Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs, December 2018

Welcome to December, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

This is the last issue of 6^th annual period of our blog carnival of quality management articles and blogs. We have taken up Sustained Success of an Organization as our key topic for discussion.

ISO 9004: 2018 goes on to state that “Factors affecting an organization’s success continually emerge, evolve, increase or diminish over the years, and adapting to these changes is important for sustained success. Examples include social responsibility, environmental and cultural factors, in addition to those that might have been previously considered, such as efficiency, quality and agility; taken together, these factors are part of the organization’s context.”

We will pick three different articles that individually links up efficiency, quality and agility respectively with the sustained success.

Efficiency and Sustained Success:

Building Efficient Organizations – An efficiency mindset is the key to long-term gains. – Ryan Morrissey, Peter Guarraia, Véronique Pauwels and Sudarshan Sampathkumar – There is no fixed blueprint for embedding efficiency in an organization’s DNA. In our experience, however, successful companies share a common overarching approach: They make sure their efficiency effort spans five critical areas: strategy, metrics, commitment, behaviors and culture. Tenacity and a sustained investment in these areas create the best chance of success.

There is an interesting white paper – Capturing Operational Efficiency and Sustainable Value through Claims – by Capegemini and Guidewire,which studies the business case for claims transformation and paying specific attention to the critical factors that generate benefits, insurers can capture substantial operational efficiency and sustainable value for the insurance companies..

Quality and Sustained Success

ISO 9004 goes beyond product quality concept of consistently meeting the requirements of customer and stresses on two key concepts for of an Organization:

• focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
• focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

The relationship between efficiency, effectiveness, sustained success and the quality of management in terms of immediate and final results.

The Figure here above shows a diagram describing the company’s hierarchy. It includes the company’s embedded resources, processes, immediate results (produced goods and services), as well as final results and impact (strategic effect). Immediate results should be presented in vector form

Agility and Sustained Success:

The leaders of organization design at McKinsey, principals Wouter Aghina and Aaron De Smet, explain what agility means and how organizations can evolve to thrive in an environment that demands constant change in the article, The keys to organization agility. Agility is when you thrive on change and get stronger and it becomes a source of real competitive advantage. (For more on the importance of being both agile and stable, see “Agility: It rhymes with stability.”)

There are a few more, general, articles which helps in understanding how to build sustained success:

• Dorie Clark, in her article, The Secret to Sustained Success draws on Chris Zook, co-head of Bain & Company’s Global Strategy Practice to state that the best companies focus on identifying and leveraging their core strengths, rather than chasing random new acquisitions and opportunities. (See her previous article on “Why You Should Kill Your Ideas.”)
• A winning culture …can be the catalyst that ignites an organization into truly becoming a “best place to work!”. The article offers 5 keys:
  • Establish a corporate set of core values that highlights being a champion for doing the right thing and taking care of people.
  • Communicate the values through the behavior and actions of the management.
  • Hire people who fit your values – Invest the resources – time, money, energy – to determine if a candidate fits with your values.
  • Enhance employee sense of ownership– This ownership is derived from opportunities that enable employees to know their leaders, to being informed on the success of the company, to know who their customers are, and future plans for the company.
  • Assess employee passion and satisfaction – and act on results.
• How to Create Sustained Success is a rapid-fire summary of Jim Collins’ famous first book, ‘Built to Last‘.

Recognizing the limitation of what can be covered in an article like ours, one can find good deal of highly useful literature on the subject.

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up William Cohen, Ph.D.’s article The Focus on the Customer and What the Customer Values @ Effective Management topic of Management Matters Network….At the strategic level this could mean an important differential advantage in positioning against competitors to win customers.

We now watch two videos of the ASQ TV, one of which is related to quality improvement and other one containing the year-end message:

• Enhancing Quality through Improved Quality Reports : Gregory (Grisha) Gorodetsky, Safety, Environmental & Quality Manager, Wipro Givon, discusses the importance for organizations to format all documents, such as quality reports, in an identical way.
• 2018 Year-End Message: Elmer Corbin, ASQ Chair : In his year-end video message, ASQ Board of Directors Chair Elmer Corbin highlights significant accomplishments in 2018 and acknowledges contributions of the Board, GCC, TCC, member leaders, members, and staff.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for November, 2018 is:

• Success makes us feel good, but failures teach us valuable lessons – Certainly, negative results are never fun, but they shouldn’t become demoralizing. What innovative people realize is that negative results are signaling that something different and new needs to be done…It is easier to understand the concept of productive mistakes when the situation is reversed…When the project is successful. In this situation, your assumptions were correct, you most likely took the standard approach to getting the tasks done and did a good job managing the project…While completing a successful project is something to feel good about, there may have been a missed opportunity to get breakthrough improvements from the project. Was it your objective to simply get the job done, or was it your goal to take some risks that could take the business to a new level of performance?.. Think about this for a moment to consider how you can adjust your mindset. Most likely you won’t become another Thomas Edison, but there’s no doubt you can find ways to make your life more productive.
• Personal GPS – May be you’ve never thought of your roadmap for success being like a personal Goal Projection System (GPS) but it is much the same. Let’s see if we can connect the dots…Ask yourself, what would you like the outcomes to be for yourself at the end of one, five, ten and twenty years? Once you have that outcome, what will you see? What will you hear? What will you feel? Be as specific as possible, as you write the answers down…After this is done which as much honesty as possible, examine current reality…This process isn’t easy and will take some time but stay with it. You also should revisit this on occasion to ensure you’re staying on tract. Once you have everything recorded, you’ll have a roadmap you can use to guide you to a very personal kind of success.

On that note I take your leave for the year.

Trust you had had a great year and wish that your 2019 also is more productive, more successful, and above a thoroughly enjoyable year of your personal and career life journeys.

 

Note: The images depicted here above are through courtesy of respective websites who have the copyrights for the respective images.

 

P.S. All episodes for the year 2018 of this quality blog carnival can be accessed at  / downloaded from Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs, 2018.

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – November, 2018

Welcome to November, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

Let us recollect from our August, 2018 issue that two of the three key changes that characterize ISO 9004: 2018 are:

• focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
• focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

We will expand the concept of Identity of an Organization in this November, 2018 issue.

Organizational Identity is not a new subject to the world of management academics and the practicing professionals. However with the introduction of the concept into the body of the revised ISO 9004:2018 standard, the subject opens up a very interesting dimension to the quality professionals too.

Organizational identity is a field of study in organizational theory that seeks the answer to the question: “who are we as an organization?” ..According to Whetten (2006) the attributes of an organizational identity are central, enduring, and distinctive/distinguishing (CED).

• Central attributes are ones that have changed the history of the company; if these attribute were missing, the history of the organization would have been different.
• Enduring attributes are ones deeply ingrained in the organization, often explicitly considered sacrosanct or embedded in the organizational history.
• Distinguishing attributes are ones used by the organization to separate itself from other similar organizations, but can also set minimum standards and norms for that type of organization.

Organizational Identity = Purpose + Philosophy – As a unit, the Purpose and the Philosophy are the central attributes of the Organizational Identity that have defined the character of the organization and the cause that it has served over the years. These elements of Organizational Identity serve as the basis for all aspects of the business.

Organizational Identity- From ‘Why we are’ to ‘Who we are – Organizational Identity also helps define the organization to Who Are We? And Why Are We?. Very few organizations actually know the answer to these questions – ’Who are we as an organization?’ ’What are we doing?’ ’What do we want to be in the future?’ An organization’s identity affects its actions, interpretation, and decision-making by its members and the management. This identity also has a huge impact on organizational change processes.

Is your identity given or created? | Marcus Lyon | TEDxExeter : Using Somos Brasil (We are Brazil), a multimedia photography, sound and DNA project, Marcus Lyon brings us images, stories and ancestral DNA to examine modern Brazilian identity. In turn he asks us to consider what drives us and what we can become.

IKEA is known as one organization that is strongly identified for the alignment of its organizational identity with its brand. For IKEA, its vision of creating a better everyday life for the many people also means making a difference for the people and communities where they work. The film – The IKEA Group – The Story of How We Work – lets you know more about how.

Finally, here is a Management system model to achieve sustained success

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up Joshua Spodek’s article The 20/80 Rule, Integrity, and the Opposite of the 80/20 Rule @ Leadership Step By Step column of Management Matters Network….Vince Lombardi says that paying attention to details always pays, i.e. paying attention to the last few percent. When you care about the 1 percent that others don’t, people look to you to lead. It is more important to get every detail right than getting it right most of the time.

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

• Risk Intelligence for the Organization – Sanjeev Koshe, Vice President, Management Assurance Group, Tata Housing Development Company Limited, explains how to go beyond brainstorming identify risk, measuring it, and how best to deliver a risk report.
• Big Data – discusses Big data, data analytics, and predictive modeling, and how organizations and quality professionals can use all three. Additional reference – The Deal With Big Data

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for October, 2018 is:

• Pursuit of Excellence – Like the old story of the race between the tortoise and the hare, it’s the slow, steady and continuous pursuit of excellence that wins the race, not the flashy sprint that can’t be sustained. Experience has taught me to believe that sustainable improvement requires an organizational culture change. Continuous improvement is more about rigor and discipline than technique. It is about the pursuit of excellence.

I look forward to your inputs / criticisms/ observations to enhance the utility of our Quality Management Blog Carnival.

Note: The images depicted here above are through courtesy of respective websites who have the copyrights for the respective images.

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – October, 2018

Welcome to October, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

Let us recollect from our August, 2018 issue that two of the three key changes that characterize ISO 9004: 2018 are:

• focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
• focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

In our present October, 2018 issue, we will expand the concept of Quality of an Organization.

ISO 9004: 2018 draws upon the definition of quality form ISO 9000:2015 and states that, ‘The quality of the organization is the degree to which the inherent characteristics of the organization fulfil the needs and expectations of its customers and other interested parties, in order to achieve sustained success’…In short, Quality of an Organization is equated with its ability to achieve sustained success.

Sustained success in a complex, demanding and ever-changing environment is not to be taken for granted. For example, the 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast predicted that by 2027, organizations represented in the Standard & Poor’s 500 would be listed in this index for an average of 12 years. New technologies, economic shocks, disruptive competitors and eventually the inability to identify and address future challenges are the main reasons for conditional sustainability.

If we correlate this with the contents of ISO 9001: 2015, then this translates into the culture and organizational knowledge about how the organization approaches Understanding the Context of the Organization and the Needs and Expectations of the Interested Parties. Additionally, the quality of the organization can be judged from the maturity of its systemic performance w.r.t. its intended outcomes in so far as effectiveness of organization’s actions to address the risks and opportunities.

In his article, The Top 10 Characteristics of a Healthy Organization, Rose Johnson describes characteristics ingrained in company culture, recognizing and understanding which helps in identifying potential problems and taking appropriate corrective actions to help remain afloat.

The article also refers to a good amount of additional material on the subject:

• Five Signs of a Good Organization
• Traits & Characteristics of an Effective Organization
• Common Traits of Successful Organizations
• American Express: Ten Signs of Unhealthy Company Culture
• University of Minnesota Duluth; Characteristics of a Healthy Organization; Katie Brunelle; 2004
• Businessweek; How Healthy Is Your Company?; Jack and Suzy Welch

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up Jim Champy’s article When a Company Goes Astray @ Essential Management for Doers, Doubters and Darers column of Management Matters Network….while narrating some recent case studies, the author re-emphasizes the fundamental need for asking a right question.  More so when company has gone astray. He suggests four such questions:

• Does the Company’s Management Team Have the Skills and Appetite for Change?
• How Well do the Company’s Products or Services Respond to Market Needs?
• Has the Company Gone Far Enough with Digital?
• How Operationally Sound is the Company?

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

• Why Continuous Improvement Teams Fail: In this episode, learn about continuous improvement teams: what they are, who should be on them, and what they should be doing.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for September, 2018 is:

• Soft Skills are Underrated – Quality professionals need strong interpersonal skills. – Proficiency with the various quality tools and techniques is paramount for the quality professional to lead their organization to performance excellence. In the current environment, that’s just not enough to be truly successful…Professionals with poor interpersonal skills are generally not considered team players…Within the workplace, quality professionals with good interpersonal skills are likely to be more productive because they typically project a positive “can do” attitude, creatively uncover solutions to problems and proactively help others succeed. .. There are a host of interpersonal skills. For the sake of brevity I’ll list the ones some experts believe are among the more important: collaborative, dependable, tactful, friendly, empathetic, sensitivity, respectful, honest, trustful, helpful, communicative (verbal, written, non-verbal, listening), open-minded, positive and considerate…Reinventing oneself is possible through an awareness of how one interacts with others, but it does take a high degree of commitment and a lot of practice.
• Impulse Decisions – An impulse is nothing more than an urge to do something. It’s a suggestion from your subconscious that suddenly surfaces in your conscious mind, and as such, it deserves to be considered…Being impulsive is generally considered a negative trait. Impulsive people tend not to consider the consequences of their actions, think things through, or finish things they’ve started…However, it might sound strange but carrying impulses into action can be a good way to become goal-oriented…Don’t ignore all impulse decisions. Some will be game-changes, but pick and choose carefully.

I look forward to your inputs / criticisms/ observations to enhance the utility of our Quality Management Blog Carnival.

Note: The images depicted here above are through courtesy of respective websites who have the copyrights for the respective images.

Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – August, 2018

Welcome to August, 2018 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

ISO 9004 and ISO 19011, the two important guidelines standards in the ISO family of standards have been recently revised. Therefore, we will take a quick recap of Changes in ISO 9004: 2018 as well as in ISO 19011:2018 in our August, 2018 issue.

ISO 9004: 2018 cancels and replaces the third edition (ISO 9004:2009), which has been technically revised. The main changes compared to the previous edition are as follows:

• alignment with the concepts and terminology of ISO 9000:2015 and ISO 9001:2015;
• focus on the concept of “quality of an organization”;
• focus of the concept of “identity of an organization”

[Note: We will cover the concepts – “quality of an organization” and “identity of an organization” in our subsequent issues.]

Secrets of business success in new ISO standard – The 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast lists new technologies, economic shocks, disruptive competitors and failure to adequately anticipate and prepare for future challenges as some of the key reasons cited for the demise of the organizations sooner than later..IS0 9004:2018 intends organizations not only to survive, but achieve “sustained success”, by addressing topics such as the alignment and deployment of strategy, policy and objectives within the broader context of the organization’s vision, mission, values and culture.

ISO 9004:2018 – Sustaining Success – ISO 9004:2018 has taken a major step in defining itself as a standalone document that is related to—but separate from—ISO 9001:2015. It’s all about business, with a primary focus on organizations’ sustained success…The words “sustained success” have been chosen carefully and may be confusing to some people because ISO and quality management system-related standards consistently promote improvement in their titles. ISO 9004:2018 broke with that tradition to convey the message that no matter what an organization attempts, it must first adopt sustainability as a bedrock principle.

ISO 19011:2018 was updated to ensure it continues providing effective guidance to address changes in the marketplace, evolving technologies and the many new management system standards recently published or revised.

The main differences compared to the 2011 edition are as follows:

• addition of the risk-based approach to the principles of auditing;
• expansion of the guidance on managing an audit programme, including audit programme risk;
• expansion of the guidance on conducting an audit, particularly the section on audit planning;
• expansion of the generic competence requirements for auditors;
• adjustment of terminology to reflect the process and not the object (“thing”);
• removal of the annex containing competence requirements for auditing specific management system disciplines (due to the large number of individual management system standards, it would not be practical to include competence requirements for all disciplines);
• expansion of Annex A to provide guidance on auditing (new) concepts such as organization context, leadership and commitment, virtual audits, compliance and supply chain.

With these improvements, ISO 19011:2018 still details the principles of auditing, managing an audit program, and conducting management system audits. It also details guidance on evaluating the individuals managing the audit program, auditors, and audit teams.

ISO 19011:2018 provides valuable information on how to improve an audit program systematically, just as other departments in an organization are expected to improve… Organizations, in pushing for auditing improvements, should consider the needs of customers and other interested parties…An area of increasing importance in auditing management systems and business in general is the concept of risk. As of the 2011 edition, risk has been integrated throughout the audit program management section of the ISO 19011:2018 standard.

[Note: We would take up ‘concept of risk’, as ingrained into the auditing process, in our next issue.]

We will now turn to our regular sections:

For the present episode we have picked up William Cohen, Ph.D’s article How to Avoid Inevitable Failure Through Innovation @ Lessons From Drucker column of Management Matters Network….’If any organization continued to do what in the past had made it successful, it was certain that it would eventually go under’ was one sure way that Drucker knew that an organization was going to fail…Avoiding failure requires innovation, and innovation is one of two primary tasks of any business, the other being marketing…He also understood that resources in time, talent, capital, and facilities are needed every time an innovation is initiated and exploited. This led Drucker to a very important concept which has come to be called “abandonment.”… Drucker saw that logically this meant that an organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does at the same time that it must devote itself to creating the new. So that abandonment must simultaneously be executed along with continuous improvement, exploitation of past successes and innovation.

We now watch one of the latest ASQ TV  episodes:

• Implementing a Continuous Improvement Program – Chris Moustakas, CEO, DevonWay, discusses the strategy behind implementing an org-wide continuous improvement program.

Jim L. Smith’s Jim’s Gems posting for August, 2018 is:

• Organizational Excellence in Quality Management – The basic element is people who care. – People who care understand the negative impact of doing less than their best…Caring isn’t a new concept. The late Dr. W. Edwards Deming called it “pride in workmanship”…. If their employees really do care, it is so tangible it can be felt and detected in many ways. There’s a foundation of caring permeating throughout the organization. However, if people don’t care, it really doesn’t matter what kind of products or system they have or how many plaques are hanging on the walls, they will never achieve the level of performance needed for all to succeed.

I look forward to your inputs / criticisms/ observations to enhance the utility of our Quality Management Blog Carnival.

Note: The images depicted here above are through courtesy of respective websites who have the copyrights for the respective images.