Improve My Business

Earlier this week I posted about the importance of trust in business relationships and I wanted to take a minute to look at a current case study about trust. I want to talk about the Toyota recall and the surrounding accusations, questions, concerns and general hype. A quick survey of the news and blog outlets on the internet earlier this week revealed a ton of comments, articles and posts questioning Toyota’s actions in the matter of its recall. Cleary Toyota is experiencing a trust issue right now, but how did they get here?

The first thing to note is that of course, like anything else on the internet, some of these posts can’t be considered un-biased or completely factually accurate. Putting that aside though, there are definitely some serious concerns about how Toyota has handled this recall. If you doubt that Toyota has done anything wrong then consider this, based on the comments of people like Ray LaHood, the US Transportation Secretary, it is no longer a question of whether or not Toyota will be fined for the way they handled the problem, now it is just a question of when and how much.

So step one in the loss of trust is that Toyota made a bad product that has serious and life threatening problems. This is certainly not a good way to build trust with consumers, but this Toyota recall isn’t the first time cars have been recalled for serious problems. Since 1999 Ford has recalled 14 million vehicles due to a faulty cruise control that was prone to catching fire, and best of all, the car didn’t even have to be running for it to happen. However, if you search online for comments about the Ford recall you won’t find the same kind of response that you see to the Toyota recall. So what is it about this Toyota recall that has created such a crisis of trust?

Where Toyota really went wrong is that they tried to hide the facts, they ignored our number one rule for building trust in relationships and didn’t listen to their own better judgment. Anyone can understand that if you found out about a problem with your product as big as the one Toyota is having now with the acceleration issue you would need to handle the situation carefully, but I think unanimously everyone would agree that the right thing to do would be to tell the customers about the problem. Which Toyota eventually did, but it took a lot of pushing and numerous complaints for Toyota to issue the recall. This does not look good for Toyota, it makes it look like they were trying to hid the fact that car had a problem and hope that no one noticed. This may not have been what was actually going on, but what matters in building trust are appearances.

Beyond the delayed response to the issue, further problems have arisen because Toyota hasn’t been very upfront with consumers sense issuing the recall. There is still confusion about what is really causing the problem and what Toyota is doing to fix it, there are actually at least two different issues that Toyota has issued recalls for, and some people believe there may yet be a third cause of the problem. Toyota executives are not building trust even though they need to be doing everything they can to salvage what little trust people still have in them. Toyota was once revered as the pinnacle of quality, and in just a few short weeks there are questions about the company’s ability to continue in this country.

To me this serves as a perfect example of what will happen if you don’t listen to your sense of right and wrong and try to hide things. Eventually, it will come out, and it will make you look worse than if you just admitted the problem in the first place. Maintaining and building trust must be our first concern in business relationships. Hopefully we can all learn from Toyota’s mistakes and realize that putting trust first, sometimes means doing difficult things. Like admitting that you made a bad product.

Technorati Tags: Business, Business Relationships, quality, Trust

Process Mapping should be the foundation for any initiative to increase the performance of your company. Whether you are trying to achieve cost reductions, increased quality, higher employee satisfaction, increased efficiency, decreased wastes, or improvements in any other company performance metric, you should start your initiative with process mapping. To show the importance of process mapping let’s start with an example we can all relate to, writing a paper.

If you were asked to write a report drawing conclusions about the value of a particular niche in a subject that you weren’t familiar with you wouldn’t start your research with a laser focus on the niche. If you did you would inevitably wind up writing a sub par paper. You wouldn’t have an understanding of the greater context of the subject and your paper would be lacking the depth of understanding that a well written report requires. Sure you may learn everything there is to know about that niche, but how could you draw an accurate conclusion about its value without first understanding how it fits into the overall subject. Most of us, if asked to write this kind of report, would begin by looking at the overall subject and seeing how it fits into everything else around it, then exploring the interactions between the different parts of the subject, then exploring our particular niche. This way, when we draw a conclusion about the value of the niche we have been exploring, we know that the conclusion takes into account how this niche interacts with the broader picture.

Trying to take on an initiative to improve the performance of you company without first going through a process mapping exercise is like trying to write the paper by taking a laser focus on the niche. Before you can try to improve the performance of any one particular area of your company, you first have to understand how each area of your company operates internally and how the different areas interact with one another. This is why process mapping is  invaluable for company performance improvement projects. With a good process map you will understand the ins and outs of each part of your company and how the work that makes your company run gets done. With this understanding you can then focus on improving particular metrics with an understanding of everything that affects that metric and is affected by it.

Targeting a performance metric and taking steps to improve it without having the context of a good process map will inevitably have negative consequences for your business. While you may be able to achieve increased performance in that area you won’t see or understand the organizational cost of those achievements. The goal of improving a performance metric is always to make the company as a whole better, and to do this you have to start from an understanding of how the company as a whole operates, which is precisely what a good process map gives you. Staring with good process mapping gives you the foundation you need to insure that your efforts to improve the performance of you company are achieved and sustained.

Technorati Tags: Business, eliminating defects, improvement, process improvement, process mapping, quality, Streamlining

Do you feel guilty for taking time to think?

Thinking is important; really important…so why are we embarrassed when we are caught thinking? Thinking is not the same as daydreaming. Deep, productive thought cannot always be accomplished while multi-tasking. Just because you are not typing on your keyboard doesn’t mean that nothing is being done.

I think we are harder on ourselves then we realize when it comes to taking time to think. In fact, we actually stop ourselves from thinking when that little voice in our head says, “You need to get busy!” We’re so used to jumping when we hear our inner voice that we don’t even challenge that thought. Try answering that thought with: ‘Hey, I am busy, I am thinking and you (voice) are interrupting!”

When you let your thoughts be interrupted by the notion that you need to get busy, the outcome is potentially dangerous. Here are some reasons why:

• Incomplete thoughts lead to unforeseen problems
• You can lose your ability to complete a thought before acting (getting trigger happy)
• You will be stumped when someone asks you if you’ve “thought this through”
• You can miss the obvious better solution
• You depend on others input so much that you’re really just copying their thoughts – losing your originality
• It becomes your habit to rely on crutches to help you with your thoughts (Google, spell check)

So, I’m suggesting you take some time to think, fight the urge to look busy and see how your quality of work improves.

Technorati Tags: preparation, quality, working smarter

Many folks are concerned about the state of the economy - locally, nationally, and internationally.  I see the same worries in some of my clients, but not in others; I’ve taken a closer look at these two groups of companies, and this is what I’m seeing (unscientific, but interesting nonetheless):

Worried companies — I’m defining worried companies as the ones who are not in good shape from a Quality standpoint.  Oh, their final product quality is fine; it’s the processes that could use some sprucing up.  Not sure if this sounds like your company or not:

• Your final quality product or service is fine; customers are overall happy.
• however, your company often is jumping through hoops to make this happen.  It sometimes takes extraordinary effort to deliver on time — overtime, extra work being done, or even hand-carrying the order through the line.

• When a change comes through, it requires a lot of special attention to be done ‘right’.  It’s not a normal occurrence, and really puts a strain on your organization.

• When a key person is absent (vacation or sick), the organization has trouble delivering with the same efficiency.

• Everyone spends time and energy determining who made the mistake, before asking why the mistake was made, or how to fix the mistake

By contrast, un-worried companies have a noticeably different set of situations:

• Your final quality product or service is fine; customers are overall happy.
• It’s no problem for your company to deliver top quality products and services; it’s routine for your organization.

• When overtime is needed, it’s done with the understanding that this is a temporary situation, and everyone pitches in.

• Absences, both planned and unplanned, barely cause a ripple in the smooth operations of the organization, as all critical work is documented, cross-trained, and backed up as appropriate.

• The organization is more concerned about fixing the problem than fixing the blame.

So, what are the steps that companies can take?

1. They can document the nebulous processes, review the existing processes, and ensure that critical steps in a process are documented and are correct.  (Documenting and leaving on a shelf to get dusty is a common, and useless, situation I see in some areas…sigh…)
2. They can use this time to tighten up their internal overall process flow once step #1 has been done — analyzing it for redundancies, streamlining, and ways to make it more efficient.  Do multiple areas in your organization do almost the same thing?  Are there more than one ‘right’ ways to do a certain process?  Can it be streamlined to deliver the output in less steps, or with lower defects?
3. They can spend this time to do training - formal training to bring up their employees’ skills; cross-training to ensure that absences are easier to handle; corporate knowledge transfer so when the guru goes on vacation or (gasp!) retires, the knowledge doesn’t walk out the door with him; management training to spruce up your managers’ interpersonal skills so they can handle the questions from nervous employees better; teamwork and teambuilding to let employees know that they are valued, and that working as a team is the best chance you have of staying in business; and a host of other training that I’m sure you can name immediately.

Interestingly, the client who are calling us are the ones that fall into the second group - they continue to focus on “business as usual”, streamlining, becoming more efficient, requesting training, delivering higher quality both internally and externally, etc.  The worriers?  Well, let’s just hope that they don’t lose my phone number as they run around with worried looks on their faces and gloom and doom in their hearts.

Technorati Tags: downturn, economics, efficiency, quality, Streamlining, training