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what he's learned over the last 25 years about implementing change
Yes, the year past did bring the first Baldridge Awards. And
managers seem to be taking quality more seriously than ever. Yet, I
am gloomy. We have not reached even the takeoff stage in making
quality a national obsession. In reality the Baldridge Awards did not
at all capture America's attention; you can't find one person in a
hundred who's even heard of them. And the judges' failure to find a
single service company that merited the award is a disgrace to the
selection process.
The American Society for Quality Control's latest Gallup Survey
wasn't heartening either. Consumers don't think American quality has
improved since 1985. (Only the elderly, the poor and the less
educated think highly of what we make.) Perhaps quality has improved
in the US, but the other guys keep getting better too And relative is
the only word that matters when it comes to quality. The poll again
emphasises that consumers will pay a whopping premium for good
quality - are you listening yet, corporate America?
My reading of the auto industry evidence, an important leading
indicator in the quality movement, is also as glum as ever. Consider
the data from the latest J. D. Power survey on customers' willingness
to recommend auto makers and dealers (please see Figure One). Our
dealers fared all right, but our cars were shut out - as usual.
Aiding my pessimism is the likes of the June 1988 cover story in
Business Tokyo magazine, "America's Quality Crisis." It outlined in
grim detail Japan Airlines' continuing woes with Boeing quality
lapses.
Someone told me that Phil Crosby thinks 99 percent of the quality
program's he's reviewed are flops; i.e., fail to reach or sustain
anything like their potential. If Phil feels that way, then he and I
are in accord. So how do so many grand projects, launched with so
much fanfare, travel so short a distance toward their objective?
To try to answer that question, I decided to focus this article on
change per se, and have made a list of what I think I've learned
about change during the last 25 years. The list is based on
observations from my years as a US Navy Seabee officer, a drug-abuse
advisor in the White House, where I coordinated the efforts of 13
agencies, and from my 15 years as a consultant/researcher during
which time I have visited hundreds of companies.
Go for the Small Wins
The small-win principle, or get on with it factor, remains at the
head of my change-management list. Nothing is in close second. This
was the first principle in In Search of Excellence. Bob
Waterman and I called it "A Bias for Action." My advice: Test. Test
small. Test now. Test often.... Or: Do it. Fix it. Try it.... Mount
get-started tests in the boondocks, as far away from headquarters
(division, corporate) as you can.
Heed the words of Ross Perot: "At EDS (a firm that Perot founded),
when you see a snake you kill it. At General Motors (for which he was
a director at the time), when you see a snake, first you seek out the
best consultants on snakes. Then you appoint a committee on snakes.
And then you study snakes for a year or two." Harry Quadracci, chief
executive of wildly successful printing company Quad/Graphics,
likewise describes his success key as, "Ready. Fire. Aim."
Or consider this advice from Canada's premier oil and gas wildcatter,
aimed at future generations of managers in his company: "This is so
simple, it sounds stupid. But it is amazing to me how few oil people
really understand that you only find oil and gas when you drill
wells." Long-time strategic change consultant, Bob Schaffer, says
that firms seeking to induce major change should follow a
"breakthrough strategy," which consists of "locating and starting at
once with the gains that can be achieved quickly and then using these
first successes as stepping stones to increasingly ambitious gains."
He decries our overemphasis on big, high-visibility change programs
and our characteristic "perpetual preparation" approach, as he calls
it. Schaffer urges managers to "put aside their studies,
explanations, preparations. preliminaries, training, gearing up,
analyses and programs - and focus on accomplishing a short-term
result, a success."
In other words, to begin, begin. Start experimenting now. Start
nudging people to rack up small wins. After a small win or two has
been tallied, then explicitly urge forward the diffusion process.
Create an intensely nurtured network of champions, would-be champions
and small-win seekers. Stitch the network together - and work
directly and specifically on the momentum-building and momentum-
sustaining process.
It adds up to creating a learning organisation, an experimenting
organisation. To begin, ignore the resistors and work first with
ready champions at all levels. Sometimes I call the approach, with
reference to the National Football League, "Walter Payton versus John
Riggins." Riggins, a burly Washington Redskins fullback in the early
1980s, liked to run through the centre of the line. Time and again,
he'd take dead aim at the 290-pound nose guard opposite him. He'd
gain some yards on Sunday - and then spend the next three or four
days after the game in traction at George Washington University
Hospital. Elusiveness was the trademark of Walter Payton, a recently
retired Chicago Bear, who became the National Football League's
all-time leading ground gainer. Payton liked to run around
flu-stricken, 160-pound free safeties. I'm a Payton fan - successful
implementation is about looking for the pockets of least resistance,
not greatest resistance.
The small win/action bias approach is a philosophy, a way of life, a
fundamental attribute to every aspect of an organisation. For
instance, the rapid action bias distinguishes, above all, the premier
quality program in America in my view - the one at textile-maker
Milliken & Co. Milliken has developed many a new wrinkle since it
began its quality/customer/ quick response thrust in 1980. But all of
its new efforts were underpinned by its long-standing penchant to cut
the malarkey and get on with it (whatever the "it" was at the
time).
For the best read on all this, start by ingesting Bob Schaffer's
The Break through Strategy: Using Short-term Successes to Build
the High Performance Organisation. The book, from Ballinger, is
the best text on implementation ever, chock-a-block with practical
examples. Schaffer does a particularly persuasive job on why the
small win approach, over the long haul, is a much faster way to
achieve strategic change than the mega-program approach so common to
the quality movement. Long-term success, it turns out, is a function
chiefly of generating momentum and orchestrating down-the-line buy
in, not the sound and fury accompanying program launch.
Give Quality All Your Attention
Attention is all there is. You are what you spend your time on.
You're as focused - or unfocused - as your calendar says you are.
Interested in launching, and then sustaining, a program of quality
improvement through the empowerment of front-line people? If so, that
theme had better be reflected unmistakably on your calendar, hour to
hour, day to day, year to year.
Woody Allen put it best: "Eighty percent of success is showing up."
Pay attention in big ways (rallies, recognition ceremonies,
attendance at five-day introductory training courses) and, at least
as important, in small ways: The questions you routinely ask to start
off every meeting; the persistent theme of notes penned informally on
memos; the little five minute detour that you invariably make while
you're on an inspection site, to chat with the receptionist or
housekeeper; showing up at midnight on the loading dock to say thanks
for a record-breaking day; et cetera.
Symbol Management
The calendar is one vital part of a larger subset of
managerial/change management tools that I call symbolic management.
The chief doesn't drive the forklift or answer the phones in the
reservation centre anymore. She or he inspires, points out examples
of what success looks like (in big ways and especially small ones),
recognises and underscores the importance of what is to be important
(quality, for example) through a myriad of symbolic activities: Who
attends meetings? Who sits where? Who gets promoted? What's
unfailingly first on the agenda? What's the content of the first
paragraph of the annual report?
There are a host - literally thousands - of individually tiny,
collectively huge, symbolic weapons available to leaders/managers at
all levels. Creating in this fashion a persuasive buzz about your
devotion to quality is essential. Key message: To use these tools,
you must think consciously about them.
Modelling
If you want listening, model listening. If you want risk taking, then
take risks. If you want an obsession with quality, then live an
obsession with quality. This is the biggest breakthrough in the
behavioural sciences in the last two or three decades. It turns out
that we learn virtually everything by emulation of peers. Think of
yourself as a model, because you are, for better or for worse.
Trust
The first principle was test, experiment, adjust and learn - seek out
and build on small wins. But you can't get that process going in a
quality implementation effort and then sustain it without trust. In
short, if you don't believe in the fulsome capabilities of people on
the front line to get the job done and take responsibility for
getting the job done, then you will make a million boo-boos. From the
look in your eye to the rules you write, that unbelief will undo the
heartiest and best-planned quality improvement effort.
When I first drafted this, I wrote, "...trust, which will come with
time and after providing training...." That's wrong. With time and
training, trust will grow. But trust, at least on the part of the
instigating leaders, has got to be soul deep, and be in place from
the start. But trusts, on the other hand, can grow among teammates,
and among lower-level leaders. If you can lead them to create a
legitimate demonstration process (small wins again), the odds are
high that they will be surprised by the results, and come, over time,
to alter their views about people's capabilities.
Trust at first is incredibly delicate. It's the small acts that
invariably derail trust building, not the big ones. Be clear about
the implications of your tiniest actions at all times.
Kindness and Caring
Kindness and caring are corollaries to trust, and are another form of
paying attention, of really focusing on and listening to the people
at the front line (who count most in any quality improvement thrust).
A kind and caring organisation is not soft. To the contrary, it
provides a stable platform for constant, fast-paced, self-managed
change. An unkind organisation and a non-caring organisation, on the
other hand, instils fearfulness or contempt and destroys the
possibility of substantial change.
Test
Try. Foul up. Then move forward quickly and adjust. These are
essential notions, and they suggest hustle - a very important idea.
But to hustle should never lead us to the point of frenzy, where
there's no time for a kind word. Bone-deep kindness and caring, even
in a bureaucratic setting, was the essence of IBM's success through
people for decades.
I believe that kindness and caring can surely be modelled and to some
extent taught. But it helps immensely to worry directly about these
attributes in the recruiting process, or, at the latest, at promotion
time.
Fun (Joy)
Laughter is potent medicine for a strategic quality improvement
thrust. What laughter/fun really signifies, of course, is something
much deeper - joy in attacking the task; understanding the human
foibles we all share in trying new things and doing things better;
pleasure in each other's company as participating teammates in
pursuit of world-class quality.
You won't find that lately overused word, vision, on this list.
Vision, I contend, is a subset of fun! Vision implies going to the
mountaintop and returning with a one-sentence manifestation of
eternal truth, gathered from the breast of the great chieftain, no
doubt aided by a passel of consultants. Instead, I see vision as
people turned on about what they're up to - making and delivering
something great, building awesome and sustaining relationships with
customers and vendors. Sure, the big boss plays a role in conceiving
of such a setting. But mainly, it's leaders at all levels instilling
- and living - a pervasive attitude about participating in something
nifty. Fun, joy and sharing success go hand-in glove with world-class
quality.
Celebration
Remove the fear of failure: Surely this merits a point by itself.
Yes, sort of. Consider the chief antidote to fear: that is, remove
the fear of failure by "accentuating the positive," as the old song
line goes. Proffer constant small rewards for constant small
advances. Engage in perpetual big and small celebration of,
especially, the tiniest success or sign of initiative-taking, even
little initiatives that fail. Celebrate purposeful rule violations,
where those rules don't represent a breach of ethicality, but
represent taking a chance to fight off the Mickey Mouse and make it
better, do it quicker.
Celebration and constant recognition of small wins are unquestionably
the best ways to attack the typically pervasive fear of failure.
Celebrations must be unimposing and spontaneous. And they must be
planned and grand. There's simply nothing more powerful than
recognition that's heartfelt.
Caution--There's little that's tougher than setting the time aside,
especially for senior executives, to repeatedly celebrate the small
successes. Celebrating the mega-victory is easy and instinctive.
Constantly celebrating the little tries - that don't feel little at
all to previously unempowered, fear-stricken workers - is a major
factor separating winners from losers in strategic change
programs.
Self-Control
The best control is self-control. Self-control comes when the fear of
failure is removed, and when celebration of small wins (and small
losses) is the norm, when test it is the motto, when fun is the
routine and when everyone is singing from roughly the same page of
the same hymnal (for example, attention has made the quality priority
clear).
Psychological experiments, from the research discipline called "focus
of control," suggest that the tiniest dose of self-control can lead
to potent improvement. My favourite example is often labelled the
"shut off the noise button experiment."
Ownership
Research subjects were given an ambiguous, intellectual task (solving
puzzles that were insoluble) and a rote task (proof-reading) to
perform. They were told that the experiment was about the effects of
noise on productivity. While they worked, a raucous sound marred
their consciousness. It was an audiotape consisting of a gaggle of
people speaking several languages, typewriters and office machines
going and cacophonous street noise. The control group was just told
to go to work. The other group was given a button that could be
pushed, which would make the sound to go away. Those with the button,
not unexpectedly (except perhaps for the magnitude of the difference)
made about five times more tries at the intellectual task and just
one-quarter as many proofreading errors. But the result of interest,
subsequently replicated in any number of settings, was that not once
did anyone with the button ever push it. The mere fact that people
had the button at their disposal (the subconscious perception of
control) was cause enough for an astonishing increase in ownership of
the task and productivity.
My own observations, in places ranging from sausage plants to
motorcycle factories and bank's back offices, has only underscored
what can be found in the psychological literature. In Working,
Studs Terkel describes work as "above all (or beneath all) about
daily humiliation." The antithesis of "daily humiliation" is
ever-increasing doses of self-control.
Self-Discipline
The best control is self-control. Likewise, the best discipline is
self-discipline. The route to strategic change I'm describing may
sound anarchic at first blush (devolution of authority, constant
experiments, even rewards for rule-breaking are traditional failure
indicators ). To the contrary, such a process is under far greater
control than most of our normal, large-scale, quality-program change
efforts. The combination of trust and an environment that begs "get
on with a little something - now!" all in the context of a worthwhile
and exciting challenge (the achievement of world-class quality) is
the essence of discipline. But the discipline is self-discipline, not
a hierarchy-driven discipline.
Self-Managed Systems
Systems are key. "What gets measured gets done." Reward's what's
important. Systems are the blood vessels of the organisation. My
colleague and change master, former Harvard Business School professor
Tony Athos, argues persuasively that systems are the most important -
and most undermanaged - element in the organisation change process.
He's got a point.
However, to manage the development of systems does not mean to over
manage, or follow a top-down path. System development, too, should be
bottom up, including development of measures and the apportionment of
rewards. Participation is more than a part of the system-design
process - participation in system design is the key to effective
system building; and effective system building, in turn, is critical
to sustaining a strategic quality thrust.
Sharing All Information
Scandinavian Air Systems Chairman Jan Carlzon contends that, "An
individual without information cannot take responsibility; an
individual who is given information cannot help but take
responsibility." This idea is more powerful than I'd ever dreamed.
Access to virtually all information, by everyone at every level and
on a continuous basis, is a vital part of quality-oriented change.
It's at the core of the self-discipline, self-control, self-starting
process.
Outsiders as Stimulants
Outsiders (especially distributors and end-user customers) are a
great, generally untapped, source of day-to-day inspiration. No
matter what the expenditure of time, energy and cash, put everyone,
at every level and in every function, in direct touch with the
customer from time to time (regularly is best). Using outsiders to
send the message about quality is much more powerful than using
insiders.
Caveat - As usual, this tactic will do no good, unless people at the
front line are empowered to do something about what they find out
when they get in touch with outsiders. Once again, if trust and the
opportunity to experiment and cross organisational barriers are
absent, then this, too, becomes worthless - or worse, one more source
of frustration.
Developing and Nurturing (and Protecting) a Network of Crazies
One of our colleagues describes an effective senior naval officer
who, at every new command, immediately pulls together a Council of
Crazies (numbering 10 to 15). He uses this gang to advise him (and
often to informally lead) in developing strategic change
programs.
Champions/Skunks/Crazies - The essence of the experimenting and
continuously learning organisation in pursuit of awesome quality is,
by definition, experimenters. Find them (they're there, even in the
most dispirited outfits) in all functions, at all levels (including
non-management) and especially seek them out in the boondocks.
Nurturing and protecting the crazies, oddly enough, is especially
important if you are a mid-level staff manager. I view the effective
staff manager, not as a guardian of functional turf, but as an
exhorter and cajoler of would-be line experimenters, who constantly
test (and promote) new bits and pieces of programs in the field.
Teams
Champions, skunks and crazies are essential. But to say that does not
detract from the importance of orienting the organisation toward a
team structure - that is, conceptualising the organisation (at any
level, in the accounting department or in a strategic business unit
as a whole) as a collection of teams. Bend reward systems to
emphasise team performance. Train everyone in group problem solving.
Work on developing team-level experiments.
Getting everyone on teams is imperative. I'm sick and tired of
50,000-person companies bragging, in their annual reports, about
their 125 quality teams. Take the number of people in the firm,
divide by ten - if that's not close to your number of teams, you've
got a problem.
Space
Putting teams, especially from disparate functions, together in one
location is remarkably powerful. Space is usually considered a
secondary variable in the change-management process. Not so. Hanging
out together, or even having a private team locker and training area,
quickly builds up friendship and understanding - and a willingness to
try new approaches and disregard functional barriers. Put space
management near the top of your priority list.
Training
The best approach to training I've seen so far is at the
exceptionally successful, $100-million (revenue) Johnsonville Foods
of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The firm's attitude is a paean to life-long
learning. Every worker (yes, hourly sausage workers!) is vigorously
encouraged to take any course of study, on any topic, job-related or
not. Hourly sausage workers routinely take drafting courses, personal
computer courses or advanced accounting courses. The firm declares
that it wants only life-long learners on board. It will pay for
anything and everything when it comes to learning, as long as the
employee is willing to constantly grow. That's an approach to
training (or the better term, life-long learning) - a philosophy
rather than a technique - that is necessary for sustained pursuit of
quality improvement.
No Limits
There is - literally - no limit to the degree of self-management
that's possible over time (for the individual and team) and not so
long a time at that. This is what I've observed and learned, in the
toughest of settings. I, who thought I was sympathetic to these
ideas, have been surprised again and again by the likes of NUMMI,
Harley-Davidson and Johnsonville Foods. The practical implication for
the quality-oriented change process is, as I've hinted at under the
heading of trust above, that this idea of limitlessness must come to
be a shared, core belief on the part of all leaders.
Delegation
Delegation is impossible. But keep trying anyway. Delegation is the
most brittle of tools. No one ever gets it right. One undoes it in
the time it takes to snap one's fingers. Transferring the monkey, for
real, to someone else down the line is no easy task. But true
delegation is essential to psychological ownership - to self-control,
self-inspection, constant experimentation and the achievement of
change-program objectives. Most supervisors have grave difficulty
with self-managing team structures, sharing information and
empowerment in general. The chief reason is the difficulty in
shifting from cop to coach. It's all about such things as
hundred-year-old beliefs about people's limitations and an
unwillingness to give and receive trust. But call it, in the end, a
delegation problem. Work on it. Train at it. It's essential to
serious - and sustained - quality improvement.
Variety
Be impatient, yes. Induce fast-paced experiments, and manage the
momentum-building process by creating a sense of urgency for change.
But at the same time, understand and acknowledge that every person,
in every group, in every unit, does "it" (trying, risking, trusting,
owning) differently, very differently in fact. Each of us (person,
group or unit) learns and sheds disbelief and skepticism; buys in and
moves forward at a different pace; and suffers minor (or big)
setbacks for different reasons. This is why management of the
diffusion process (turning a few good tests or ideas into a
groundswell) and management of momentum are such important,
hard-nosed ideas - and so tough to pull off.
Above all forcing mindless replication of someone else's good idea or
successful experiment is doomed. I've seen it backfire, time and time
again.
Charisma Be Damned
Leadership is overrated in the change process. That is, conventional,
and even some new, ideas about leadership: leadership as inspiring,
visioning, making big decisions, dashing about on white horses,
exuding charisma from every pore. The long-term quality improvement
objective, as I see it, is to create a rolling sea of small
experiments, by people at all levels and in every function. Creating
and sustaining the groundswell is leadership. To do it, as suggested,
requires effective use of the calendar in big and small ways - and
abiding trust.
But please, throw out all those books on "dress for success," "how to
manage up," "how to manage the boss," and "the art of negotiation and
conflict resolution." Instead, paper the walls of your soul (and/or
office) with mental or physical posters that proclaim: "Have fun."
"Try it." "Get started now." "Drill more wells." "Celebrate it."
"Recognise it." "Trust them - they're there and know what they're
doing, and I don't." "Stamp out Mickey Mouse." What does my calendar
say? - "Listen, dummy!"
Culture Bunk
Culture change is so much hooey! "B" drives "A": Behaviour change
induces attitude change. That's the chief social-psychological
research lesson I've learned (and then re-learned many times) in the
last 25 years. Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner with his rats
running mazes, and Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura with his
analyses of modelling behaviour, are fundamentally right. If we can
get people to do something - to experiment, to try it, to learn about
their native competence, to increase their self-esteem and
self-control - well, then, the desired attitude change will
follow.
Culture has been an important idea, a 1980's management antidote to
the over-attention we directed to shuffling charts and boxes of the
past. But trying to change attitudes first (create a quality culture
without having lived and then elicited from others the new
behaviours, or trying to implement a
by-the-numbers-culture-change-as-panacea process), is as stupid as
believing in charismatic leader-as-panacea.
Three Cheers for Mindless Optimism!
Optimism is contagious. (Witness the Reagan years.) And,
unfortunately, so is pessimism - maybe even more so. (Witness the
Carter years.) This notion has always seemed simple-minded to me.
But, as the years roll by, I increasingly believe it to be true - and
important. My mind has changed as I've run into so many effective
leaders who stamp out gloom and doom with religious fervour; who take
the greatest (vociferous and public) pleasure in the smallest signs
of success in the midst of chaos and disorder; who really treat
foul-ups as opportunities rather than hurdles. We see it in sports.
We see it in the military. And we see it among workteam leaders in
pursuit of quality improvement.
"Accentuating the positive," exuding energetic enthusiasm for what
you're up to, laughing past the foul-ups as you get off the deck and
go at it again and banishing dark spirits and cynics - it's a potent
elixir.
Nobody's Perfect
No leader, change manager or quality fanatic or champion gets all
this stuff, or even most of it, right all the time. The process of
managing change is the essence of trial and error. A million, subtle
variables (literally!) are always at play. Test it. Try it. Adjust
it. Mess it up. Try it again. These must be, first and foremost, the
watchwords for the change manager.
"Nobody Knows Anything"
This assertion, a reflection after a long and successful career, was
made by top Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman. And it's good
advice for any leader of a quality program. The details and rhythms
of a major change process are unknowable in advance, and barely
comprehensible after the fact. This doesn't imply at all a laid-back,
do-what-you-want- to-do, style. It does imply guiding others to try
and try to accept setbacks and the unexpected as normal - and always
having intellectual humility about management, change, people and
organisation.
It Can Be Taught
All of the above is teachable to leaders at all levels, and
followers, too, if you never forget the first principle: the small
win, which is the essence of the effective change in pursuit of
quality improvement. Small wins (consider them demonstrations) are
possible, and almost instantly, no matter how gloomy the current
situation. Teaching (new skills, self-esteem) by example
(self-example, team-example) is what change is all about.
Effort Counts for Naught
Results count for all. This doesn't imply that lapses of morality or
ethicality, especially in the treatment of people, are ever
justified. It's not a carte blanc endorsement of "the means justify
the ends." On the other hand, there is a lot to say for Winston
Churchill's words: "It is no use saying, 'we are doing our best.' You
have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." This, in some
respects, is one final plea for our first proposition - the
relentless pursuit of small wins and building momentum behind the
small win-generation process. Getting something done. Increasing
esteem and confidence. Learning. Adjusting - fast. And moving forward
again. In the end, of course, that does boil down to persistence. But
the persistence must be perpetually oriented toward clearing another
specific hurdle, no matter how small - right now!
"Some Advice! I've Got this Big Quality Effort and...."
Some will perhaps find the above advice surprising, and, in
particular, inconsistent with the large-scale change programs that
are so commonplace in the so-called quality movement today. I have no
inherent antagonism toward large-scale change programs; in fact, I
recommend them. On the other hand, those who have had the big
programs work (such as Milliken) have been blessed, at the front end
of the process, with an amazing bias for action - the small win
philosophy was already in place.
Recall that we began this discussion with disquiet about the
overwhelming number of programs that fail to reach their potential
and, in fact, peter out entirely after a year or so. All of the above
ideas can be part of a formal, big-scale program. But beware the
giant-scale launch when the above essentials - such as trust, a
caring attitude, an orientation toward action and celebration and
recognition thereof - are not locked firmly in place.
This article is written out of frustration. Frustration at the
slowness of Americans to truly come to grips with the quality
challenge. Many starts are being made. But the finish line seems no
closer than it was a few years ago. Something's got to give. The
prescriptions above may be a reasonable stab at an answer to what's
missing in many of our well-intentioned, but routinely futile efforts
- especially our most dramatic efforts.
©
Copyright 1999, The Institute of Advanced Leadership. (www.ioal.org)
All rights reserved. Last updated 15th July
1999