Many organizations are realizing that they must change now or they will not survive. Even companies currently in a favorable financial situation need to continually make improvements. However, with this realization comes the challenge for management: "What should I do to generate effective change within my organization?"

When developing a strategy for the orchestration of change, I believe that management should first conduct a self evaluation that focuses on determining what they should do differently. Today, managers must exhibit characteristics that were not necessary in the past. Hopefully, an honest self evaluation that includes discussions with subordinates, peers, and superiors identifies both the management strengths that they can build upon, and the areas for improvement.

This article focuses on a do it smarter characteristic that is very important and is typically lacking. It has been my experience that individuals and teams are often focusing on the wrong activities because of the direction given by management.

Upper management cannot dictate and expect meaningful change to occur; they must create an environment in which transformations are orchestrated at all levels. They must ask the right questions to stimulate productive, efficient activities. If they do not, they should not be surprised when meaningless work is accompanied by the wasting of valuable resources and time. This article discusses strategies and tools that can help management generate effective and efficient improvements within their organizations.

Orchestrating meaningful activities

As part of a self evaluation, management should consider the types of statements and questions typically directed toward subordinates. What were the results and benefits from the statements or questions asked of individuals or teams? Did questions often lead only to a status report that may have required a lot of effort but generated no positive activity? Or, did many directions lead only to fixing the problem of the day?

Questions or statements made by management should not only address immediate issues or concerns, but should also act as a stimulus for generating efficient and effective process improvement activities. With this approach, an organization can change their focus from "fire fighting" to "fire prevention." From this redirection, management and teams reduce frustration, the customer gets better service, and the company achieves improved profits.

The concern now becomes: What questions should be asked when orchestrating meaningful change activities? To get the most effective measurements and proactive work, wisely applied statistical techniques need to be an integral part of the change process activity. Hence, the wording of questions and statements by management should focus on encouraging the application of these concepts.

The extent to which statistical techniques are utilized depends upon the situation. However, to receive the full benefit from the methods, it is very important that management have an overall understanding of how the concepts could be helpful to their situation. Management needs to exercise care when phrasing their questions and statements so that they encourage the application of the strategies in the day-to-day work activities of subordinates, peers and other organizations.

People often believe that the usefulness of statistics only exists with the analysis of large amounts of data. They do not realize that there are many useful statistical tools that are helpful for proactive process improvement activities, which do not require a large amount of data. These tools can help reduce the number of problems and personnel/time to complete a task (i.e., yielding increased profits and a more competitive edge).

Questions that may not lead to improvements

Consider the following questions and accompanying issues which exemplify interactions that can occur between management and subordinates. Supplemental questions are discussed later in this article.

What are your measurements?

Process owners might be asked this question as part of a quality improvement program that dictates a reduction in failure rate within a certain period of time (e.g., reduce defect rates by a factor of 10 within a year).

Goals need to be an integral part of the change process; however, if measurements are used as a driving force, these measurements can become an impediment for constructive change. Employees may be spending all their time trying to make the numbers look good instead of improving the underlying processes that create the numbers.

What is the status of the defect rate?

This type of question can lead to a plot of failure rate over time accompanied by a list of the failures and an explanation of fixes to all failures.

There needs to be activity to fix current problems; however, there should also be an emphasis placed upon what could be done differently in the future to improve the underlying processes that are creating the most frequent type problems (i.e., increased "fire prevention" can lead to less "fire fighting").

When will the project be completed?

Schedules are an important part of business; however, this statement by itself can be detrimental to getting a quality product or service performed in a timely fashion.

Is the problem fixed?

In a meeting where many problems are addressed individually, it can be easier for someone to respond, "yes" or, "the risk is minimal" than to give an answer that more accurately reflects the true situation. When a "yes" response is given, the person typically asking the question is either relieved (i.e., the "right answer" was given) or now has to accept the burden of proof that the person may be in error or may be withholding some pertinent information. This can be the situation when a supplier of a proprietary process states that a problem is fixed.

If there is a lot of pressure for an immediate resolution to a problem, there might not be much incentive to evaluate the fix thoroughly because of time constraints, and the evaluation might uncover a small issue that would need immediate attention (i.e., ignorance is bliss). Often, problems that are "fixed" without a structured evaluation resurface later (perhaps in a different form, where someone else is responsible for the "new" problem). To assess the process of problem resolution, it is beneficial to inquire about the statistical approach and strategy that was used (will be used) to assess the validity of the fix in various situations.

Questions leading to improvements

Consider now the questions presented previously with the accompaniment of additional questions which can yield more effective process improvement activities.

What are your measurements?

Other questions:

Is your process documented and consistently followed? What are you doing to improve your process? What organizations are helping identify the opportunities for improvement? Have you generated a Pareto chart illustrating the estimated benefit of each improvement idea? What is the status of the defect rate?

Other questions:

Have you determined that your process is consistent from day-to-day (i.e., in statistical process control)? If your process is in control, what is the average common cause mean response? From a Pareto chart of failure types over the last several months, what process improvements should be made? Are you executing a DOE (Design of Experiments) to better understand what should be changed in the process to reduce the number of failures from the most frequent failure type? When will the project be completed?

Other questions:

When you created your schedule did you meet with others who were involved with similar projects to build upon their experiences? Are you planning to use DOE strategies to help create a process that is robust to day-to-day manufacturing variability? Are you considering the wise application of statistical techniques to reduce the overall development project duration and also reduce the risks of future customer problems? Is the problem fixed?

Other questions:

What did you do to fix the process so that this type of problem does not reoccur? Did you use statistical techniques to help you determine the source of the problem? How are you applying statistical techniques to insure that the problem source is really understood and will not later reoccur? CONCLUSIONS

Many of the questions asked and measurements taken have no value. The Goal (Goldratt and Cox 1992 - one of the most insightful and interesting buysiness books - even today) vividly illustrates how a fictitious manufacturing company was measuring and trying to optimize the wrong things. Directing their efforts toward traditional goals and objectives for subprocesses was actually hurting the overall financial picture of the company. The company was focusing on the measurements and activities while missing constructive efforts that helped the big picture. Management was giving directions that focused on the wrong activities.

A basic understanding of the power of statistical techniques can better equip you to ask the right question and orchestrate efficient, effective change within your organization. What is at stake? The techniques can make the difference between an organization surviving or not. The techniques can help you meet your aggressive profit and quality improvement objectives.