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Tying Baldrige, quality values to increased employee engagement
By Henry J. Lindborg
The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence presents an ideal pattern of values to which quality professionals can aspire. Tracking its development throughout nearly a quarter century reveals shifts in the quality community’s thinking and language.
The term “performance excellence” is evidence of such a shift. Another is “engagement,” a concept discussed in Tom Becker’s recent QP article, “Happiness Helps.”[1]
Becker reports on rather disappointing results from an engagement survey—conducted by Right Management—that reveal some wide gaps in employee commitment. Becker then offers advice on career development ideas to close those gaps.
The article headline, however, may seem provocative in an environment more focused on survival than happiness. Yet, it’s worth reflecting on where engagement fits into our set of quality values and how we respond to corporate efforts to enhance it.
Defining engagement
Section 5.2 of the 2011–12 Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, “Workforce Engagement,” asks, “How do you engage your workforce to achieve organizational and personal success?” Engagement is defined as “the extent of workforce commitment, both emotional and intellectual, to accomplishing the work, mission and vision of the organization.” The question assumes that engagement produces success.
Though the term has become popular in just the last few years, how engagement affects employee and customer satisfaction, how it relates to other factors at work and how it may improve the bottom line have been extensively researched throughout the last two decades.[2] Virtually every type of organization has been studied, and most employee surveys are now structured around workforce engagement. Additionally, as testament to the idea’s reach, a survey of student engagement is widely employed in higher education.[3]
Engagement is a hot topic in our world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). The topic is popular because of the rapid transformation of industry and workforce demographics, with anticipated talent wars for highly skilled professionals, many of whom have become disengaged from their workplaces.[4]
A number of large–scale surveys, in addition to the one by Right Management, have alerted employers to low levels of engagement and warned of the consequences of weak corporate ties to the workforce. Firms such as Blessing–White and Gallup have conducted similar surveys and now offer a range of consulting and training to improve employee commitment.[5]
It’s hard to argue against efforts to provide interesting work—one of the most desired factors in a career as reported in surveys throughout the world—development opportunities and defined career paths. If anyone is to argue, however, it’s likely to be those who have been downsized due to outsourcing and the economic recession.
In seminars my organization has conducted, I have learned that attendees find a career metaphor in the game Chutes and Ladders. These employees may respond with cynicism, fearing that classifying the engaged and disengaged may become another “rank and yank”[6] or require hypocritical allegiance to the organization’s espoused mission, vision and values.
They want engagement and meaningful work, but there are many reasons for alienation, including poor—even corrupt—leadership and management in turbulent times. As with other VUCA challenges I’ve discussed in this column,[7] however, the quality profession offers sets of effective core values and practices that help shape organizations.
Recipe for success
The Baldrige question links corporate and personal success. This is the essence of engagement, or the guarantee that it’s not a fad, but rather the heart of meaning at work.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, is often cited as evidence and inspiration for seeking engagement. Csikszentmihalyi’s standing as a psychologist—he was once the psychology chair at the University of Chicago—distinguished him from authors of popular articles on personal development and surprised many who thought psychologists ought to deal with angst rather than happiness.
His writing has continued to explore the notion that we are happiest when we are fully involved in life and work, at a level of near self–forgetfulness, in which boredom and anxiety vanish. He has extended his writing to explore student success, creativity and leadership.[8]
Another psychologist who explored happiness is the late Donald O. Clifton, author of How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life[9] and the driving force behind Gallup’s system for identifying personal strengths.[10] As Gallup’s CEO, Clifton preached workforce engagement and directed research toward improving individual and organizational performance.
This work is additional evidence there has been a convergence of what we’ve learned about personal happiness with how to build the types of organizations we want. This is exemplified in the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and through principles that have long been embedded in quality thinking—notably, W. Edwards Deming’s insistence that workplaces be free of fear, involve all in transformation and encourage pride in workmanship.
Quality professionals are fortunate to have clearly defined values, criteria and practices for creating the types of organizations that foster engagement. Their challenge, as it has always been, is learning from an expanding body of knowledge, holding a vision in difficult times and ensuring that practice is aligned with promises. Quality professionals are also challenged with avoiding buzzwords and detachment from workplace reality that alienate rather than engage.
References and notes
1. Tom Becker, “Happiness Helps,” Quality Progress, January 2011, pp. 16–22.
2. Many researchers trace contemporary academic interest to William A. Kahn’s “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work,” Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4, 1990, pp. 692–724. The humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow underlies the entire field.
3. The National Survey of Student Engagement, developed by
George Kuh, http://nsse.iub.edu.
4. E.E. Gordon, Winning the Global Talent Showdon, Berrett–Koehler, 2009.
5. The “Blessing White’s Employee Engagement Report 2011,” for example, is global in scope and continues research begun in 2003, www.blessingwhite.com/research.
6. According to MSN Encarta Dictionary, “’Rank and yank’ is a system used to review employee performance in which top performers are slated for promotion and compensation increases and low performers are slated for reassignment or termination,” http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701709124/rank_and_yank.html.
7. Henry J. Lindborg, “Curbing Career Fears,” Quality Progress, October 2010, pp. 52–53.
8. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper, 1990.
9. Donald O. Clifton and Tom Rath, How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life, Gallup Press, 2004.
10. Donald O. Clifton, Soar with Your Strengths: A Simple Yet Revolutionary Philosophy of Business and Management, Dell, 1995.
© ASQ, Henry J. Lindborg
First published in Quality Progress, April 2011
Use Toyota’s recent troubles as an educational opportunity
by Henry J. Lindborg
Last fall, when I remarked to university educators that a particular decision-making tool was widely used at Toyota, their response was respectful interest. When I did the same in February, a similar group laughed derisively at the comment, as though I were being ironic.
For that audience, Toyota’s reputation for quality had become a joke, a tragic reversal for a company accustomed to admiration and emulation.
Last year, Toyota was the world’s eighth most valuable brand—down from sixth a year earlier—and worth $31 billion.[1] The company was named among the 100 most ethical firms, and books—most famously, The Toyota Way[2]—spread the gospel of its quality systems from manufacturing to other industries, including healthcare.
Not so fast
The decline in market share, recent recalls and Toyota’s CEO’s public admission of a downward spiral led the Economist[3] to cite another book that may help diagnose Toyota: How the Mighty Fall.[4] As additional massive recalls were announced, negative press has turned melodramatic.
At the same time, the company has tried to recover, employing crisis management aligned with its espoused values: apologizing, telling the truth, avoiding finger pointing and taking direct action by stopping production to focus on making things right for customers.
Whatever the lasting damage to Toyota’s brand, competitive position or ability to recover, the company’s troubles have a special significance to quality professionals. Toyota’s situation is different from other manufacturers that had safety problems and conducted recalls—Mattel or Bridgestone/Firestone, for example. No other organization, whatever its success in winning brand recognition or quality awards, has captured quality professionals’ imaginations like Toyota.
In some respects, the company represents the culmination of the United States’ decades-long adaptation of Japanese tools and techniques for improvement: Toyota offers a compendium of “how to.” Its approaches have been successfully applied in a broad range of organizations. Now as the role model’s reputation is damaged, there is significant risk to the credibility of those who have held it up for admiration.
Room for growth
In the Toyota story, there are warnings and opportunities for quality professionals. While many practitioners have applied the company’s lessons intelligently—with systems perspectives and full awareness of the perils of knowledge transfer—others have not. They have reverted to selling tools and techniques by invoking the Toyota brand.
It’s not a bad concept for marketing, but over time, it can be perceived as a fad: a set of practices that overpromise. Clients may have wondered, “Why didn’t we become Toyota?” Now, of course, they may be grateful they didn’t.
We should be warned that Toyota’s brand is not quality’s brand. When a brand suffers major blows—including media frenzy, government investigations and allegations of long-standing inattention to risks—successful marketing can become an albatross. The lesson applies to consultants and other quality professionals who need to make a case for improvement initiatives: Quality is a profession with a body of knowledge (BoK). It is not dependent on any single model, brand or training.
While our most persuasive arguments are often embodied in stories, narratives are perilous. Check out textbooks or trade journals from a decade ago for glowing case studies of quality transformation. How many fulfilled their promise? How many imperiled the credibility of the principles and practices they were intended to illustrate?
Peter Drucker wrote, “Failures, unlike successes, cannot be rejected and rarely go unnoticed. But they are seldom seen as symptoms of opportunity.”[5] He understood failures as opportunities for positive, disciplined innovation. Innovators create value by applying what is already known in new ways.
Let that be a lesson
How might quality professionals use Toyota to spark innovation? First, focus on the full range of quality’s BoK. Do we have perspectives that allow us not only to capitalize on Toyota’s success, but also to explain to a cynical public the dynamics of its failures? Do we have an enterprise perspective? Can we tell the rest of the story?
To what degree have we limited ourselves to functionary, and now defensive, roles by focusing on tools and techniques? Is our reaction, “But the tools work?” Can we offer a big-picture response based on quality’s role in global economics and organizational life cycles? What is our level of understanding of strategic risk, especially in the supply chain? Do we grasp the implications of risk within a stakeholder approach to quality, involving ethics and social responsibility (SR)? Do we bring to the table an integrated view of the profound knowledge W. Edwards Deming advocated? How we answer these questions may be an indication of our willingness to innovate and to reinvigorate the profession.
Individually and collectively, we have the opportunity to define the quality profession by articulating how its BoK not only applies to improving efficiency, but also has the power to explain enterprise risk and strategies for improvement. This may require revisiting our BoK to ensure it integrates what we have learned about risk, stakeholder management and auditing for corporate SR. We may need to ask whether our education, training and certifications incorporate that knowledge.
We should use Toyota as our test. Can we analyze and explain its failures—and, we hope, its recovery—as convincingly as we did its success?
Note and references
1. For more information on brand valuation, visit Interbrand at www.interbrand.com. For a list of the world’s most ethical companies of 2009, visit Ethisphere at www.ethisphere.com/wme2009.
2. Jeffrey Liker, The Toyota Way, McGraw-Hill, 2003.
3. The Economist, “Toyota Slips Up,” Dec. 10, 2009.
4. Jim Collins, How The Mighty Fall, Harper Collins, 2009.
5. Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Harper Collins, 1986, p. 46.
© ASQ, Henry J. Lindborg
First published in Quality Progress, October, 2010
Adapting to a new market for quality, engineering professionals
by Henry J. Lindborg
In consulting and planning with not-for-profits—especially universities, which are unaccustomed to market turbulence—I often use the phrase “glacial change.” The phrase implies change that is large but so gradual that human beings don’t see it in their lifetimes.
But I’ve had to modify my language. Climatologists predict that by the middle of the 21st century, there will be no glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park. What we’ve thought of as geological time has been abbreviated.
We’ve all heard this, and satellite images confirm what we’ve heard. Change guru John Kotter even produced a useful fable about it.[1] Now, we have the more immediate metaphor of “reset,” echoing the title of Kurt Andersen’s Time magazine cover story and book.[2]
In reset, we suddenly come to the painful realization the world is transformed. The gradual, accumulated economic, social and environmental shifts that take decades are suddenly made visible in massive changes, many of which are unlikely to be reversed in a new cycle.
As I recently tracked the fate of a large manufacturer negotiating concessions from its union, I was struck not only by the weakened condition of a great company, but also by how the firm made sense of its future. As it expressed hope of emerging stronger, it made clear its market would be forever different.
So, too, the market for quality and engineering professionals has changed. We’ve seen engineering unemployment double this year, and the long, slow downward drift in manufacturing has accelerated. How do we adapt?
Change vs. transition
Thirty years ago, William Bridges observed the important difference between change and transition.[3] Change is situational, and transition is psychological, with three phases: an ending, a neutral zone and new beginnings. In ending, we lose something. The neutral zone is a sort of wilderness in which we let go of the past and either go dormant we try new things. In new beginnings, we engage a new reality—ourselves transformed—with a new sense of identity.
During the last decade, I’ve worked with quality professionals in transition. Some have moved to new industries. Others have cultivated new instrumental and networking skills to find jobs in emerging industries. Now, mature workers are even taking advantage of internships.[4]
A New York Times article notes that science and technology professionals are broadening their skills to include business and communications.[5] I’ve noticed this gradual trend, as those with doctorates in engineering, law, biology and medicine have entered the management program in which I teach. At the same time, many are just entering or still wandering in the wilderness, reassessing what they bring to this reset world.
Organizations in recovery
To assist those in transition, I consulted with Jeff Dean, training specialist at Oshkosh Corp. The vehicle maker is different from many other manufacturers as it faces rapid growth challenges. Having obtained billion-dollar contracts from the federal government, the firm has needed to hire and rapidly train hundreds of new employees. Participating in both processes has given Dean important insight into job searching and what will be required of organizations in recovery.
More than 4,000 job-seekers turned out to apply for about 750 positions at Oshkosh. Dean interviewed candidates for two days.
“Lines began to form as early as 3 a.m.,” he said. “Many people came with nothing more than hope and a resume. As the days progressed, I had to take a break and process the magnitude of what was happening in front me.”
He was deeply moved by the hardships many faced, but he had to choose. “Everyone I interviewed wants to work,” he said. “What separated the group was their ability to combine their cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills. I call it, ‘head, heart, hand—do you know how, do you want to and do you have the ability to?’”
Dean’s formula is a good one. Detailed career plans aren’t worth much if you can’t define your skills in the few minutes you have.
Training day
Dean also needed to help redesign training for new employees, many of whom brought rich experience from other industries. His team began rapid improvement of training approaches and materials. By reviewing outcomes and efficiency, they were able to develop training programs that delivered the same or better results in less time. His experience models what we may expect as the economy recovers.
Many organizations are themselves in the wilderness, partly dormant, awaiting change. During their new beginnings, they will look at new realities. They will hire in new ways—often for projects rather than permanence—but they will screen carefully for a good skills fit. They will also look for those who understand urgency and know how to rapidly improve existing systems that have to be upgraded to compete in reset markets. Quality professionals should be first in line.
References
1. John Kotter, Our Iceberg Is Melting, St. Martins, 2006.
2. Kurt Andersen, Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America, Random House, 2009.
3. William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, revised 25th anniversary edition, Da Capo Press, 2004.
4. Ageless in America, Internships for Mature Workers, www.agelessinamerica.com.
5. Steve Lohr, “Adding Layers of Skills to a Science Background,” New York Times, Aug. 20, 2009.
© ASQ, Henry J. Lindborg
First published in Quality Progress, October, 2009
Highly skilled quality pros can make it through hard times
by Hank Lindborg
No sector is immune. Manufacturing, IT, finance, healthcare, education, publishing and retail are being affected by economic conditions that range from slowdown to slow-motion collapse.
For many, a job search is no longer an optional step in career development—it’s a matter of immediate economic survival. Others awaitthe next piece of bad news that may put them on the street. Given such serious risk, how should we behave? How should we develop strategies for our jobs and careers?
Driver safety analogy
To illustrate, let’s use what we learned in driving school. Why? Because of all daily activities, driving is the riskiest. We may fear snakes, spiders, bird flu and public speaking, but they don’t kill many of us. According to the Smith System, there are five keys to success in driving.[1] The five keys also apply to careers.
The Smith System’s first key to success is to aim high in steering. Understand, evaluate and act on all of the information you have. Under threat, people respond to immediate circumstances, rely on previously learned behavior and may limit channels of information—especially as they see distress everywhere.
The most important information you need, however, is about yourself in relation to your environment, market and technology. What do you bring to work? What are your skills, orientation and experience? How are these relevant to emerging fields and to the training and education required by them? Green technology, power engineering and managing supply chain risk may call you, but are you ready?
The second key is get the big picture. Quality professionals have long advocated systems thinking in organizations, employing disciplined techniques to keep from jumping to solutions before seeing the whole. What is the big picture for the industry in which you work? What political, economic, social and technical trends are affecting it? Are these likely to persist? For how long? From a larger, strategic (not just company and job) perspective, what is the likely future? Think like a CEO but without too much management jargon.
Misleading statistics
Third, keep your eyes moving to scan changes in the environment. For those who remain employed in times of uncertainty, scanning may itself become a difficult challenge.
The same holds true for those seeking work or surviving at new jobs—often at lower pay, with fewer benefits and diminished professional identity. Some, confronted by unremitting bad news, stop seeking full-time employment altogether, perhaps cobbling together part-time jobs, to fall among those no longer even counted in government statistics.
This situation isn’t new to those who were buffeted by economic churn while Wall Street bonuses and corporate profits rose along with house prices and the size of SUVs.[2] It is new to those in arenas such as state and local government, finance, and industries—including IT, which in spite of outsourcing had been regaining competitive advantage through lean practices and innovation.
In spite of massive economic setbacks, there is hope. A new book reviews global trends to forecast a new environment in which highly skilled quality professionals can thrive.[3]
The author makes no guarantees but provides the kinds of trend data—beyond daily headlines—and integral perspectives you need for your own big-picture scan for opportunities.
The fourth key is to always leave yourself an out. In driving, this means using space to stay out of harm’s way. In careers, it applies to professional development and contingency planning. What is the scope of your career? Is it bounded by a single function or job? If so, you have little space to maneuver. What new projects, training or education will allow you greater latitude? What plans have you made for a possible move—voluntary or involuntary?
Remember, those who have noticed where outs (exits) are and have mentally rehearsed using them have the best chances for surviving a crash of any kind.
Finally, the fifth key—make sure they see you. If you want to remain among the core employees in your organization, your value has to be apparent to your boss and coworkers—not only in the tangible results of your projects, but also in your role as supportive colleague. Their opinions count when it comes to references, networking and even new job offers. If you are planning a change to consulting or contracting, perhaps taking on your newly outsourced job, or if you are actively conducting a job search, you need to be visible.
Active participation in ASQ is another means to remain visible and to maintain professional identity by holding office, gaining certifications, speaking, writing for its publications and developing a supportive network.
References
1. Smith System, www.smith-system.com.
2. Louis Uchitelle, The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, Vintage, 2006.
3. Edward E. Gordon, Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses and Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline, Berrett-Koehler, 2009.
© ASQ, Henry J. Lindborg
First published in Quality Progress, April, 2009
Understand and use VUCA to manage threats
by Henry J. Lindborg
Books on careers usually contain some advice on strategic thinking. They suggest getting the big picture, sometimes by applying the tools and techniques of business planning.
This can be done, for example, by conducting a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of your career. Sometimes, the books describe using a political, economic, social and technological trends approach to determine what is affecting you. While these are useful exercises, I’ve noticed lately that discussing threats is more emotionally charged than in past.
Perhaps we’re conditioned by the newspapers and books we read about threats to national security[1], or our enhanced understanding of risk in enterprise management, quality systems (think Toyota) or lean projects. More personally, we fear losing our jobs. I’ve heard professionals in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, technology, publishing, sales and education candidly express such fears.
Given the challenge of coping with threats, I’ve applied another strategic model to career development: VUCA, an acronym that stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
Coping with threat
VUCA—developed for leadership education at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, PA—isn’t a new term. In 1994, Fortune reported it was used so often that it had become something of a cliché. It has since, however, gained wider currency as more of us face a world rich with VUCA.[2]
Formulated by leadership and organizational development guru T. Owen Jacobs[3], VUCA’s four elements describe the external environment:
1. Volatility has to do with the rate of change to which organizations and individuals must adapt. The more rapid the change, the greater the difficulty in adapting.
2. Uncertainty occurs because our knowledge is inadequate—we can’t predict everything. Organizations once appeared stable and were built on rational planning and efficient management. They offered predictable career paths. This is no longer the case.
3. Complexity arises from multiple systems interacting at once. As quality professionals, we understand root causes are difficult to uncover.
4. Ambiguity comes into play as it becomes difficult to make sense of things, and events take on multiple meanings.
My simple approach to using VUCA’s four elements to manage threats is to divide a sheet of paper into four columns. The first column lists each VUCA element. The second is labeled “me,” and the third is “my organization.” The fourth column is “trends,” which must be supported by objective, outside information. The information in the other three columns relies on your own perceptions.
If the exercise is conducted in a group, a facilitator can briefly explain each VUCA element and distribute a resource on trends. Participants—yourself or a group—first list how each element affects you and your organization. You might consider these questions: How has rapid change affected you? Where do you feel greater uncertainty? How has the environment become more complex and difficult to interpret?
After brainstorming each element, participants consult a resource on trends, using the fourth column to explore the economic, social and professional changes most affecting them and their organization.
The trends column is significant because it connects individual experience and reflection to a systematic understanding of what is affecting us now and shaping our future. Two useful resources are ASQ’s Future of Quality Study[4] and the World Future Society’s reports[5]. Allot time for reading about trends, adding them to the chart and discussing their implications.
Understanding the outcomes
At least four benefits have been discovered by using this approach. First, the categories overlap, which is an advantage. In fact, it assists us in seeing connections. Change is clearly related to uncertainty and ambiguity, because it triggers emotional response. Second, participants’ systems skills can be enlisted to enrich discussion. Third, focus is kept on careers. Participants should ask how they can craft a strategy to reduce stress and enhance their success. Finally, VUCA can be reinterpreted for positive action, rather than fear.
Quality professionals are called on to be systems thinkers. They understand dynamic complexity, which Peter Senge describes as, “Situations where cause and effect are subtle, and where the effects over time of interventions are not obvious.”[6] Professionals can use their systems skills to further explore career issues.
At the same time, though, the exercise is not just about intellect. Discussing career threats can be profoundly emotional and involve professional identity and loss. Some participants may find uncertainty and ambiguity painful as they pass through what William Bridges calls the neutral zone of personal transition. “For many people, the neutral zone is essentially one of emptiness in which the old reality looks transparent and nothing feels solid anymore,”[7] he writes.
Fortunately, VUCA can present opportunity, a positive in SWOT analysis. “The VUCA world is sparking new ways of thinking and acting—ways to deal with the original dark meaning”[8] Bob Johansen writes. He suggests substituting vision for volatility to set direction; understanding for uncertainty to practice listening and learning; clarity for complexity to make sense of the world in ordinary language; and, finally, agility for ambiguity to prepare for inevitable surprises.
Try variations of this simple tool. It’s OK to combine it with others you know. It can broaden your strategic career horizons.
References and notes
1. Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What To Do About It, Harper Collins, 2010.
2. Lee Smith and Rajiv Rao, “New Ideas From the Army (Really),” Fortune, Vol. 130, No. 6, p. 203.
3. The VUCA concept has mainly been applied to strategic leadership. For more information, see T. Owen Jacobs, Strategic Leadership: The Competitive Edge, National Defense University Press, 2002.
4. ASQ conducts its “Future of Quality Study” every three years. The first one was done in 1999, and the last iteration was in 2008. QP publishes articles based on the studies’ results, which are available to ASQ members. For a clear explanation of current trends, see Marvin J. Cetron and Owen Davies, “Trends Shaping Tomorrow’s World: Economic and Social Trends and Their Impacts,” The Futurist (May-June 2010), pp. 35-50.
5. For more information about the World Future Society, visit www.wfs.org.
6. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, 2006, p. 71.
7. William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, Cambridge, MA, 2004, p. 139.
8. Bob Johansen, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present, Berrett-Koehler, 2007, pp. 49-54.
© ASQ, Henry J. Lindborg
Originally published in Quality Progress, October, 2010
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