this cycle of thinking – systems thinking offers hope.

I get great enjoyment in seeing front-line workers grow. Too many managers have long discounted workers as having too little confidence, information, tact and whatever other idiosyncrasies may fit the argument of why not to rely on the worker.

Low expectations are seen played out by the use of information technology, scripts, rules, procedures, etc. to dumb down the worker. Yet, time and again I have witnessed the worker exceed low expectations set by management . . . when given the chance. Too few do, and pay for it in reduced efficacy.

There is a cost to command and control management and as good as the US has become at it. The last major success it had was WWII. Since then command and control management has been soundly been trounced by better thinking. W. Edwards Deming started this thinking and Taiichi Ohno refined it.

However, this new thinking doesn’t stop there. Advancements in systems thinking help leverage the power of better thinking to change minds about the design and management of work and the role of the worker and manager. Different roles create a respect for the work and not the hierarchy.

Armed with an understanding of customer purpose, workers get clarity of what matter to customers and achieve business improvement by experimentation with method. Focus on purpose gives the organization an outside-in view that trumps functional finger-pointing and hierarchy bringing to bear the validity of changing the work. Organizational change management with innovation emergent from those that understand the work leaving those without understanding no place to hide.

Business cost reduction can be something that can be a simple step . . . simple as benefiting from engagement of a front-line that can improve the work without traditional shackles.

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

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Systems Thinking Concepts

Fear Factor – Management in the Work

September 18, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

Systems thinking requires management to “get knowledge” or use measures and context to understand what to do. Getting to the point where making decisions is a product of both common and uncommon sense. It is those counter-intuitive moments of uncommon sense that can be breakthroughs for businesses. But to get there management has to be in the work.

And so fear, anxiety and gnashing of teeth presents a big obstacle. Sometimes you wonder how these wimps made it into management. By education? Or maybe by blood? After all, by the third generation that acorn becomes a nut. Well, that is one theory.

Another theory is the need to hide in caves maybe in our ancestry there were cave dwellers. The closest thing today is the office or meeting room where management hides themselves as they ponder the important decisions. Arguing over lobster or steak, tennis or golf, or possibly how to manipulate the system to achieve this month’s financial target.

Yet another theory is that management will lose the enigma of being management . . . that position in the hierarchy. “I can’t be in the work or I’ll wind up looking stupid like the CEOs in Undercover Boss.” CEOs always get fired for the inability to do the job in that show.

The funny thing is that wokers are forgiving in as much as management isn’t The surprise of seeing a manager trying to understand what that entrapping information technology did to them when it was forced down their throat is almost always welcomed by the worker. With skepticism . . . yes, but only because management showed up last time right before the last RIF, new productivity target or appraisal system. You can’t help but flinch a little when management shows up.

Management and worker alike have every reason to be nervous. So, take a “tranqui” as in tranquilizer, swallow hard and show up. 20 minutes into the work and both manager and worker will be talking about what prevents achieving customer purpose. All those hand-offs, scripts, IT, etc. (and the list is long), prevent the absorption of variety, wreck culture, increase costs and destroy value.

So, suck it up management. Your chariot awaits, Cinderella’s slipper and the brass ring aren’t hidden in those mounds of data, the board room or your office. They are right where customers seek value . . . with the worker and the work.

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

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Systems Thinking Concepts

Management Pop Culture – The New Systems Thinking Lingo – Brain Enemas and Polished Turds

September 16, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

The language surrounding systems thinking can be very entertaining. Anyone with an encounter with systems thinking knows that different thinking must prevail and that it requires one to unlearn and then relearn a different and better way of thinking. This is a challenge to many and management is no exception and, in fact, are the targets of much of this better thinking.

If one is to unlearn that means old assumptions must be replaced with empirical evidence. Too often we base whole business plans on one persons “theory” and spend to little time getting knowledge. I have long coined the phrase that this requires a “brain enema” – flushing the old thinking out to introduce new thinking and learning.

Another equally important phrase is associated with Russell Ackoff’s “doing the wrong thing, righter.” Where we have people with the false belief that the problem is we just need refinement of old, bad thinking to get better. The phrase “polished turds” now permeates the ears of those that engage in this brand of thinking.

I don’t know whether these crude, but appropriate, phrases will catch on . . . but they should.

Imagine your next executive meeting where instead of accepting the same normal BS one hears, that you have new language to communicate your dissatisfaction with assumptions in the development of next year’s business plan. “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, but aren’t we just polishing turds here?”

Or when management makes a poor decision (as they are known to do) there should be a “free brain enema clinic” sign posted on the door of the executive wash room.

The possibilities are endless. If you have more systems thinking examples to point out the err of management ways, post them here.

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

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Systems Thinking and Technology

Broken Promise – The Hope of Information Technology Turns into False Hope

September 12, 2010 Tripp Babbitt 2 Comments

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The story is the same that I have heard played many times. Information technology to the rescue. We were expecting Ironman and instead got Underdog or Homer Simpson. The broken promise of IT and the carnage left behind can only leave one shaking their head in disbelief.

Yet, organizations both private and public keep believing that this time will be the magic answer. Modernization is our future and may careers are at stake so let’s go to the well one more time.

Maybe a different path would be more appropriate.

Information technology has followed the same path as faulty operational thinking. You can’t hear the machines running like in manufacturing, but the brains still follow scientific management methods in hope that we can create the economic glory of early post-WWII America.

Where information technology had great promise we now have instead software developers buried behind business analysts and project managers. Only to find that we now plan to miss dates and make the customer worse.

Mind-boggling, as IT continues to carry a false bravado that only an executive from Enron, WorldCom and Tyco could pull off. The salespeople sell the sizzle . . . because there ain’t no steak.

In fairness, the organizations are dysfunctional too, but we lock in the waste with information technology. Workflow where the work already doesn’t flow, so let’s automate the poor work design . . . that’ll fix it! Management gets piles of reports with data and now we have to (data) mine it for the best of the nuggets of information. More technology sold with little value.

Until organizations begin to understand that improving the work BEFORE information technology is introduced the redundancy of failure is sure to continue. AND when we quit hiring loads of non-value IT positions that keep software developers away from the work, we may have hope. Unfortunately, we will be left with the same management thinking that built the work design and IT in the first place.

Where do we go from here? A better thinking path that promotes information technology in a supporting role would be a beginning. Redesigning the work to optimize the system BEFORE technology would be a good start. Regardless, seems any path is better than the present.

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

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Systems Thinking Concepts

Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness and Culture

September 11, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

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I just finished the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) and was left with a certain sense of incompleteness. The story was compelling enough and those who read my posts know that I share the grammatical problems Tony discusses at the beginning of the book. But the message on culture is what makes me feel uneasy.

I have written about Zappos before and was critical of a few things in the post Zappos’ Achilles Heelthat drew comments from some folks from Zappos that gave me insight. Sorry Zappos, I am still annoyed by the 8% cut as I believe trust is compromised when you lay-off people to shore up the financials. This is a mentality that keeps too many on the unemployment roles and companies slasing their economic wrists. This isn’t to say there aren’t imes, I am not that naive, but when you wear the sign that advertises one of the best companies to work for you need to have a different and better game than the same old bean counter approach.

In another post titled Want an Incredible Customer Experience? Don’t Copy Zappos, Apple or Disney. In this post, I warn the copycats of the world to not do this. While reading Tony’s book this was reinforced, he almost went bankrupt on many occasions and the culture that developed was emergent, not copied. When he attempted to copy “good business practice” and outsource he put the company in peril. Tony says, “Don’t outsource your core competency and I say . . . “It’s all your core competency.” Over and over, again I warn customers and readers to not outsource as they often do it for the wrong reasons – to save money.

Your culture is your brand was a theme throughout the book. Yet, culture was still emergent from having focus on doing things for customers and viewing things outside-in and not inside-out. The book gives the impression that a focus on improving culture makes things better, so look for a new generation of surveys, team exercises, balloon kicking, group hugs . . . oh, and of course culture books and smiley face wrist bands. The problem is that you organization has the same old crappy command and control style of management and work design that will rain on that parade.

Tony Hsieh has built something unique, but it is not him, it was the people that built the system and he was able to get out of the way just enough for some good things to happen. Whether this continues is dependent on how much he puts into moving away from command and control culture and toward one that puts decision-making with the work and far away from the bean counters that stand to drag down both culture and company.

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

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Systems Thinking Concepts

Flushing Away Profit and the Future with Command and Control Thinking

September 8, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

I have spent some time at a couple of large service organizations and have seen many of the same dysfunctional thinking I have posted about in the past. The budget – which is better described as our assumptions about the future in monetary terms – was riddled with revenue forecasts and reductions in expenses at one company. One might only label this as IBS (intellectual bull sh*t).

A systems thinking intervention and pilot was set-up to in one of the organizations seeking a small 5% decrease in expenses in their budget. Redesigning the work against customer demand in this pilot has shown the company that they can achieve 30 – 70% reduction in expenses. Creating a pinball “tilt” in the minds of the bean counters. How could this be?

Well, it takes a different mindset than the existing command and control structure and thinking. This thinking probably would not meet the menial 5% reduction in expenses that managers hoped they could achieve. Sometimes, though, it is easier to sink with the ship than to change thinking that protects status quo.

A well designed system will help this company achieve the 30% in better service, greater efficacy, etc. But here is the kicker, if management can further adopt principles of better thinking 50% – 70% is achievable. Unfortunately, so few can believe or fathom such business improvement in any organizational change management program they have seen or heard of to date.

However, there are organizations adopting systems thinking and reaping huge returns. A management change in thinking will lead to those stuck in the command and control paradigm with buggy whips and dinosaurs . . . or somewhere between – slim and none – and slim just left town. This gives a whole new meaning to entrenched management and entrenched thinking.

Haven spoken to many US companies about systems thinking you get the sense we have become a nation of whiners. You hear things like, “it’s so hard to change our thinking” . . . is 10% unemployment enough? What about loss of market share? Competitive position? Or any of the other crap that organizations pay billions to over-analyze?

Perplexing as systems thinking may be to the whiners, you can only hope that other large service organizations start to dip their toe in the water. Because the next thing you will be dipping your toe in is Chapter 11 or 13 or selling to some foreign competitor . . . if there is anything left to buy.

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

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Systems Thinking and Measures

A Source of Confusion – Variance and Variation

September 6, 2010 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

I was recently asked about the difference between what is meant by variance vs. variation. As most should do when asked a question such as this, there is a need to understand context and operational definition. Since this has come up a few times with same context, I thought it would be worth a post.

The use of variance s typically used in the context of variance from budget. For example, “did I meet or exceed budget” describes the variance from budget. This is often described in monetary or percentage terms.

On the other hand, you have variation which to many of us describes a statistical term. Variation has been descibed in a previous post titled Service Metrics – What You Need to Understand (take a minute to read). Data taken from organizations will display common cause variation or between the limits. Unusual events lie outside the statistical limits and are often referenced as special or assignable causes.

The key point is that variance and variation have little to do with each other. In fact, they couldn’t be any more different. Budgets with all their hope to be objective and scientific are little more than best guesses and variance drives dysfunctional behavior in organizations. All the reports that follow are really wasteful.

The normal amount of variation in financial or any other set of numbers can tell us more about how common the variation is or identify any special causes allowing one to ask better questions. Variance does not help us understand anything except that we don’t know how to improve performance.

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

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Tripp Babbitt’s Blog

Monthly Archives: September 2010

#Management Chauvinist Sloths

The Oblivious Manager

Hilton #Fails the Customer

Growing the Bottom Line with the Front-Line

Fear Factor – Management in the Work

Management Pop Culture – The New Systems Thinking Lingo – Brain Enemas and Polished Turds

Broken Promise – The Hope of Information Technology Turns into False Hope

Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness and Culture

Flushing Away Profit and the Future with Command and Control Thinking

A Source of Confusion – Variance and Variation

The 95 Method