Tag Archives: systems

Somewhere in the System

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“I know I am accountable for the output of my team, but we still have a ten percent reject rate. If my team would just try harder, the reject rate would come down,” Byron protested.

“Really? Just try harder means what?” I asked. “You told me your team was doing their best. Are you telling me, now, that they are not doing their best?”

“They seem a little down, discouraged. I know I have been on them. We need a 100 units of production each day and with a ten percent failure rate, that means we have to run 115, on average, to get our 100. If they would just try harder, they would get there.”

“I am going to make an assumption,” I said. “I am going to assume that your team shows up every day to do their best. If your team is doing their best, then there is something else in your system that is causing the failure rate. You are a smart guy. Get a big white board, draw out your system, get your team together and find it.”

Operations and Command and Control

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“If only life and business were that simplistic,” Scott said. “If you work in operations then your job is about commanding and controlling the time, labor and technical resources towards an agreed output. For the jobs in operations, your vision makes sense. But, I think it is only a functional perspective, not a universal one.”

“You seem to think that operations is all about command and control,” I replied. “It sounds a bit mechanical. Tell me more.”

“Operations is operations. Pretty cut and dried. We have defined processes inside efficient systems. Line up the people, line up the machines, line up the materials. Pop, pop, pop. Predictable output. Yes, it is a bit cut and dried.”

“If that is all there is to it, then why don’t we have robots do all our work?” I probed.

“In some cases, we do,” Scott raised his eyebrows in a subtle challenge.

“Yet, even in the midst of defined processes and efficient systems, even in the midst of robotic welding machines, we still have people engaged in operational work. And in that work, as defined as it is, aren’t there still problems that have to be solved and decisions that have to be made?”

“Well, yes,” he nodded.

“So, inside a process you describe as command and control, there is still discretionary decision making?”

Scott continued to nod.

“So, it’s not all neat and pretty,” I said. “Not all tied with a bow. In fact, some days, the work gets downright messy. Even mature processes are subject to variations in material specs, worn machine parts, delays in pace. Command and control short-changes the discretionary judgement required to effectively operate a well-defined system.”

Inspired by a comment posted to Responsibility, Accountability and Authority

Not Enough Time

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“I gotta get something off my plate,” Adrian shook his head. “I am so busy, I just don’t have time to get everything done.”

“Busy?” I asked. For me, busy is a code word, a clue, that there is a mis-match in level of work.

“Yes. Busy. I get here early to catch things up from yesterday, make some headway on one of my projects, but about 7:30, the chaos begins.”

“Chaos?” I asked. For me, chaos is a code word, a clue, that there is a mis-match in level of work.

“Yes. Chaos,” Adrian replied. “Unsolved problems from yesterday. Yesterday’s decisions delayed until today. It hits my email, it hits my text messages, it hits my phone, it walks through my office door.”

“So, you think you have a problem?” I clarified. “And, if you could get something off your plate, you would have more time? And if you had more time, you wouldn’t be so busy? And if you weren’t so busy, there would be less chaos?”

“That’s it,” Adrian agreed.

“Then, why did you start coming to work so early?” I probed.

“Because I was too busy during the day. There was too much chaos during the day. I couldn’t get anything done,” Adrian was frustrated with his circular problem.

“So, you came to work early to get more time, but you are still too busy and there is still too much chaos? Do you think not-enough-time is really the problem.”

The Go-Go Stage

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“That which does not kill you, makes you stronger,” Jim Dunbar grinned. “Our momentum told us we were not likely to die, at least not in that fiscal year,” he said. “We were invincible. So, I signed a lease on the second plane.

“Passenger loads picked up, and I had to hire more people. And that led to a predictable stumble. There was no rhyme or reason for the way we did things. We survived on our tenacity, but our tenacity began to fail us. My wife described our behavior as improvisation. Invincibility and improvisation make for a toxic cocktail. We over-promised, extended our thin resources.

“I remember our first overbooking. We had more passengers than seats. I looked at my schedule, figured we could make the run to Denver, flip the aircraft around and come back for the other group. For some reason, we thought the stranded passengers would wait the four hours. But, a weather system moved in. In spite of our promises, we never made it back, and missed another flight leg with a scheduled full plane.

“To say we flew by the seat of our pants was an understatement. But, at the time, I figured that my team practiced for months. We successfully flew one plane, how difficult could it be with two planes?

Excerpt from Outbound Air, Levels of Work in Organizational Structure, by Tom Foster, now available on Kindle, soon to be released in softcover.

Outbound Air

Where’s the Problem?

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“I don’t understand,” Abby lamented. “I have been working with the sales team for the past six months. We had an increase in sales volume almost immediately. But, after three months, sales began to trail off. I have all the data, here in front of me. The team is making the calls, following the process, but we aren’t getting the orders we expected.”

“What feedback do you get from the sales team? What are their reasons?” I asked.

“That’s the worst part, they just want to blame someone else,” Abby was mildly irritated. “They are blaming the shipping department, of all things.”

“What about the shipping department?” I pressed.

“The sales team says the shipping department isn’t doing their job according to the delivery schedules.”

“And what does the shipping department say?”

“Seems like everyone is in blame-mode. The shipping department says they can’t get orders out of the production department. And the production department is blaming everything on a machine,” Abby replied.

“Tell me about the machine.”

“It’s old and only goes so fast. Work stacks up in front of it, but we can only get so-much output, and it’s running three (8) hour shifts. We would buy another machine, but we have no place to put one and it costs $250,000.”

“Let’s look at the sales orders placed in the first couple of months of your program. What is this list of back-orders?”

“That’s what the sales people are talking about. Their sales orders turned into back orders and their back orders turned into cancelled orders. Now they can’t seem to get new orders.”

“Tell me Abby, how might you be able to connect a slow machine to orders, back-orders and cancelled orders over a six month period? Think about how one system impacts another system.”

Working on the People System

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“You are right,” Kristen relented. “I really am too busy. My priorities are focused on short term fires. I feel like all I do, all day long, gets consumed with management issues and keeping people motivated. I don’t have time to work on basic stuff like writing role descriptions. When I look at doing that, it is so far down my urgency scale, I almost think writing a role description is silly.”

“What would be the payoff?” I asked.

“The payoff? I can’t even think about the payoff. I could write a role description and then I would have a role description, but I would be further behind dealing with all the crap,” she explained.

“Kristen, you are not unlike most managers,” I nodded. “If you could truly focus on getting the right people, most of the crap you deal with would largely go away. Stop working on crap and start working on systems. Your life will only improve when you start working on systems. And the most important system is the people system.”

Not a What, But a Who

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“Do you really think it’s luck?” I asked.

“I know, it’s not luck,” Vicki replied. “But it seems that every project is different. And the reason that a project goes south, seems to be different every time.”

“So, when projects are predictable, they are more likely to be profitable?”

“Yes, but there is always some variable on the project that drains the schedule, or adds cost,” Vicki pondered.

“So, if you could remove the variability, anticipate the variability or at least have a well planned contingency when things don’t go right, profit might not be as affected?” I pressed.

“But there is always that unanticipated wingnut that comes in sideways and screws things up. If we could just do a better job, seeing into the future, imagining what could go wrong. If we could just figure out what the problems might be.”

“So, you think the problem is a what? You are going about this asking, what’s the problem?”

Vicki stopped talking, so she could think. “Are you suggesting the problem may not be a what, that the problem might be a who?”

Market Responsive

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“You improved your quality, so your warranty program became a competitive advantage instead of a liability. Your lead time was down to four weeks. You lowered your cost structure. Your output and unit profit was consistent and predictable, systems focus. And then the rug got pulled out?” I asked.

“Yes,” Arianne reluctantly explained. “Everything, up to now had been internally focused. Efficiency, pace, quality. Then, the market fell out. Our customers would shrug their shoulders and buy from someone else. At first we thought they didn’t understand what a quality product we had. We even sent out our engineers with our sales people to explain why our product was more durable, lower cost and could be delivered faster. But, it was us who didn’t understand.”

“What do you mean?” I quizzed.

“We had been so internally focused that we didn’t notice a shift in the market. Our market moved. Our product was fine, but our market wanted something different. Our competitor smoked us. They had re-tooled a number of features based on user-feedback. We had no clue.”

I nodded my head, “Market responsive.”

“Yes,” Arianne confirmed. “It cost us a million dollars in stagnant inventory and months of development time to catch up. We had been so internally focused, we almost lost the ship.”

Spinning Wheels

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
In your Time Span workshop, you describe the friction between various departments, Ops-Sales-Customer Service-Accounting. You suggest this is a structural issue. In my company, we absolutely see this friction, but to me, it looks more like a personality conflict.

Response:
Most managerial issues look like a symptom, that’s why they are so difficult to resolve. The two most often cited problems (symptoms) are communication breakdowns and personality conflicts. You can have all the communication seminars you can afford, you can give everyone a personality test, the problems will remain.

The friction you describe between your departments is structural. Each department works from an internally focused agenda, with little consideration for other agendas in other departments. The exterior looks like a breakdown in communication. Not so.

Why is the agenda in each department internally focused? Simple. We, executive management, told them they had to be internally focused. We told each department they had to be efficient, profitable, no waste, no scrap, high utilization rates of internal resources, we told them they had to be internally focused.

In the heady days of growth, as these departments were emerging and developing, this internal focus was necessary, to gain those efficiencies, to make the output predictable. Absolutely normal. But now, that internal focus works against us. For the organization to move to the next level, those departments have to work together, support each other, cooperate, trade inside information, share planning, cross-train personnel.

You can spin your wheels with personality tests, but the fix is Integration. We have to integrate our systems and sub-systems together into a Whole System.

Flowcharting the System

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“So, what does it take to create a system like that?” I asked. “To create a system that would notify for rejected parts along with lead times for replacement parts and alternate suppliers?”

Valerie was shaking her head. “I know our computer software pretty well and to program that functionality would be pretty expensive.”

I reached in my bag and pulled out a handful of 3×5 index cards. “Suppose I said that you were not allowed to modify your software and the only tool you could use were these 3×5 cards? Now build a system. Let’s start with how frequently it happens.”

“You’re right,” Valerie started. “It doesn’t happen that often. Our QC guy who certifies incoming parts, could send a card with the details to our purchasing person. Our purchasing person has access to lead times and alternate vendors. Purchasing gets their order quantities from sales orders, so they could run a reverse report to find out what orders would be impacted, that’s easy.”

“What else do we need to know to effectively respond?”

“We would need to get our sales people involved to find out what wiggle room we have on those orders. Since we are three weeks ahead of the game, there are all kinds of adjustments that can be made with ample notification.”

“If I asked to draw a picture of this on a piece of paper using circles, arrows and labels, could you do that?”

“You mean, like a flow chart?” Valerie asked.

“Like a flow chart.”