John Zavacki contibutes insights to the quality picture which I much
enjoyed. Technical underpinnings he briefly describes are obviously
needed; completely essential.
In my learning with co-workers here, I speak about the two overriding
aspects of team work which contribute to success: (1) content, and (2)
process. Hired into organizations as adults, professionals, competent
individuals, it is rightly assumed that we are capable of bringing
"content" to the table; we've got the facts, the data, the intellectual
muscle to run those Paretos, fill in those control charts, pave the road
forward with some degree of lower-risk decision making based upon
analysis, upon educated thinking applied to the tasks at hand.
On the other hand, it is wrongly assumed that we professionals, we adults,
we competent individuals somehow know about process. Sadly, this has been
proven not the case. At one company in today's forefront of TQ
deployment, it was calculated about five or six years ago that fully 70%
of their teams were crashing.
This was not due to lack of data. Content was everywhere. Rather, the
teams suffered from inability to see their process of group work. Now
this is a topic to which many, many of us have contributed terrific
insight on this list since last spring. Let's keep at it. Ironically,
the "hard stuff"--the data--is the soft stuff, whereas the "soft
stuff"--the process pieces necessary for human teams to success in
achieving qualified results--is the hard stuff.
In order to practice 7-Step problem solving, for instance, you have to
bring appropriate data to the table. For example, check sheets for data
collection must be easy to fill out, but must contain what a team feels up
front are the necessary data points to stratify through analysis. There's
nothing touchy-feely about that--straight hardball. Let's remember John's
admonition that we shouldn't forget that good data is critical in
organizational function. Let's also remember that the path to team
success requires team process understanding. I like what John is implying
about balance. Funny how life is filled with the need to balance so many
things in order to "maintain equilibrium" (duh...).
I always talk and write about "TQ", not TQM. I think I stated months ago
that the word management continues to have too much association, rightly
or wrongly. We developed as I recall a wonderful thread back then about
this theme of what contitutes managing.
Thanks again, John, for your observations about my previous post.
Best regards,
-- Barry Mallis Total Quality Resource Manager MARKEM Corporation Keene, NH bmallis@markem.com