Holding back, letting go

This quote from W. H. Murray always fills me with resolve.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

What “go-to” quotes keep you coming back ?

What to Do on Your First Day Back from Vacation

Especially relevant as I’m coming back from a four-day. Especially relevant for an Org with a changing focus. Especially relevant to all senior leadership all the time.

Believe

In my last post (My First TED) I reported that “American Made” manufacturing guru Jennifer Guarino crushed five bad assumptions about manufacturing. Here are Ms. Guarino’s five, with my own note about why:

1. Technology has taken the place of skilled labor. Wrong: Technology assists skilled labor.
2. Lower costs = higher profits. Wrong: Higher quality = higher profits.
3. College degree is the best bet for success. Wrong: Critical thinking and grit are the best bet for success.
4. There is no dignity in trade work. Wrong: All work is trade and craft work.
5. Manufacturing has left us forever. Wrong: Some manufacturing has left us temporarily.

I can’t cite any global statistics that support Ms. Guarino’s statements. As with most insurgencies, the conventional indicators often obscure what is happening on the ground. Regardless, personal experience attests to the empirical truth of what she says. I believe a renaissance in American manufacturing has been in progress for at least 15 years. The facts are there for anyone interested enough to look for it. The emergent and evolving south and east Asian economies are driving up the cost of outsourced labor. Politicians are incentivizing companies to re-shore. Consider also the cultural factors associated with the rise of social media, the popularity of local-grown food stocks, the resurgence of the American automotive industries, and the emergence of high quality, high-pride American made products. Most important though is the relentless entrepreneurial drive that characterizes the American Mittelstand. I can’t prove it; but I feel it, I see it, and I believe it. And all revolutions start with ” I believe”.

Do you?

Journal Mining 1.0

I was going through some old notes the other day and came across these minutes I took at a Customer Service Committee meeting about a year ago. I regularly mine though my old notebooks and journals, and am constantly amazed at the great content that I had forgotten. If you’re not mining your journals, you’re missing a great opportunity.

These customer service tips are no-brainers, but it’s great to see them again as a reminder. My personal favorites are points about effective listening and mastering the “positive no”.

Customer service committee meeting, 11/06/12:

• Effective listening skills are a competitive advantage.
• Responsiveness: call back, email back on the same day.
• Full voice-mail boxes = bad manners, poor communication.
• Start meetings on time, and come prepared for the meeting.
• Have an agenda.
• Invite in advance, no late notices.
• Manage (client/internal) expectations.
• Attend if you’re invited, or send a delegate.
• Get good at the “positive no”.
• How to effectively deliver bad news.
• Internal transparency and communication.
• Always deliver a high quality product, regardless of what the product is.

I’m sure you have something to add too. Please let me know your top customer service teaching points.

Negativity? Call it out!

I was a panelist as a recent leadership conference in Baltimore, and was asked the following question. A perpetually negative team member can suck the life out of an entire team. How do you correct or counteract the negativity?

This is the process we teach our front-line leaders:

1. Call it: Don’t fool around; give the candid feedback.
2. Ask, listen: Get the person talking. Start by asking the dumb question: what is the real problem? Then listen, and listen aggressively . This person is negative for a reason. It’s your job to find out where the negativity is coming from. 
3. Respond: First response: the negative behavior stops now. Say it just like that. Then you can figure out if you’re going to solve their problem or not. It’s OK if sometimes you’re not going to fix it; some problems are beyond your scope. Either way, tell them what is going to happen.
4. If this doesn’t work: Get them off the team. Fix it or remove it, but do not tolerate toxic behavior in the group.

You have to move fast: This stuff can get so out of hand so quickly; you’ll have unholy bedlam on your hands if you don’t sort it out today. The sequence is important too. If you respond with expectations before you know the root cause, you’ll misdiagnosis the real problem.

This process requires that you speak with complete clarity and honesty, that you listen aggressively, and that you move with strong resolve. But don’t worry; you already do all that anyway.

First, master the message

I’m often told by my cohort that communication isn’t what it used to be. The Luddites would have me believe face-to-face is dead and replaced by electrons. Far from it! Face-to-face will never go out of style; it’s just supplemented by email, IM, texting, Skype, Twitter, and other media

Continuous connectivity is a fact, and any leader worth their salt seeks out a way to master that context. Here are a couple of pointers I share with all my front-line staff:

• First master the message
  • No amount of technology can fix a bad message. Regardless of the vehicle, you still have to craft and sell the message.
  • That fundamental has not changed and never will: An effective message is born from meticulous craftsmanship, and the way we craft a message has not changed in spite of all the technology.
• Then master the volume
  • You can’t ignore it and you can’t make it go away. I get 120 – 150 email/day, 100’s of tweets, a dozen or so blogs, RSS feeds, etc.
  • Data filtering is a critical leadership skill. It’s about signal vs. noise: know the difference and assume a substantial amount of the input is noise. Your job is to figure out what is true signal.
  • Don’t respond to everything, only respond to signal.
  • My front line supervisors learn from day one that (important + urgent) = mandatory live interaction.

And don’t worry about the technology. If you master the message and master the volume, then the technology will sort itself out.

Dock to Stock

Suspension of acceptance inspections, or “Dock-to-Stock (DTS)”, is a common practice in a wide variety of industries, including aerospace, pharmaceutical, biopharma, and medical device industries. Properly applied, a DTS strategy can improve operational responsiveness and provide considerable cost savings. The decision to suspend incoming inspections is not a trivial matter, and companies cannot simply “decide” to implement a DTS policy without considering the potential risks and how those risks may be mitigated. Suspension of inspection is predicated on the following assumptions:

1. The intrinsic risk to customers is already low.

2. Potential risk to the customer has been minimized by redundant and robust quality systems.

3. The extant quality history of the component and/or supplier demonstrates acceptable and consistent performance levels.

4. The cost benefit is positive.

The DTS status of a given component represents one point in the continuum of product acceptance activities.  

 

Supplier selection      >     100% inspection        >      Sampling plans        >        Dock-to-stock (DTS)

 

The current acceptance activities for any component may change as the quality history of that component evolves.

Outsourcing Quality Assurance

One of my colleagues in the pharma industry asked a question the other day if Quality Assurance could be outsourced. Here’s the answer:

“This is an acceptable practice, and has precedent in the pharma/biotech industry. It must be managed and controlled like any outsourced process as described in ICH Q10. Pretty much everything can be outsourced except Management Responsibilities (again, an ICHQ10 requirement). This is how virtual companies, integrators, and specification developers often run their QA. Don’t believe that outsourcing QA will protect the Management team: Management still has overall responsibility for quality outcomes, including quality of product on the market. Think of the European model of Qualified Persons; they often act on an independent contract basis. A strong quality/technical agreement that describes the scope, responsibilities, and oversights how this outsourced process is managed would be the first step in outsourcing QA.”