This is the last of a series of blog posts digging deeper into the seven keys to building a quality culture, which builds on Nicole Parker’s introduction blog. In this article, we will discuss the seventh of these seven keys; No Heroes.
No Heroes?
Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say “no individual heroes”. As I have alluded to in previous episodes of this series, building a quality culture requires a mindset shift. We want to focus on cross-functional teams, not individual heroes, because cross-functional teams focus on prevention. These teams are the real heroes. They remove the chaos and create long lasting calm and cost savings. On the other hand, if you have “individual heroes” in the quality arena, it’s usually highlighting a symptom of a problem while overlooking the real problem.
Even when there is a reactive quality event, such as a quality spill, a single individual can rarely address a problem to the extent that a cross-functional team can. The individual often treats a symptom of the problem and not the root cause, and many times the change can produce unwanted side effects elsewhere in the business. This problem is further exacerbated when they are rewarded for resolving the issue singlehandedly, regardless of whether they are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. Humans naturally seek rewards and will repeat actions when rewarded. If individuals are rewarded for resolving issues on their own, they will continue to act as the lone hero and not reach out to others for help.
In this series, we have discussed focusing on prevention in the new product introduction process in great detail and advocated that it is critical for cross-functional teams to think through quality risks up front. In doing this they can eliminate unexpected problems and no longer need an individual person to step in as a hero. Prevention is the ideal to which we should aspire. We know there are trade-offs that must be made to remain profitable, and as our preventive efforts reach diminishing returns, we need to reduce the likelihood where reasonable. Cross-functional teams can help us both prevent problems up front and reduce the likelihood of repeating problems. In other words, we need teams to be our heroes.
How do we do this? The answer lies in controlling behaviors. There are two fundamental levers to enable behavior changes: rewards and metrics.
Rewards
Humans are a complex species, but one thing is consistent—people will continue to do what rewards them. If we define a reward as the things people receive that further motivate them, then rewards are, by definition, in the eye of the beholder. When we establish rewards, leaders need to think about the mindset of the person. When they connect what they perceive as a reward to a behavior, they will continue that behavior. Some are motivated by verbal recognition, some by compensation and others by a simple “thank you”. As leaders, we need to make sure rewards, in the eyes of the recipient, are not given for unwanted behavior and instead given for the wanted behavior. Back to our example, if we reward an individual for single-handedly addressing a quality incident, they will likely gravitate toward doing that the next time. If, on the other hand, we respond by acknowledging their work and indicating we need to take on the important work of forming a team to ensure it never happens again, we will see behavioral changes.
Metrics
The second thing we can do to change behaviors is establish a measurable outcome and hold people accountable to that metric. We can select the best metrics, but if we don’t hold people accountable, the metrics are only numbers and we won’t get the results we want. If we hold people accountable to metrics that don’t drive the outcomes needed, at best we will simply achieve the metric. We need to think about the metrics that drive the behaviors and desired outcomes, set those as expectations, talk about how they might achieve the improvements, review the progress and hold people accountable. For example, if we have a metric for the time it takes to close a corrective action, my guess is we will meet that metric, but will we get sound corrective actions that stop repeats—probably not. However, if we have the effectiveness of corrective actions as a metric, I bet the likelihood of that number decreasing will be higher.
Phases of a Maturing Culture of Quality
As a company transitions to a culture of quality, it will go through phases. The first phase is one that starts by building the behaviors and practices we have discussed until they become habits of the organization and permeate throughout, leading to solid year-over-year improvements. Then those improvements will diminish over time and plateau. This is a good sign that quality is optimized and there is little more to gain. Now a transition can take place where the team will be able to focus on other initiatives such as cost reduction, cycle time reduction and waste reduction. However, the team still needs to continue diligence of world class new product introduction so old habits don’t creep back in. At some point the ability to optimize those initiatives will bring diminished returns and a really exciting phase can begin—expanding into new products and processes—and then the cycle can continue.
Review
In this blog series, we have talked about the seven keys to building a culture of quality. The first blog covered the importance of designing quality into your product and process up front during the new product introduction process to set the stage for dramatically preventing costs of quality. Then we talked about using discipline in the practices and tools used, which become best practices and can continually be refined by the team. Next we covered building awareness of the team so they know what behaviors have positive impacts on the cost of quality and those that have negative impacts. If we do these things, we should see a dramatic decrease in the firefighting the team needs to do. In other words, if firefighting is happening, it is likely an indicator that there was a breakdown in either designing for quality, using disciplined quality practices or lack of awareness.
- Design Quality From the Start
- Disciplined Use of Improvement Tools
- Awareness of Quality’s Financial Impact
- No Fires — Fires Prevented
We then covered how important it is to have everyone in the company own quality so quality issues are found immediately and quickly addressed. Next was the practice of using cross-functional teams for both up front design of product and processes, but also for finding root causes and effective corrective action when problems do occur to eliminate repeats. The different perspectives drive a rich understanding and thorough responses to problems, with a wonderful side effect of sharing knowledge and building stronger teams. Lastly, in this blog we talked about heroes. When we see a single person coming in to save the day, it is usually a sign that someone didn’t take ownership of the quality of their output or cross-functional teams were not leveraged. The cross-functional teams that actively prevent quality issues are our invisible heroes!
- Full Ownership of Quality By Everyone
- Use of Cross-Functional Teams
- No Heroes — We’ve Got This
