NC State of Business

When the Carolina Hurricanes made the playoffs,* I found myself thinking about sports and teamwork as they relate to leadership and management. I thought about that even more a couple of weeks ago, during the All-Star break, and I wondered whether my IES team is like a hockey or basketball team, or more like a baseball team, or maybe even like a football team.

Hockey and basketball teams have versatile players who can move all over the rink or the court and make their own decisions about passing and scoring based on what they observe at the time. The coach may make substitutions and call for specific actions, but in general the action moves so fast that the players have to make the decisions with the most immediate impact.

Baseball, of course, puts players in positions that require more specific skills. The action in a baseball game is more sporadic, and doesn't often engage all the players equally -- but they have to be alert for the next ball that's going to be hit their way.

Football seems like the metaphorical model for most U.S. business and industry. The players have defined roles, and one person -- the quarterback or the defensive captain -- calls the play and makes final adjustments to the execution. And then, SNAP!, the action is sudden and fierce and we see whether or not we made any progress or stopped the other team.

Which kind of team do you work on, or lead?

How I look at my IES team determines how I try to lead the team. I think a lot of leaders and managers would rather be playing in the game than yelling advice from the bench, and that's why they take active roles in controlling the details of what their businesses do. But I know, because we've been careful in our hiring and support professional development, that I can trust our people to do their jobs without a lot of "help" from me. So Dave Boulay and I strategize and call the plays, and we trust our players to run them effectively.

I hope you can develop that kind of team, and that kind of trust -- in my experience, it's a rare and beautiful thing.

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*For all my friends up north: yes, even those of us who hate snow and ice appreciate hockey.

Perspective is a very powerful thing. Over the past few years my primary interaction with the medical industry has been that of a continuous improvement expert. Recently I had the opportunity to experience things from a different perspective: not as a consultant but as the family member of a patient who required minor surgery. From the moment we arrived at the center we were greeted by courteous people, each who took the time to introduce themselves and to explain their function in ensuring that things went smoothly. With each new person came the introduction and explanation of purpose and with most of them several common questions. Among these were questions necessary to confirm identity as well as the presence of any medical allergies. This treatment was consistent from the moment we arrived until the moment we left after a successful procedure.

It wasn’t until we stopped to pick up the prescription for medication that a problem arose. It appears that even though several nurses had asked about medical allergies, the information did not get properly communicated or applied, the result being that the prescribed medication contained ingredients which would have brought about an allergic reaction. Fortunately the error was caught before the medication was taken but it very easily might not have been.

How does information so important and gathered so many times not make a process fail safe? The right questions were asked, but somehow the information didn’t make it to the place it needed to be. As we employ computerized and other complex systems to manage information we mustn’t lose sight of what is most important: that the right information is gathered, analyzed and applied at the right times. It isn’t bigger, more complex information systems and more protocols that are needed. Rather, we need to keep our focus on simple, concise, standard work systems on which we can rely time after time to produce consistent, effective results.

Lately I have received an incredible number of emails regarding problem solving trainings offered through the web, on site, and as public classes. I believe that if there is an offering is because there is a demand for it, what raises the question: Why we try to be masters on solving problems instead of preventing them?

The other day I was talking to one of my friends and he was telling me that his car broke down leaving him on the side of the road at night, making him really late for a business dinner. I asked him if he had been giving the appropriate maintenance to his car, and he replied that the recommended maintenance by the OEM and mechanics was only for the owners of vehicles to spend more money on the dealership or the shop; bringing the car to service according to the "recommended mileage" by the OEM was just a waste of time and money; plus he didn't see the need to do so when the car was running completely fine. I couldn't help to smile and say, that is why you have to bring it on the recommended time, so it is still fine and you avoid having your car leaving you on the side of the road.

He started telling me all the money that he had to spend on the repair of the car and the inconvenience of the situation; he was saying that the mechanics were charging him an incredible amount of money.

After he calm down, we sat down and start “crunching” some numbers, we analyze how much the recommended routine maintenance would have cost him during the entire year. Once we figured it out, we compared it with the bill of the repairs after his car broke down, plus the rental car that he obviously needed to get around, plus the tow service to move the car from the side of the road, plus the businesses he missed for being so late to the business dinner. Nether less to say, the recommended routine maintenance was way under the money he was paying at once! He would have paid less money, in payments, if he would have taken his car to the routine maintenance instead of paying for the repairs.

Since the incident, my friend started to take the car to the routine maintenance and he is "saving some extra bucks".
Prevention is an investment, not an expense. On the other side, repairs are expensive as well as inconvenient.

We know problems are going to happen, and we need to learn how to solve them, that's life. However, the more we can try to minimize the probability for problems to occur in first place, the less stressed and more efficient we are going to be.

Even though this experience may seem like common sense and maybe not applicable to the business life, is more applicable than what you may think. There are a lot of tools for risk analysis and potential failures analysis that are not used on their full potential, sometimes because in our "busy" lives we don't have time to perform them correctly, or perform them at all. What gets me wonder: How do we have time to solve the problems, when that time was not even planned, and our lives are still "busy"?

In this economy there is no time or money to waste, it is imperative to try to be as efficient as possible in everything. A good start could be to try to eliminate potential problems from the beginning.

At the end of the post in Part 1, we left off with the thought of how to get everyone on the same page. Let’s start with discussing the culture piece. Organizations must first transform their culture to one that is conducive to change. How do we do that? Most organizations have decades of strained workforce relationships, confusion over roles and responsibilities, and perhaps worst of all, leadership that changes direction on what seems like the slightest whim. Often, very few people in the organization understand where the organization is headed and they are not about to tell the rest of the folks. Senior management is often fearful of providing a direction and incapable of generating the trust to get the entire team on board. Metrics are often scarce with most not aligning with the true performance indicators of how the organization is doing. Layers within the organization work on their “objectives” with little understanding of what other facets of the organization are doing and how their portion aligns within total organization performance. Sound like a company you know? Do you think a sports team would be very successful in this type environment? Most of us easily see that they would not have a winning record if run this way. So why can we not clearly see this in our companies and organizations?

It has to start at the top of the organization. Senior management must set the tone and direction of the company. In other words, they must establish the true core objectives and a means to deploy to all levels of the company. They should start with five to eight core objectives. Hey, it is harder than you think to find those five to eight that are right for your organization. Do not get side-tracked or enticed into selecting an objective that does not fit your organization. If your organization is losing profits due to high cost of off-quality and its impact on customer sales, then don’t focus on getting efficiency improvements or that fancy new piece of machinery that will help you make more of the off-quality that the customers don’t want and are not going to take. Just like when your pitching cannot get the other team out, you apply resources to fix the pitching. In this business case, we would apply resources to improve our quality and satisfy our customers.

Once senior management identifies the core objectives, they need to deploy throughout the organization. Each layer within an organization should have objectives that link. Each layer creates its objectives to support the core objectives. Layer objectives will differ as each function or role supports the organization; but, all align to the core objectives. Relationships between different layers are clearly identified so that each can see how it fits in the total picture. All layers and associates will now have a clear view of the core objectives and how they impact those objectives on a daily bases. Once you clear out the weeds, you can see the crop. Getting everyone aligned on the very few core objectives and actively participating each day, all day, is a way of thinning out the weeds. Sports are filled with statics and data. I often wonder just how important it is that a particular pitching staff allows 0.05 more runs on Wednesdays when it is 47 degrees with a slight mist falling against teams with an “e” in their name. I see this same type “data” in many organizations when they seem to chart data just because they can. Instead, they should remove these items and replace with metrics that tie to the objectives. By narrowing the focus to only the important metrics, you will be able to increase the attention that associates give to these metrics and reduce the time they spend on less important tasks.

Please hold frequent meetings with small groups in their area. Large meetings held infrequently (or only when there is bad news) are generally not constructive and usually add to associate mistrust. Keep the meetings focused and brief. Allow open discussion and provide follow-up. Honest analysis of performance and participation from all associates will create a culture change and provide support to the direction of the organization.

If you work in the healthcare industry, you may be interested to know that OSHA has been talking about you! Here's the scoop -- Federal OSHA is planning to develop outreach training for healthcare workers! Conceptually similar to the 10 and 30 hour courses offered to general industry and construction, the end product will be tailored to meet the unique needs of healthcare workers.

As a starting point, OSHA recently hosted a meeting where stakeholders were invited to bring their ideas on what targeted training for healthcare should look like. Representating the Southeastern OSHA Training Institute and NC State’s IES, I had the opportunity to join 11 other participants in Washington DC where we offered our thoughts and opinions on how to best meet the safety training needs of healthcare workers.

At the end of the half-day meeting, we had consensus on 2 things: (1) the risk of illnesses and injuries among healthcare workers is very real; and (2) the challenges of developing targeted training are very complex!

IES will continue to work with OSHA on this project, and would like to hear from you. If you have thoughts and opinions on the safety training needs of healthcare workers and how to meet those needs, please send them our way. Here are some questions to get you started:

• What specific safety and health hazards should be included in safety training for healthcare workers?
• What types of workers (RNs, EMTs, Lab Tech, etc) or work places (hospitals, long-term care, home care, etc) should be targeted?
• What are the barriers to participation in OSHA training for healthcare workers?
• Regardless of what OSHA develops, what can IES do to support safety in the healthcare industry?