Continual Improvement

The author of True to Our Roots provides a great story about the power of motivation in the workplace. The context of the story revolves around the power of creating the right environment where people feel they are obtaining much more than a paycheck. (I plan to write some more on this topic after I’m finished with True to Our Roots.) Here’s a paraphrased version of the story.

A management consultant has been brought into a hospital to look for ways to improve processes, productivity, etc. The consultant interviews all the doctors, nurses, HR staff, and etcetera for weeks. As he’s leaving one Friday, he notices a janitor mopping the floors near the elevator. Debating whether to even talk to the janitor, the consultant stops and asks him the opening question that he has used with all of the other staff. The question is simply to explain what role the person plays at the hospital. The janitor stops and thinks for a moment, and then says, “I help Doctor Johnson save lives.”

While a much more animated version of the story is described by the author, the point is incredibly clear, almost inspirational. It also provides a sharp reminder that we should look for things like this in our own work routines or find other means to accomplish what’s important to us as individuals.

If progressive process change is getting bogged down in an organization, one of the remedies to consider is bringing in outsiders. Most likely, these people from outside the company are either contractors or some other sort of consultants in a particular area. Another approach could be bringing in a new manager or other expert into the company as a full time employee. It’s amazing to see how people within the organization will accept the advice of a new voice, even if the message is exactly the same as a previous champion of the change from within the company. (I could write a novel about the reasoning for this, but I’m sure every dear reader has their own story to relate.)

Companies that create an environment of continually promoting change have less of a need for these outsiders; however, it’s sometimes difficult to determine that healthy new ideas are not being promoted when observing from the inside. The key to getting outsiders into the organization is to justify the ROI because of the expense that’s often required; however, in some cases, consultants will perform some free sampler training or consulting in order to get more business if the ideas are accepted.

After commenting on Brandon’s post about Google’s supposed open source strategy, I started to think about which companies promote a “life is great” marketing strategy. By “life is great”, I mean these companies seem to have the following in common: (1) hire and motivate employees who genuinely appear to have high morale and be enjoying their jobs, (2) promote a “customer comes first” attitude, (3) tend to favor environmentally sound approaches to doing business (or at least market that they do), and (4) focus on a sweet spot combination of higher than average quality at reasonable prices. A lot of companies will claim to do numbers 2 through 4; however, CEOs across the nation should be paying attention to the number 1 aspect because that is the key differentiator to obtaining sustained margins. Here are three examples, and all are places where doing business is typically a very enjoyable experience.

• Southwest Airlines
• Whole Foods
• REI

I was recently asked for some ways to determine team fit during the interview process. It’s a good question because there is a grey area between having a “gut feel” about someone based on previous management experience and the purely objective qualities that someone could be measured against during the interview. In order to keep this post brief, I’ve listed some of the more important questions that should be answered to determine team fit.

How relevant are this person’s skills, and what is their ability to learn new skills? While this may seem obvious in the technology world, I predict it’s vastly important to know the domain in which the person will be working in any field. One very good technique in determining technical prowess is to ask the person to solve more than one relevant technical problem while explaining his/her thought process for deriving a solution. This and many other methods like this tend to weed out someone who has memorized a bunch of technical jargon and acronyms but can’t apply them. It also exposes the person’s analytical skills and quickness in learning while under pressure.

Assuming there is a team interview, which is highly recommended, what are the opinions of the existing team members? While there’s always a chance that one person on the team will be opposed to the most qualified candidate, it’s very important to know whether major personality conflicts will occur down the road.

What are the skill sets of the other team members? Many times a resume review will suffice in answering this; however, having a team of all junior members or vice versa is typically not desired. In many cases, a true skill set comparison cannot be made until some direct contact is made with the candidate.

What are the person’s previous work environments? Some people prefer large corporate environments, while others only want to work in a completely flat organization. Getting an honest assessment from the person can be tricky, as they will most likely know what type of organization exists for the job in which they are interviewing.

Can the person say, “I don’t know” when an unfamiliar question arises? Knowing the answers is sometimes not as important as admitting that you don’t know the answers.

Performing well on any single item is not good enough to base an offer, but almost any one item, if bad enough, could warrant a veto. These conditions make the interview process interesting/unpredictable for the hiring manager as well as for the candidate. While I’m sure this isn’t a complete list, I’d love to hear other’s opinions on the matter.

Over the years, I’ve heard many a person grumble about having to change managers, either due to organizational changes or natural attrition. I found it interesting that the author of The Fiefdom Syndrome actually promotes the systematic changing of managers and directors at periodic intervals. Using a system such as this prevents people from hiding within an organization and allows fresh eyes to look at old problems. As the title suggests, it also decreases the possibility that fiefdoms will occur within an organization and base their actions on self-survival while costing the company as a whole.

When I first heard this, I was somewhat opposed to this idea, but after thinking about it more, I can see certain situations where this might make sense. A lot of employee surveys I’ve seen state the number one reason for quitting was due to a bad manager, and this option might help while improving the business in other ways. At a minimum, organizations, large and small, should be on the lookout for situations where groups have taken on a “life of their own” within the larger organization and consider this as one possible option.

• The McKinsey Quarterly: The Online Journal of McKinsey & Co.
  Some of these articles look interesting. As much as these guys make in consulting, they must be doing something right.
  (tags: career management)
• Companies increase use of employee screening - Jul. 19, 2006
  Technology is making transparency a reality - like it or not. After reading this article, one might be inclined to do regular checkups on other background checks in addition to a credit report.
  (tags: career management)