Grow Spectacularly

In my previous blog post, "In Search of performance Excellence", I spoke on the importance of leadership and strategic planning to organizational success and performance excellence.

In his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader,” Warren Bennis offers a distinction between leaders and managers as: the manager does things right; the leader does the right thing. The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence's Leadership category asks how senior leaders' personal actions guide and sustain the organization: how do they lead? how do they set the vision and values? how do they promote and demonstrate legal and ethical behavior? how do they create a sustainable organization? how do they communicate with and engage the entire workforce and key customers? how do they create a focus on action that will achieve the organization's objectives, improve performance, enable innovation and intelligent risk taking, and attain its vision? how do they create and balance value for customers and other stakeholders?

This month I wish to elaborate further on the topic of leadership, providing one company's example of alignment and integration of its vision, values, strategies, culture, ethics and behaviors to achieve sustainable growth.

I am proud to share my experience as a 33+ year employee of 3M company. I have experienced seven different CEO's at the helm since I began my 3M career in 1981. Some were better than others with regards to sustaining the organization. Like many businesses, 3M has had its share of challenges over its (112 year) history delivering consistent revenue growth against increasing expectations, and we have successfully sustained our rich culture of innovation and quality. 3M's corporate culture of innovation and quality begins with the revered McKnight Principles. William L. McKnight, who served as 3M chairman of the board from 1949 to 1966, encouraged 3M management to "delegate responsibility and encourage men and women to exercise their initiative."

About 3M: 3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Its culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $31 billion in sales, 3M employs 89,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 70 countries.

Shortly after taking office in 2012, new CEO Inge Thulin announced 3M's new vision, key strategies, growth levers, and a new set of leadership behaviors. The new vision statement perfectly fits 3M's matrixed organizational structure and culture of innovation, quality and customer focus:

Our Vision

3M Technology Advancing Every Company

3M Products Enhancing Every Home

3M Innovation Improving Every Life

Our Values

• Act with uncompromising honesty and integrity in everything we do.
• Satisfy our customers with innovative technology and superior quality, value and service.
• Provide our investors an attractive return through sustainable, global growth.
• Respect our social and physical environment around the world.
• Value and develop our employees' diverse talents, initiative and leadership.
• Earn the admiration of all those associated with 3M worldwide

Our Strategies

• Expand relevance to our customers and our presence in the marketplace
• Gain profitable market share and accelerate market penetration everywhere
• Invest in innovation: Invigorate existing market opportunities and Focus on emerging megatrends
• Intensify capabilities to achieve regional self-sufficency
• Build high performing and diverse global talent
• Drive consistent superior levels of operational excellence

Our Growth Levers

Portfolio Prioritization

Invest in Innovation

Business Transformation

More recently, 3M Talent Development published a new set of "Leadership Behaviors" in alignment with key strategy #5 to develop high performing and diverse global talent. These new behaviors replace the previous set of Leadership Attitudes. Why the change from attitude to behavior focus? Behaviors are observable and measurable. Behaviors can be learned. These new leadership behaviors help to shape employee engagement - a critical factor in delivering superior customer experiences. Accountability, empowerment and employee engagement result from workers and teams who continually ask the accountability question posed by Roger Connors’ The Oz Principle: “What else can I do to operate Above The Line and achieve the desired results?”

Leadership Behaviors

Today and every day …

Inge Thulin, his senior leadership team and management at all levels constantly and consistently reinforce the 3M Code of Conduct. 3M's Business Conduct policies and Code of Conduct are hard-wired into our culture. Even more recent than the new Leadership Behaviors, 3M senior leadership has launched a new series of videos describing the Code of Conduct Principles.

Code of Conduct Principles

BE GOOD: Obey all laws and 3M Code of Conduct

BE HONEST: Act with uncompromising honesty and integrity

BE FAIR AND IMPARTIAL: Play by the rules, whether working with government, customers, or suppliers

BE LOYAL: Protect 3M’s interests, assets and information

BE ACCURATE: Keep complete and accurate business records

BE RESPECTFUL: Respect one another and our social and physical environment around the world

Yes, I am biased towards 3M based on my personal work experiences. However, many other excellent examples of aligned leadership and culture resulting in operational success can be found among previous winners of the state and federal performance excellence awards. I encourage you to peruse the Baldrige website for a listing of these role model organizations.

In Search of Performance Excellence

Congratulations to ASQ for achieving "Excellence" level of achievement for the 2014 Wisconsin Forward Award. The Wisconsin Forward Award is essentially the state-level equivalent of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the U.S.

In the June blog post to A View from the Q, ASQ CEO Bill Troy asks whether we have been part of an organization that has embarked on an excellence program, and what has been our experience with this exercise in organizational self-examination?

I have been actively involved with the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria since 1997 when 3M Dental Products Division won the national Baldrige Award. I continue to serve as a Baldrige Evaluator for the State of Minnesota through the Performance Excellence Network (PEN). PEN is a non-profit, membership based organization that builds networks and helps leaders navigate various pathways and routes in pursuit of performance excellence. Though 3M Company's Quality Council is a Site (organizational) member of PEN, I continue to maintain my Individual membership as well.

The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence are organized around 7 Categories of:

1. Leadership
2. Strategic Planning
3. Customer Focus
4. Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management
5. Workforce Focus
6. Operations Focus, and
7. Results

My two areas of greatest interest, focus and passion among the Baldrige Criteria are Leadership and Strategic Planning. During the first 15 years of my professional career as a Quality Specialist and statistical practitioner I focused primarily on the rigorous, disciplined use of tools and methods to improve the quality of processes, products and services. Over the years, my appreciation of a system and of Deming's profound knowledge has evolved to my significantly greater emphasis today on the importance of culture and leadership as foundations to continuous and breakthrough improvement. Thought leaders in leadership and management, and human factors experts, such as W. Edwards Deming, Peter Senge, Peter Drucker, Roger Conners, Simon Sinek, and many more, have shaped my belief system that shared values, vision, purpose, accountability and leadership create and foster the culture necessary to ignite and sustain the passion for excellence.

It is my experience that an impassioned workforce, inspired and empowered by leadership, that is laser-focused on creating positive customer experiences, is an absolute requirement to employee engagement resulting in organizational success and growth leading to sustainable performance improvement.

The Baldrige Criteria, its organizational assessment tools and army of Evaluators and Judges, and the assemblage of previous role model organizations, together provide valuable benchmarks and roadmap for this improvement journey.

Quality in Education

In a guest post contributed to A View from the Q, Julia McIntosh highlights the 2014 WCQI closing keynote by education reformer Michelle Rhee. Michelle spoke about the poor quality of education in many U.S. public schools. Paraphrasing Michelle: low-quality education results in a low-quality workforce. Another challenge, according to Rhee, is that students in the U.S. are praised for poor performance or for “just showing up.” As a result, they expect to be celebrated for mediocrity, rather than for quality.

Sadly, I share the same experience having raised my two children in a typical middle class Twin Cities, MN  suburb. (MN is known for its relatively high quality educational system- I shudder to imagine how poor the less well funded public educational systems might be...). I can vividly recall participating in a parent-teacher conference with my children where the teachers basically asked the child what grade he/she was aiming for that school year. My child initially stated his goal was a 'C' because..." 'C' was average" - and I got the distinct impression from the teacher that a C was a perfectly acceptable goal because it established a contract between the learner and the instructor. To be fair, this teacher did encourage my child to aim a little higher. Nonetheless, these low expectations are not delivering minimum standards of educational performance, much less helping develop the skills needed to compete in today's highly competitive global society. As a result of poor quality K-12 educational systems, colleges are having to enroll more and more incoming freshman in college prep courses. 5 year college degree programs are fast becoming the norm - creating greater hardship on families struggling to send their children to college, and further increasing student debt. Employers are having to pick up the slack too, delivering more basic reading, writing and math skills training to their workforce.

I reminded my children on numerous occasions that they were not just competing for jobs with other students in their class, school, community or even the U.S. - that their competition is increasingly from overseas. In a 2006 YouTube video "Shift Happens 3.0" Karl Fischer (The Fischbowl) stated an alarming statistic that there are more honors students in India than there are students in the U.S.  High paying, high tech jobs require employees possessing strong STEM skills and competencies.

Now, I am not bashing our teachers and educators, many of whom are committed, dedicated, passionate, hard-working professionals giving 110% to their students. There are many reasons for the decline of our public educational system: years of cost-cutting and neglect, the very nature of global competition, the exponential pace of change, the all-consuming focus on taxation, economic recession, the loss of higher-paying manufacturing jobs, the general decline of the middle-class, etc.  Recalling Maslow's hierarchy of needs, basic physiological needs must be met before one can ascend to self-actualization. Simply stated, our children cannot learn on empty stomachs. In today's "Walmart economy" (a phrase used to describe the characteristically low consumer purchasing power in today's retail-driven economy), many families are forced to turn to the government for nutritional assistance. Public school districts are having to provide nourishing meals for children of low and middle income families to better equip the student to learn, placing even greater burdens on our educational system.

Our educational system, like our highways and roadways, is a strategic asset that is critically important to our national defense and the future and viability of the United States of America. They are essential to a strong, robust economy - to our very survival. The U.S. can no longer ignore the decline of these strategic assets. In terms of recruiters' expectations, today's post-graduate masters degree holds the same value as yesterday's undergrad degree. However, graduate and post-graduate study is not for everyone - nor should it be. Not everyone can afford to go to college; not everyone is cut out for post-graduate study. The good news is we also need more skilled workers. Opportunity abounds for tradesmen and women. In fact, a study recently published by the Manufacturing Leadership Summit states that the age of skilled craftsmen is returning. Paul Tate of the Innovative Enterprise states that "new manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing are providing the catalyst for a resurgence in craftsmanship".

new manufacturing technologies as providing the catalyst for a resurgence in craftsmanship – especially technologies such as 3D printing. - See more at: http://www.gilcommunity.com/discussion/manufacturings-future-role-craftmanship/#sthash.POVqoQhU.dpuf

new manufacturing technologies as providing the catalyst for a resurgence in craftsmanship – especially technologies such as 3D printing. - See more at: http://www.gilcommunity.com/discussion/manufacturings-future-role-craftmanship/#sthash.POVqoQhU.dpuf

new manufacturing technologies as providing the catalyst for a resurgence in craftsmanship – especially technologies such as 3D printing. - See more at: http://www.gilcommunity.com/discussion/manufacturings-future-role-craftmanship/#sthash.POVqoQhU.dpuf

I believe Albert Einstein is credited to have said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Our educational system needs drastic reform. Incremental, even breakthrough, levels of performance are not adequate to stay ahead of our global competition. We need innovation and disruptive change. One such innovation is the concept of the "flipped classroom".  In these times of larger class sizes, the flipped classroom concept utilizes technology - the internet, laptops and notebooks - to deliver online self-paced instruction outside the classroom, thereby allowing the teacher to provide one-on-one hands-on homework assistance to the student in the classroom setting.

Such requirements for innovation and meaningful change are embraced by the Baldrige Criteria as a means to achieve organizational performance excellence. The Pewaukee, WI school district was the education category winner of the 2013 Baldrige Award. Pewaukee is a role model for other public school districts to benchmark.

WCQI Conference Survival Guide 2014

Will you be attending this year's ASQ World Conference on Quality & Improvement (WCQI) on May 5-7, 2014 in Dallas, TX? The theme of this year's conference is "The Global Impact of Quality". I am planning to arrive Friday evening, May 2, in order to attend weekend meetings and events as a member leader of the Minnesota ASQ Section, and participate in the Executive Roundtable as the 3M company representative.

In the latest post on the "A View from the Q" blog Paul Borawski asks:

1. Which networking events, conferences, or workshops do you typically attend? How do you decide they’re worthwhile? Is it more about the learning or the networking or both for you?
   
2. What are your tips and advice for making the most of the events you attend?

I generally try to attend all of the keynote addresses, the international team process presentations, and many of the various networking events before, during and after the conference hours. I do drop in on several conference sessions of keen interest to me in my role as change agent and quality leader, but I particularly enjoy visiting many of the ASQ Division hospitality suites in the evenings to meet conference speakers and visit with fellow member leaders.

My tip to make the most of the events is to follow Twitter feeds and blog updates of WCQI attendees. This year's hashtag is #wcqi2014.

Regards,
QualityBob

Business Growth Linked to Employee Engagement

In ASQ's most recent Manufacturing Outlook survey nearly 46% of global respondents say the economy continues to be the biggest hurdle to operations, while 18% said the shortage of skilled workers is the biggest challenge they foresee in 2014. Smart manufacturing, defined as “the integration of network-based data and information that provides real-time understanding, reasoning, planning, management and related decision making of all aspects of a manufacturing and supply chain enterprise" is slowly gaining momentum and credibility in industry.

Similarly, The Conference Board conducts an annual CEO Challenge survey. The 2014 CEO Challenge reveals that today's CEOs are cautiously optimistic about the global economy and are turning their attention to leadership development, employee engagement, customer satisfaction, innovation, brand management and culture change - all aided by the use of big data - for improved business performance.

According to the 2014 CEO Challenge, CEOs around the world are more focused on their business performance , and rank big data analytics as their number one "hot-button" issue. Big data analytics are seen as a unique opportunity linking employee skills development and organizational culture to improved competitiveness, productivity and business success. The use of big data provides the CEO with greater insights to the synergistic benefits of leadership, strategic planning, hoshin kanri, project management, PDCA and the balanced scorecard.  As a result, CEOs become more aware and willing to re-evaluate their organization's culture in order to improve customer focus, employee engagement,  personal accountability, and organizational agility for distinct competitive advantage. Hence, Human Capital is the number one CEO challenge in Asia and Europe, and number two in the United States and Latin America. A talented, engaged workforce and a diverse leadership team are imperative to innovation and superior customer experience.

The adoption of Six Sigma as a leadership development tool has dramatically increased the use of data by senior leaders and executives to make better business decisions. Big Data analytics is the next, natural progression of the use of data to improve organizational performance. I am reminded of W. Edward Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, his 14 Points for Management, and the principles of statistical thinking whereby the knowledge and management of variation are keys to success. 

Minnesota Quality Month - November 2013

MN Governor Mark Dayton proclaimed November 2013 as Minnesota Quality Month. Commissioner Spencer Cronk, Dept of Administration, presented the state proclamation to ASQ Minnesota Section Chair, Robert "QualityBob" Mitchell on November 1, 2013. Also that evening, ASQ Chairman Dr. John Timmerman spoke about behavioral economics and "Innovation 2.0".

 

Commissioner Cronk presents to "QualityBob"

 

 

MN State Proclamation

 

ASQ Chairman Dr. John Timmerman

Celebrating World Quality Month 2013

What are you and/or your organization planning this November to recognize World Quality Month?  According to ASQ, World Quality Month was inaugurated in November 2010. "World Quality Month was established to reignite attention once generated in the 1980s by National Quality Month in the U.S. and to create a united, global forum for the people and organizations that have celebrated World Quality Days in November to come together and raise their voices for quality"

Per the Chartered Quality Institute (England), World Quality Week runs November 11-15, 2013, and World Quality Day is Thursday, November 14. The theme for 2013 is "Making Collaboration Count".

The Minnesota Section of ASQ is launching World Quality Month with a special program the evening of Friday, November 1 featuring ASQ Chairman, Dr. John Timmerman.  John will deliver a presentation titled, "Innovation 2.0". This program is open to members and non-members; senior Quality Leaders from 60+ local organizations and businesses (i.e. MN Executive Roundtable) have also been invited.

Earlier that same day Dr. Timmerman will join several company executives in kicking-off 3M's World Quality Month, beginning with a tour of the 3M Innovation Center at its world headquarters. 3M executives will speak to the importance of quality processes, products and people to the 3M brand, reputation, sustainability, and business performance excellence. This kick-off event will be webstreamed to all of our worldwide operations. Best practices, workshops, contests and social events are planned throughout the month of November to celebrate collaborative continuous improvement.

Does your organization need suggestions to help celebrate WQM 2013? Consult the resources at www.worldqualitymonth.org