Archive for November, 2009
Deming’s 14 Points
Posted by enrique s in Leadership, Motivation, Productivity on November 30th, 2009
Back when I was working towards my MBA, I had a professor that was very passionate. Let’s call him Nick. One night, Nick polled the class, asking us who we thought was the epitome of a great leader, a person whose policies allowed for everyone to win. When one of my classmates offered Lee Iacocca, the then-chairman of Chrysler as an example, I swear that I could see steam pouring out of Nick’s ears. “LEE IACOCCA!” he bellowed. “Lee Iacocca is building his engines in Mexico! How does that help everybody win? He’s trying to solely increase the bottom line by costing Americans jobs!”
You’re kidding, right?
Rather than ague with Nick, lest he burst a blood vessel in his forehead, we let him rant on. When he finally calmed down, he gave us his example of a good leader: H. Ross Perot. Yup. This was before he ran for president, and just after he sold his business, EDS to General Motors. All that I knew about Ross Perot was that Richard Crenna played him in that movie about a hostage rescue in Iran. As part of this diatribe, Nick also managed to dismiss Peter Drucker and Management By Objectives (MBO), and introduced us to W. Edwards Deming.
Who?
W. Edwards Deming was a statistician by trade, who wound up in postwar Japan to work on the census. He was invited to teach statistical control and the concepts of quality to a group of engineers, managers, and scholars. His concepts were put into practice by Japanese industry, and the rest is history. Japanese goods became renowned for their quality and reliability. Couple that with the energy crisis in the 1970s, and you can understand why Japanese automakers took away market share from Ford, Chrysler, and GM.
Indelible mark
See, while American auto companies were giving us the Corvair and the Pinto, Japanese car companies were building a reputation for quality that trumps American car companies to this day. Maybe Iacocca should have listened to Deming. Anyway, here are his 14 Points:
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11.a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
11.b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12.a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
12.b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.
It’s funny how these concepts are just being accepted now, more than 20 years after Deming wrote about them in his book Out of the Crisis. My company has started preaching the “factory without walls” concept to help our diverse divisions work together to bring in new business. Too bad they’re still stuck on slogans. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia entry that provides more background on Dr. Deming: W. Edwards Deming at Wikipedia
I’ll be revisiting Deming in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! Why not subscribe, so you don’t miss a new installment? Subscribe
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Slacking Off at Work
Posted by enrique s in Career, Leadership, Motivation, Productivity, Rants on November 26th, 2009
Photo by cell105
As we get toward the end of the year, people in my area of expertise (finance) tend to get busy. Very busy. It starts just before Thanksgiving, and just gets crazier as the end of the year gets closer. So today it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m planning on slacking off big-time. Because when the bell rings on Monday, all Hell will break loose.
To everything there is a season…
Some professions have their busy seasons, while others don’t fall prey to quarterly reporting like finance and accounting people do. In my case, these are the engineers, who work on projects that may span years. Sure, they have certain milestones to meet along the way, such as Technical Readiness Reviews, Critical Design Reviews, and Functional Bench Tests, but these aren’t contingent on the calendar year.
I guess it’s just not my season
So, for my friends in Engineering, the time after Thanksgiving is slack-off time. Holiday parties are arranged. Extra vacation time is burned. Trips to Rockefeller Center to see the tree are taken. I know this, because the ranks are thin in Engineering during the holiday season. I had one guy tell me years ago, as I was going balls to the wall in order to get home at a decent hour, that he was “pretty much finished” with his work for the year. This was two weeks before Christmas. I must be in the wrong racket.
Personal Standard of Excellence
So, as I kick myself in the ass for not becoming an engineer, I see that my technical brethren are just enjoying the spoils of their craft. I can’t blame them for exploiting the peculiarities of their profession. But even if I had the opportunity, I don’t think that I’m wired for slacking off. I think way back to college, and one of my business lessons that dealt with motivation and the responsibilities of managers. My favorite teacher, Professor Stanford, told us a tale of a worker who lowered his productivity to that of his coworkers. One of my fellow students thought that the worker was smart for not “rocking the boat.” Prof. Stanford admonished him for not upholding his own personal standard of excellence, regardless of what those around him were doing. Wow. That one really hit home, and I carry it with me to this day.
Less bullshit, more work
If I think even farther back, I had a lesson in not slacking off from my older cousin, on a roofing job. His was less subtle, however. It went something like, “Less bullshit, more work”, accompanied by an angry shake of his fist, but the message was basically the same. He was also bigger and could beat the crap out of me, so work hard I did. I consider it a primer for Stanford’s more elegant lesson.
So, before you slack off, think about your personal standard of excellence, and whether you want to risk compromising it by getting caught goofing off. But, you can goof off today.
Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble ’til you wobble!
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The Conspiracy Guy
Posted by enrique s in Career, Motivation, Productivity, Rants on November 25th, 2009
Photo by Marko Miloševi�
One of my coworkers is a little paranoid. Well, maybe more than a little. He’s always looking for hidden meanings in the most pedestrian announcements that are issued by our company. To him, black is white, up is down, right is left, etc. He thinks someone is always trying to put one over on him. He’s Oliver Stone in corporate casual. He’s the Conspiracy Guy.
If an announcement comes out about changes to our pension plan calculation, Conspiracy Guy thinks the worst. He starts spreading the word that the company is scrapping the pension plan, sending all of the other Nervous Nellies into a frenzy. I’m sure that HR appreciates all of the phone calls. He worries constantly about the health of the company. When a big shot retires, he wonders what scandal will be breaking in the news, be it sexual harassment, bribery, or other unethical behavior. When layoffs are announced, he thinks the survivors are part of some sort of productivity experiment.
Conspiracy Guy is a tortured soul. I feel for him. If I were that paranoid, I would seek professional help. While it’s prudent to keep an eye on the trends of your company, doing it to the extreme will only make you sick. And let me tell you, he doesn’t look so good. A week away from work would do wonders for him. I’m sure this must have a carryover effect into his personal life, and I feel bad for his family. I also feel bad for my coworkers.
Because Conspiracy Guy is affecting his coworkers. Each unfounded rumor spreads through the ranks like wildfire, and Conspiracy Guy is there to fan the flames. His behavior is hurting the productivity, not to mention the motivation, of anyone who happens to catch his shtick. My old buddy Ed had a saying: “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your job was to drain the swamp.” Conspiracy Guy is creating these imaginary “alligators”, and his coworkers focus more on those than on their real duties. The more rational of us just think that he’s a little nuts.
I was taught a lesson about work a long time ago. At one of my earlier jobs, I complained to my boss that some guy in another department wasn’t pulling his weight. The exchange went something like this:
Me: Frank doesn’t do anything all day. He just bullshits on the phone.
Boss: Does he owe you anything that you need to finish your work?
Me: No, but he shouldn’t be slacking off like that, it looks bad.
Boss: Listen, when it’s your job to clean out the barn, just keep shoveling until it’s empty.
Me: Huh?
Boss: You’re not in charge of Frank. That’s his boss’ job. Just worry about your own responsibilities.
That’s a lesson that Conspiracy Guy needs to learn. Just worry about your own job. I’ll leave you with this familiar affirmation:
God give me the strength to change the things I can. The courage to accept the things that I cannot. And the wisdom to know the difference.
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My Thanksgiving Ritual
Posted by enrique s in Book & Product Reviews, Frugality, Rants, Self-Reliance on November 24th, 2009
Photo by theogeo
People develop different rituals to celebrate Thanksgiving. Laurel and Hardy fans may tune in to March of the Wooden Soldiers, or watch the Macy’s Parade. A local radio station plays Alice’s Restaurant in its entirety every year (I never tire from hearing the massacree again). Some may run in the local Turkey Trot, or pull a muscle or two in the neighborhood Turkey Bowl. Others will plop down on the couch as the plasma bathes them in images of whoever is clobbering the Detroit Lions this year. Some brave shoppers are getting their itineraries set for Black Friday. But I started a new ritual a couple of years ago, and it’s always put me in the right frame of mind for Turkey Day.
The ritual
I’ve always been able to empathize with other people’s suffering. I’ve got it pretty good, even though I tend to complain about life’s little annoyances. I’m grateful for the life I have, and here’s where my ritual comes in. Every year, about a week before Thanksgiving, I re-read a book to put me in the holiday frame of mind. The book is The Long Walk. It’s the story of a prison escape from a Siberian labor camp during World War II. Nothing like a tale of human deprivation to get you in the holiday spirit. Pass the stuffing…
The story
The Long Walk tells the story of one Slavomir Rawicz (I can’t pronounce his name, either), a Polish cavalry lieutenant who is captured by the Soviets during the invasion of Poland at the start of World War II. He spends a year in several prisons, each one worse than the last, before his sentencing to 25 years of hard labor. Oh, and he’s also tortured, packed into a standing-room-only railroad car, shipped thousands of miles across Russia, and then marched through the Siberian winter for several months before reaching the labor camp. He’s literally fed bread and water, and watches as the ranks of his fellow prisoners thin out due to disease and malnutrition. But the worst is yet to come!
The escape
He plots an escape with several other prisoners, and they head south towards Afghanistan. The only problem is that they literally have only the clothes on their backs, and a few meager supplies. Not the ideal setup for crossing the Gobi Desert! As members of the escape party perish from the hardships, they are reduced to eating snakes. Then, they run into yet another obstacle: the Himalayas. And guess who forgot to pack mountain climbing gear?
The lesson
You might think that I have a screw loose, or that I’m some goth kid that cuts himself. Wrong on both counts. A story like The Long Walk reminds me that I shouldn’t complain if my steak isn’t cooked to my specifications, or if my son forgot to take out the garbage. These guys survive under the most arduous conditions, with no material possessions. They’re thankful for an extra length of cloth to wrap around their bloody feet. Talk about extreme frugality!
So in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I immerse myself in the agony of a young Polish man from nearly 70 years ago, and the turkey tastes that much better, the Sam Adams seems that much colder, the Ashton cigars taste that much richer, and the football game is that more enjoyable, because I can appreciate what I have.
What are some of your Thanksgiving rituals?
Follow me on Twitter: CorpBarbarian
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Best of Money Carnival #26
Photo by ishrona
Welcome to the 26th edition of the Best of Money Carnival!
This was my first-ever hosting experience, and I was blown away by all of the quality submissions. It was extremely tough whittling the list down to just 10; I could have easily picked twice that number. In the process of reading through the submissions, I’ve found a few more blogs that I will subscribe to. Here are the top ten selections from a field of more than 40, listed in descending order:
10. J.D. at Get Rich Slowly gets back to the basics and tells us why Slow and Steady Wins the Race.
9. Danny at Free Money Finance lists the Steps To Grow Your Net Worth When You Don’t Make A Six Figure Income.
8. Emily at Prosper and Be in Health shows us How to Make a Budget That Works. I’m big on budgeting, and this post hits all of the major points on the subject.
7. J. Money at Budgets Are Sexy looks at his expenses and starts Breaking Down The Budget by Percentages. He compares his spending with the recommendations of Jean Chatzky.
6. Craig at ChristianPF teaches us the ABCs of Personal Finance: 26 Elementary Money Lessons. A very creative way of getting the point across.
5. Finavigation shows us that it takes more than money to be rich with The Right Mindset for Financial Success. Gotta get your mind right!
4. Paul at Provident Planning explains why A Penny Saved Is Nearly Two Pennies Earned. Paul runs through the tax ramifications for both the employed and self-employed.
3. Just in time for the big day, Peter at Bible Money Matters offers Black Friday Shopping Tips: How To Get The Best Deals On The Things On Your List. The secret: Have a plan before you shop!
2. A close second, Wyojeff at Sustainable Life Blog fesses up with The High Cost of Being a Moron. I just love that title! A great story that proves that even finance bloggers are human.
and the winner is…
1. Baker at Man vs. Debt blew me away with his post entitled The X-Men Guide To Unlocking Your Financial Mutant Powers. Baker’s creativity is what sets this one apart from the rest of the week’s submissions. Nice job, Baker!
I really enjoyed reading all of the submissions. Thanks to Free Money Finance for giving me the hosting opportunity. Tune in next Monday as Me in Millions host the next edition of the Best of Money Carnival. You can submit your blog post for consideration by using the carnival submission form.
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Beware of the Office Snitch!
Posted by enrique s in Career, Motivation, Rants on November 20th, 2009
Photo by AlexK100
Today, at work, I had an encounter with a shadowy figure; a cunning, pernicious specter; a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I caught him in the act, doing what he does best: undermining the cohesiveness of the workforce. He’s that well-known office stool pigeon. Smell a rat? It must be the Office Snitch!
What’s up, guys?
It starts innocently enough. A new face joins your watercooler conversations about football, or horse racing. He never adds much to the chat, but he takes it all in. He does ask some probing questions, though, and not about sports. He’ll ask if you feel overloaded, or if you don’t have enough to do. Or what you really think of the director. Your guard is down, because there’s a certain given sanctity to office bullshitting. So you offer an opinion.
Err, but I mean that in a good way…
And as the words are coming out of your mouth, you realize in that instant that you’ve made a mistake. Because you know Mr. Pipeline is going to repeat what you said, verbatim, to the director. Because the Office Snitch is an asskisser bar none. Shamelessly so. And he’ll use whatever intel that he picks up to further his standing with the higher-ups.
By the book
There’s the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law. Sure, maybe you’re checking out the latest trade rumors on ESPN.com, but your work is finished, and everyone’s happy. Ten minutes of internet browsing isn’t going to hurt anybody. But the Office Snitch doesn’t see it that way. He’s a letter of the law guy, through and through. He never takes his foot off the accelerator, and expects the same of everyone. As you can probably guess, he’s a real joy to work for.
A bag of tricks
His latest trick is to circle around the office, and secretly check up on what people are doing. I’m sure the director loves having a toady who’s as loyal as the Office Snitch. But what the director doesn’t understand is that the Snitch is a divisive force. He’s killing morale with his weasely ways. People are growing distrustful of each other. It’s the Orwellian world of 1984 in microcosm.
Disciples
What’s even worse, is that he’s franchising. He’s holding a recruiting drive. So now, we not only have the Snitch to worry about, but we have to be on the lookout for his minions. Where does it end? Is there no hope?
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Well, the best way to combat this cloak-and-dagger espionage is to confront it. Once a secret is exposed, it’s not a secret anymore. One of my coworkers asked the Snitch while he made his loop of the office, “What the #&@$ are you doing? There’s nothing to see here.” Or words to that effect. The patrols stopped abruptly. I guess it’s not as much fun being a tattletale when everyone knows what you’re up to. I’ll have to see if this tactic worked.
Anyone else had to deal with a snitch in the office?
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Sandbagging Your Personal Budget
Photo by 8zil
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One of the program managers that I work with likes to hedge his bets by painting a bleaker picture than he should, in order to easily “make his numbers”. He’s a sandbagger extraordinaire, and I marvel at how he gets away with it. He’ll forecast his sales with a three-month slip in deliveries, even though he knows that he’s bound to the contractual dates. He pads his cost estimates on projects, never projecting any savings until the project is over. He should have theme music playing when he walks to the podium, maybe Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks”. The accountants hate him, and I always take his forecasts with a grain of salt. In his world, the buzzards are always circling overhead, and there is no upside. He errs on the side of caution. If he ever loses his job, there’s a levee somewhere that could use his expertise.
Uhh, where did I put those sandbags?
Actually, he may have a point. What if we apply this concept to our personal budgets? You know, when we project next year’s expenses. Wait, you mean you haven’t done that yet? I’ve already forecasted two years into the future. Maybe I’m overzealous, but I like to have my path laid out in front of me. If you’d like, you can use the budget file that I created in Excel that I talked about in this post: Low Budget.
Time to fill them up
My point is, leaving a little breathing room in your budget is a good thing. The extra padding that you add to your expenses will cover the little things that we never budget for. I can think of several examples of unexpected expenses, such as:
- School pictures;
- Magazine subscriptions that you forgot about renewing;
- Fees for school field trips;
- Girl Scout cookie drives at work.
So, how exactly do we accomplish this? I like to look back at my expenses from year to year. I’ll calculate the escalation in cost as a percent, and add that to the latest expense amount for that budget item. For example, let’s look at car insurance. I’ll look back at my last three years, and come up with an average growth rate in the premiums:
Car Insurance Premiums
- 2006: $2,000
- 2007: $2,100, a 5% growth
- 2008: $2,400, a 14.3% growth
- 2009: $2,500, a 4.2% growth
I can take the average growth for the period in question, and add that to the current year’s expense to come up with a number for next year. In this case, I can just take the increases by year and divide by three. That would give me 7.8%. If I wanted to get technical, I could take the $500 increase and divide it by three, and then divide the answer by 2,000, which would give me 8.3%. Whatever. I’ll round it to 8%. It’s close enough for a projection. That would compute to a $200 increase over the current premium. Now, I’ll sandbag it by adding another 2%, or $50. In total, I’ll add 10% onto this year’s premium, or $250. The extra fifty bucks will either go in my pocket, or pay for some other middling expense that I forgot to budget for. I’ll use this process for any expense item that varies from year to year. Any items with fixed payment amounts, like a car loan, wouldn’t get any padding.
By sandbagging your expenses, you’ll create a cushion in your budget for any unexpected items that arise. And you won’t feel like a cheapskate when Girl Scout cookie season starts at work.
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Don’t Just Answer the Question
Photo by alexanderdrachmann
I was on a conference call today with two of my coworkers. One of them, a program manager, was asking questions about a specific contract, and the other, a contracts administrator, was giving simple yes or no answers. The program manager finally became frustrated, and said, half-joking, “Oh, so you’ve become one of those ‘answer-the-question’ guys instead of just telling me what I need.” The statement was thought-provoking, at least to me, so I decided to take it further.
Just the facts, ma’am…
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with just answering a question. It’s the fastest way to convey information to someone who needs it. But what if your answer doesn’t give the person the complete picture? It’s been said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If someone relies on your answer to validate their own wrong assumptions, then disaster could be looming. For example, if someone asks you where the door to the staircase is located, and you point it out, you’ve answered the question. The person then steps through the doorway and slips on the freshly painted staircase. Oops. Knowing that little detail might have given the person pause, and averted disaster.
You forgot one minor detail…
But taking it further, what if you intentionally answer the question and nothing but the question? For example, a person asks if you’ve shut the electricity off to a circuit. You answer, “Yes, I did.” What you neglect to inform him is that while you did in fact shut off the electricity, you also turned it back on again. This amounts to conveying a half-truth to the questioner. He won’t appreciate that after he gets a shock.
What comes around…
And that’s where the problem lies for you. Payback, and karma, are a bitch. This can only result in some sort of retaliation from the wronged party. You might be written up, or have your credibility questioned. You might even get the shit kicked out of you for being such a wise ass.
…goes around
So, whether you’re at work or at your leisure, remember to always come clean. Give the person asking the question a complete answer, and spare no detail. While it might be too much information, better to err on the side of caution. You don’t need another beating.
Follow me on Twitter: CorpBarbarian
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A Tale of Two Meetings
Posted by enrique s in Career, Motivation, Productivity, Rants on November 11th, 2009
Photo by Svadilfari
I had two meetings yesterday. One was a status meeting with a group of engineers, and the other was a meeting with a proposal manager. What struck me was the difference in how people behaved during each of the meetings.
…it was the spring of hope…
The first meeting, with the engineers, was a weekly status meeting on a development program. It was held in a conference room in the engineering area of my building. The conference room was a bare-bones affair, with a nondescript table and chairs, and no windows. The walls were covered with project schedules, and every available inch of counter space held a prototype of some unknown product. This was where work got done. It was cramped, to be generous, and I kept hitting elbows with the lefty seated to my right.
…it was the winter of despair…
The second meeting, with the proposal manager, was held in a conference room that was brightly lit from a south-facing window. This room was located in what is commonly referred to as “mahogany row”, the executive area of the building. The only reason you ever get called down there is to take your lumps in front of the VP for some screw up. It’s the place where angels fear to tread. But I digress. This cavernous conference room had a shiny cherry wood table with matching chair rail, and plush leather chairs that I could have taken a nap in. The matching cherry sidebar held two trays of pastries. First class, all the way.
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule. - Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Guess which meeting was more productive? While the engineers in the first meeting resembled a frat party, the proposal meeting took on the ambiance of a court martial. My great expectations were dashed. The first meeting, in the crappier conference room, offered a forum for everyone to speak freely. Problems were addressed, without judgments being passed for minor errors. There was a positive vibe, an exuberance that though they had experienced some setbacks, they could ultimately make the design work. The second meeting had all of the exuberance of a chess match. Things were not going well for this proposal, and time was running out. I had the sense that everyone was sharpening their knives, ready to pounce on the person who dared to utter a discouraging word. After an hour and change, not much was accomplished.
My point? It doesn’t take fancy conference rooms and ultra-modern equipment to get things accomplished; what matters most is the mix of people involved. Surround yourself with the wrong crew, and misery awaits. Find the right people, and you can accomplish anything. To paraphrase Dickens, it will be a far, far better thing that you do for your career, than you have ever done.
I have another proposal meeting this afternoon. I hope they still have pastries.
Follow me on Twitter: CorpBarbarian
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Commenters: Please Write in English
Posted by enrique s in Blogging, Rants on November 22nd, 2009
As I’ve stated in my comment policy, please leave all comments in English. It’s the only language that I can read. I’m not even worried about your spelling or grammar. If you leave a comment in a language other than English, like Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, or Klingon, I’ll have to delete it. Sorry. Blame it on my ignorance.
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