The BaldrigePlus Newsletter
Issue 13, Sunday, April 9th 2000
Deming, Baldrige and 'Dancing with Gaia'
There are a number of active Deming groups scattered around the world (what’s ‘Deming?’ See our primer at www.baldrigeplus.com/exhibit.htm), as well as Jim Clauson’s DEN discussion list (Deming Electronic Network – at http://deming.eng.clemson.edu/pub/den) and a variety of other Deming-related resources.
What’s ‘Deming’ got to do with Baldrige? According to some Demmers (or Demingites, depending on your attitude), not much! To help you decide, start at BADUG (the Bay Area Deming Users Group) for “An overview, past meeting minutes, and an index of Deming-associated sites … recently updated with all of our notes from the past year … at www.cafm-services.com/badug/BADUG-TOC.htm.
A British Deming group has just published a fascinating lecture on Deming that we’ll point you to in the next few weeks, as soon as there’s a web version available. It’s a treat, promise. Should be in every ‘quality’ collection.
BADUG’s March meeting report by Dan Robertson summarised a discussion of ‘systems as applied to organizations’ lead by Dr Susan Osborn, who “earlier in her career … was Involved with NASA. After the Challenger shuttle incident, everything changed for that organization … people who worked in NASA were no longer friendly and collaborative,” Dan reported, “Susan went on to Sun Microsystems, consults, and has pursued studies with the Fielding Institute.” She has also published “The System Made Me Do It!” (LifeThread Publications, 1997, ISBN 0-9655368-0-7. Email her at: sosborn@ix.netcom.com.
The discussion looked at five different management models, the first – labeled ‘King of the Mountain’ – is characterized by hierarchy, tradition, control and firm boundaries. “We discussed how quality in this type of organization would be identified by conformance, a central quality office, the ‘quality police,’ and responsibility for quality resting with a few people,” Dan wrote.
“The next type of system, ‘Motocross’ is characterized by learning to think and move quickly, power brokering, confrontation, ego, and results-orientation. Quality would most likely be involved with process monitoring, measurement of results and effect on the bottom line, ‘Band-Aid’ versus systemic solutions, expertise in quality lying within company not with customer, SPC to make sure you fit within the bandwidth of quality standards.
“The third, ‘White Water Rafting’ [has] a sense of common challenge, interwoven tasks, self- management, information sharing, feedback and continuous improvement … quality in this type of organization would include teams taking responsibility for quality, collaboration to achieve solutions, root cause analysis, feedback present in the system, cross-functional team design, sharing quality information, and the quality department (if it exists) is advisory versus judgmental.
Susan's fourth type ‘Magical Mystery Mime Troupe and Jazz Band’ is characterized by a strong sense of collaboration and community; vision and intuition are valued; shared values and beliefs, flexible boundaries, diversity as a resource, and a 'both-and' perspective. Quality would be shared throughout the organizational community, addressing broader issues than just product/service quality. Quality would be at the heart of the community, with trust and shared responsibility that extends to working relationships; an overarching part of everything that goes on.
The [fifth] is labeled ‘Dance with Gaia’ and [is characterized by] a sense of all forms of life being sacred, eco-consciousness, worldwide alliances, life-serving solutions to problems, flexible and resilient structures, and a long term, global perspective … quality would equate to sustainability, and a 'dark green' approach to resource utilization. The practice of quality would intuitive and rooted to the planet, clearly making a difference to the environment.”
Where does your organization fit in this spectrum? And what’s the Baldrige relevance? Seems to us that Osborn’s third and fourth organisational types would be most likely to score well if ‘Baldrige’ assessed, and they’d be the most likely to be comfortable with Deming principles. Why not the fifth? Green is fine. But without numbers?
Innovation
In Newsletter 12 we asked (more than a bit cheekily) ‘Is there a risk that focusing on Baldrige principles – like customer satisfaction, process superiority, best practice and benchmarks – is to fall into the trap that companies with the best technology tend to work to improve it, rather than focusing on creating new ideas and new products?
“Is this why Baldrige advocates are worrying about the ‘missing Category Eight’ – innovation.” We asked. And “will this issue emerge in the year 2001 re-write of the Baldrige criteria? We hope so. Are you listening Harry!?’
Harry [Hertz, director of the US National Baldrige Program at NIST] was listening, and he was quick to respond, emailing by return “You don't have to wait for 2001 to know how important innovation is to all organizations and to Baldrige.
“The innovation thread is woven throughout the Criteria and will continue to be strengthened, together with the focus on a systems perspective. Therefore it is no surprise that the 2000 Criteria, which took a fresh look at the Core Values and Concepts includes two new Core Values: Managing for Innovation and a Systems Perspective!”
“If anyone is interested in helping to shape the 2001 Criteria, please comment via the request for input which will appear on our website in mid-May or join us for our annual Improvement Day discussion at NIST on July 21, 2000.”
Thanks Harry. Look up NIST and the Baldrige Program at www.baldrige.org.
Six Sigma (final?)
We know that some of you find it a bit tiresome, and there are parallel debates going on elsewhere (DEN, for one), so we’ll try to wrap up Six Sigma with a few comments from the redoubtable John Seddon (www.vanguardconsult.co.uk).
“I cannot tell you who wrote this,” John said, “as I do not have his permission to cite it but here are some selected comments.
“Some companies have realised after several years application of six sigma that their customers are not seeing the benefits and are becoming irritated by the constant publicity. Right from the start … the 'bottom line' financial gain is the key project driver. Customer focus is of secondary importance; in the real world the first question the black belts have to answer is ‘How much will this project save?’
“Six sigma programmes call for ‘the best people’ to be trained as black belts. The training concentrates on advanced statistical methods that demand a relatively high degree of mathematical ability. The programme is very intensive, one black belt likened it to 'drinking through a fire hose'.
“There are two issues with this:
(1) Quality improvement is made to seem difficult and the prerogative of the expert
(2) Most quality improvement requires first rate application of the more basic approaches. Most black belts when interviewed will readily admit that over 90% improvements are achieved with about 20% of the content of the training. This is very wasteful.
“Where six sigma programs are being effective they tend to be in companies with very directive cultures … some 'master' black belts … spend as much as 60% of their time on collecting and reporting project data. The bigger drawback, however, is that the moment management stop driving, all improvement stops
“So,” Seddon mused, ”is six sigma just another fad designed to sell tons of training?”
Shameless self promotion
For a short-cut to Baldrige case studies and examples, take a look at my library material at this US site - Quality Today - www.qualitytoday.com/library/baldrige.htm
Note on internet addresses
Rather than live links, we've included the adddresses to off-site resources in full - cut and past to your browser.