Controlling Controls

                                                

                                              CONTROLLING CONTROLS

1. Managers always like to be in control of the processes and situations. We set up standards, rules, regulations so as to regulate the processes and systems within predefined limits. Control is what brings orderliness into the system and keeps it on track. As managers we do not like surprises and the main use of controls is to avoid surprises.
2. Control implies continuing with the continuity. It allows one to maintain the status quo by keeping the processes and systems with in the predefined limits of the parameters selected to monitor the process. It essentially implies keeping the car on the road or keeping the train on the track. The better a control system is in the organization the more confident the managers are that the continuity of the system or process will be maintained and unpleasant surprises do not occur.
3. To make a control more effective sub controls are established to monitor and control a particular variable in the process so that it contributes effectively to the establishment of overall control. Sometimes these sub controls can be in conflict with each other. But organizations in blind faith of continuing with the continuity and to avoid the risk of surprises , allow the controls to control their actions and in the end the controls start controlling the thought processes of the organization. If a surprise occurs then the organization bound by its standards and rules refuses to acknowledge them. Sometimes the controls established are not designed to detect these deviations and sometimes these deviations are ignored with the assumptions that "all is well" or ' we are doing very well". At times these surprises are often brushed aside or put under the carpet with the notion that they are exceptions or fluctuations in the process and do not represent the trend. sometimes they are dealt as crisis , where the person who manages the crisis gets rewarded rather than addressing the question as to what led to this crisis, what we missed and why we missed it. This feeling of being comfortable with the present way of doing things constraints the organization to loose the competitive edge and leads it to fade away into non entity over a period of time. The time period is different for different organizations but it the only thing certain is that it will come.
4. These controls besides leading the organization to complacency have a number of side effects:-
(a) Inhibit the organizations ability to explore new areas.
(b) Inability to question the validity and usefulness of these controls.
(c) Curb the risk taking ability of its employees.
(d) Curb creativity and innovation.
(e) Restricts useful information to them thus affecting their ability to take correct and timely decisions.
(f) People tend to play by the controls and standards rather than change them to changing environment and situations.
(g) Blame the standards and controls in case of failure rather than accept the blame.
5. This does not mean that controls are not required or they are bad. They are required and are essential but what is required is to control these standards and controls so that they do not become a burden and an anchor around the neck of the organizations thus suffocating it, by denying the oxygen of creativity and change, to its untimely death. What the organizations need to understand is how much control is required, where these are required and where these are not required , what type of controls are required, who is required to control what and lastly what controls have become outdated and need to be discarded or changed. this is what we understand by the term "controlling the controls".
6. It is a process of questioning the controls and starts with the first premise of " Do we require controls?" By all means have control but keep them to the most essential ones, where they are required as an absolute must and not to all the areas where you can possibly put controls. In examining the standards and controls for their requirement and usefulness, we need to ask ourselves the questions:-
(a) Is it required at all? Can we do without them?
(b) Find out what we need to control and what to measure and not what all we possibly can.
(c) Keep them to the most essential so that people can remember them and applying them becomes a habit rather than a forced procedure.
(d) If a standard or control is more than a year old then reexamine it.
(e) If you have not used a standard for six months then put it in the waste paper basket.
(f) If a control is working very well then it is time to question and reexamine them. It is possible that they were wrongly set or they are too loose.
(g) When you establish controls and standards then also plan as to when you are going to remove them or under what environmental conditions they will become redundant.
7. The major aim is to make the organization flexible enough so that it encourages risk taking, individual initiative and gives a person enough courage to question their usefulness and validity. This will also give the courage to employees to notice and accept and be prepared for surprises as and when they occur and to make timely changes and amendments at their own levels without waiting for a response from higher up. The organization will then change from being a reactive one to a proactive and allow creativity and innovation to flourish.

Quality Controls

Quality is not something which can be imposed on the production process; To be successful it has to be something which is inherent in the system itself. So ingrained in the system that from outside it is not evident at all but becomes apparent when you are inside the system. From outside it may appear to you as no logic or at best a fuzzy logic but actually it is so much part of the process that to experience it you have to be inside the production process.
TQM or quality circles are something which are imposed from outside and hence require constant efforts to reinforce their beliefs and procedures and after that constant monitoring audit and checks. By introducing checks and audit you take away the individuality, creativity and the inherent desire of the individual to create things and have the passion to make it better and better. Of course it has its own plus points and own advantages but somehow after having worked in a company which we started from scratch in 1994 and to have made it world’s largest in its category in 2004, I have started believing that the creativity of innocence, continuous evolution of the organization as a living organism is more important than these rules and audits.
A quality circle is a two dimensional figure and if you take any point and start from it you will ultimately end up in the same place after going around it in periphery. You can not add or subtract any thing from it, otherwise the circle will have to be changed or broken and a new one formed in its place. This is a major drawback which inhibits its continuous evolution as a living organism and to readjust itself to the changing environment of production process. You can not change your quality requirement or process of doing it every now and then and put into place a new one. The process itself should have the capability to modify and readjust itself. This is the essence or a very brief basis of what we cal, quality helix.
The requirements therefore are:-
1. The system to be a living organism of the total production process.
2. It is inherent in the system itself, and becomes visible or evident when you are part of the process.
3. It should not be imposed from outside or bound by rules and audits.
4. It should continuously evolve itself or upgrade itself as the requirement arises.
5. It should allow people to have a creativity of innocence.

God has given us five senses that are, touch, smell, taste, hear and see. When we can decide very effectively what is good for us to hear, what is good for us to eat, what is good for us to smell, what is good for us to touch and lastly more important what is good for us to see then I do not why we can utilize these thing effectively to decide what is good enough for us to produce and what not to produce. We are very good consumers , we know what to buy and what not to buy, how much we should pay and what quality is good enough for us. Why can not we take these concepts to the production process itself?
Why helix? Helix is structure of DNA the basic essence or a basic building block of life. And every life has to have a DNA which is helix in shape. A helix is a three dimensional figure as compared to two of circle. It has no beginning and no end and therefore we may call it an infinite structure. We can add anything to it or remove anything from it without altering it basic structure and it still remains a DNA and is helix in structure. This addition or deletion may create a new DNA but its structure remains the same and qualities same. In essence it still remains the same living organism capable of evolving improving and capable of absorbing any new information that is fed into it and becoming something new which is better.
Before I go into the concepts I would like to say something about the company because it will help one to understand the concept better and dispel some of the widely held concepts that skill is essential to a product process and skilled people are required if the process is to be a good one. In our company we had no qualified person, no engineers, no technicians, no MBA , just people with a lot of common sense, passion and an attitude and aptitude to learn new thing, experiment, fail and get up again to become “ Better and Better”. All our workers were unskilled workers whose sole criteria that they should not have any previous work experience. We believed in creating the required skills, allowing workers to decide what they should do, how they should do a
And how to improve the system themselves. Just for the record our maintenance in charge who maintained our fully automatics filling line machines to over 99% of efficiency is an illiterate man who can not even read a single manual and after 4 years learned to sign his name.
We basically used certain concepts which by themselves do not mean anything and sometimes appear to people as stupid and irrelevant. But the trick lies in how to put them into practice and also how to make the unskilled worker understand them. These are:-
1. As mentioned earlier that if we can decide what is good for us then why we can not decide what is good to produce.
2. The human body is a perfect filtration system. We eat things the body decides what is good and retains it and throws out the unwanted. A normal filtration system works on the same concept. You have successive filters to remove unwanted or bad things and out come pure water.
3. The immunization process. We take shots in order to immunize ourselves from the diseases. It is done by introducing live germs into the body, the white cells generate antibodies to fight this small amount and hence the body develops an immunity to fight the disease effectively.
4. Every person is an excellent customer so why he can not decide what is good to produce and what is not good to produce so that he can buy what is good

It is when you implement these concepts into your manufacturing process that the process becomes alive and inbuilt into the system and evolve itself.
I am sorry that I have gone into too much background detail which may appear to be too simple and too theoretical to be implemented into practice. But the beauty of it lies in its simplicity. We are very good at complicating things, adding new rules, new procedures, checks and audits but do we ever get down seriously and work in a deliberate manner to simplify thing. Simplification is too easy to talk about but is the most difficult part to practice.
We can go into detail about the process of implementation of these concepts once we have thrashed out and clear about what all these entail. We will also have to understand something about the company, its culture, style, value system and rules and the concept behind these rules in order to better understand the processes.
I apologize for this long note which in my opinion is too short for me to covey our passion to create something new and different, but I sincerely hope that you will bear with me otherwise we may land up into a situation where we will be asking the basic question” Was Christ a black man or a White man.”

Woman At Work

1. As per NSSO (National Sample Survey Organization) the participation of women's employment participation grew from 26% in 2000 to 31% in 2005 in India. The women participation in rural areas is 14 percentage points higher than rural women. But it is still much lower as compared to other developing countries and much below the ideal level of a ratio of 1:1. The bulk of women work force is still confined to primary sector.

2. Working women can be broadly classified into six different categories:-

(a) Those who opt for a full time career.

(b) Those who opt for a full time career as a housewife.

(c) Those who opt for a career but opt out at a later stage to raise a family and do not come back and settle down as a housewife.

(d) Those who opt for a career and again opt out to raise a family and later enter or wish to enter the workforce once the children grow up.

(e) Those who take up the job due to some constraints, viz, financial, family, additional income or large family and later leave it once the constraints are no longer there.

(f) Woman who opt for a career as they have the family support or belong to a joint family and retain it as long as the the support is there but later opt out as they find it difficult once family support or joint family does not exist.

3. A large number of women are entering the work force but it is seen that the number of rural women who opt for a job are more than the educated ones. More of educated women are not opting for a career. A urban woman leaves the job at a age group of 33- 44 years but for the rural woman the peak occurs at an age of 49 years.

4. In India some attention is paid to the women who opt for a full time career but they rise and occupy the higher posts on their own terms and by virtue of their sheer will power and determination. Recently some attention is paid in banking and IT sectors to the women who opt out to raise a family and want to return back to work after some time. These measures are basically either in the form of long leave without pay or in term of either working from home or flexi- hours working. As a Indian we are very poor in discipline while working flexi- hours and still need to develop an attitude and mentality for it. But it is the other categories where hardly any attention is paid either by the organization or by the family.

5. If we wish to make any significant improvement in the women work force then we need to look at the categories of working women seriously. One time actions such as maternity leave, long leave of absence and working flexi- time only addresses certain categories of working women. What is needed is to understand the problem and difficulties faced in each category and then try to address each category as a unique om one rather than addressing them all together.

Intutive Quality Control- Part II

1. You do not become an expert driver overnight. You have to learn the skill to drive and constantly practise and put yourself in the situations where these skills are put to test in a variety of situations by practising and practising and thus refining and honing these skills to excellence. The same applies to intuitive quality control decisions. You have to learn this skill and then to make better intuitive quality decisions you have to improve the quality your intuition. It also important that you constantly challange your intutitive decisions, learn from the results and constantly strive to make an experienced data base. You master the technique only when you start placing value to your skill to see things in a different way, in a way you would not have accepted otherwise. 

 2. There are five instruments of knowledge, viz, the sense of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch and five instruments of action, viz, the abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk and exercises manual skills. These ten instruments helps us to form patterns about what is good for us to eat and what is not, what smells good and what does not, what is good to touch and what is not, what is good to hear and what not to hear, what is good to eyes and what is not. We have been storing these information in our subconscious for years. The only requirement is to access this information and decide what is right and what is not right for us. By using these ten instruments we can also store information about the parameters of the product in our brain, create a data bank and experience base and use it to decide what is right product and what is not good and is to be rejected. More are the patterns and scripts available to us more expertise we will have in making a better decision. 

 3. The intuitive quality control can be brought into the system by implementing the following steps:- (a) Training the persons in forming patterns and the signals about the various aspects and parameters of quality. These can be done by giving the person product which conform to the specification and letting him use the ten instruments to form and store a pattern in his brain. (b) Letting the person test these patterns in deliberate experimental manner. This can be done by introducing deliberately faulty products in the process to test his decision making ability by using constant feed backs. This will not only test the man but also the machine. The product initially should be faulty in one parameter at a time and later as he gains expertise then subjecting him to faulty product in a number of parameters. (c) Step two is to performed under a controlled environment initially and then as he gains expertise and as his confidence and faith in his abilities in gained , then in a stand alone environment. (d) Keep repeating the deliberate experiments at a random interval so that the patterns and signals are constantly being challenged, updated and refined. (e) Institutionalize the system.

 4. Merely having the experiences or forming the patterns is not enough. The experience will have to be turned into a skill and to utilize the skill effectively one has to has expertise. To have an expertise one has to concentrate on the feed backs which he gets from these deliberate experiments or experiences. What is needed is:- (a) Deliberate and constant feedback on your actions not only when you make a correct decision but also when you make an incorrect decision. (b) Analyze and interpret these feed backs correctly. (c) Repeat these experiments in a regular but random manner to validate these feed backs. 

 5. What I am not saying is, that this intuitive quality control replaces the statistical quality control. Statistical quality control and parameters are required to develop the intuitive quality control. Both should support each other and are to be used as complimenting each other. As one gains expertise in intuitive version then he will use less and less of statistical quality control methods and will rely more on intuition and the patterns and signals available to him. But the statistical controls are required to keep testing his patterns and intuition. The advantages that the organization gains from this are:- (a) Quality checks can be done on line, thus saving time, less inventory cost and more production. (b) Saving in time as these decisions are instantaneous. (c) allows check on machines. (d) Cost saving. (d) Forms a habit of intuitive decision making (e) Development of faith and trust in one's own abilities. 6. Intuitive quality control when implemented does not in any way changes the way one does things in your organization nor it forces you to adopt new ways of doing things. It only encourages you to look at quality control the way you have always been looking but the only difference now is that you have a very comprehensive , experience base to base your judgements upon and the judgements are done in a fraction of second.

Intutive Quality Control- Part I

Intuition is not a bolt of lightning out of blue sky, nor it is magic. Research has shown that more experienced one is in any particular field , or more information about a particular field is available to a person in his subconscious brain , the more his judgements are based on intuition. You do not get intuitions about the fields about which you have no knowledge. The quality of intuition depends upon the quantity and quality of the information available in the subconscious brain. Intuition is a natural outgrowth of experience or as Gary Klein defines it " Intuition is the way we translate our experience into judgements and decisions".

All of us get intuitions. Some of us are more skilled at recognizing and using them while others have it to a lesser degree. Intuition works on patterns which are formed in the brain and these patterns are a result of repeated experiences which we have accumulated in our subconscious brain over a period of time. Whenever we get an input , it awakens a pattern in our brain and we get a sense of familiarity . The more observations and experiences we have in a particular Field , more patterns will be formed in our brain, and with more patterns better will be our intuition.

Quality control basically consists of a set of parameters/ measurements which defines the input, output or the process. These parameters have some tolerance limits attached to them within which the input or product must lie so that the output is of desired quality.

It is often seen that newcomers find it difficult to pick up subtle flaws in the product even when they are very conversant with the specifications and techniques. It generally happens that, they place too much reliance on the specifications, procedures and techniques and fail to notice the subtle flaws in the product because they lack the pattern in their brain and even when they have it, they usually ignore these intuitive signals. Experienced persons pick up these signals easily and with the patten matching, it is easier for them to pick up these subtle flaws missed out by the newcomers.

These parameters/specifications can be used to form a pattern in our brain describing as to what the input or output should look like . The patterns can be reinforced by deliberatly repeating the experiment of testing the specifications, getting feed backs and modifying the pattern till a reasonable good pattern of a what a product look like is formed and reinforced. The more patterns we have, the more expertise we have and it will be that much easier to do the checks mentally and make a decision whether to accept or reject the product. The key here is that of deliberate experimentation, practise and feed back.

The receipt of a signal about the product , its matching with the patterns in the subconscious brain and arriving at a decision which happens in a very short time span of a few seconds is what we call "Intutive Quality Control".

Compromises

1. We make compromises when we accept something which is not what we desired. Compromises are made due to our long held beliefs. These beliefs are basically about the relationships between various aspects of what we wish and what is available. Most of the time these beliefs are so well established in our thinking pattern that we do not even notice that we have them and we start believing them as true or accepted way of working.

2. One such compromise we always make is when we try to hire a person for a particular job in our organization. We specify the requirements, lay down the qualifications and experience, and skills required for the job. Then we go about trying to find a person who will best fit these requirements suited for the job with the hope that the person selected will be the best and most suitable and will fit in our organization like a fish takes to water. This is where we make our first compromise and it is the most difficult one to understand and break. We make a compromise to hire a person rather than help make the person acquire the required skill and experience. We try to fit a person to the job, job requirements and skills but we do not go about fitting a job to a person. We do not want to spend time, effort, energy and money on a person so that he grows to fit the job perfectly. We accept what is best available rather than develop a person to fit the job. 3. This is where we make the first mistake. We normally make the mistake due to a number of reasons:-

(a) It is easier to hire a person than to train him.

(b) Hiring process can be totally outsourced thus saving time and effort.

(c) You are not sure of your capabilities and have fear of failure.

(d) You do not have confidence in your training methods and procedures.

(e) You do not sufficient time or finances to train as you had not anticipated or forecasted this requirement.

(f) You are just lazy and wish to go with the flow rather than swim against the current.

4. A person you have hired has normally worked in another organization for some time and leaves that organization to join yours due to a variety of reasons:-

(a) Financial consideration- higher pay.

(b) lack of promotional prospects.

(c) Dissatisfaction with the work culture.

(d) Higher promotion.

(e) His goals and organization goals are not in resonance.

(f) Interpersonal or personal problems.

5. If we look at these reasons carefully then we realise that these are exactly the reasons due to which a person would like to leave your organization and go somewhere else. If you can bring him in by promising better pay, work culture and promotion then another company can always better your offer and take him away from you thus leading to a heavy turn around of manpower. Moreover, a person who comes easily would also leave you that easily. Basically what you have achieved is a temporary and stop gap arrangement only. You will also be worrying as to what all your secrets, clients and business this person might take from you to the other organization.

5. The best way out of this is to have persons who are loyal to your organization and trustworthy and would like to stay in your organization. This is possible only if we have people who have been given necessary skills in your own organization. The emphasis is to train and develop your own people rather than hire from outside. You are also not sure as to what all culture that person might bring into your organization. A very promising and successful person from outside may not be able to deliver what you expect him to do. Moreover there is no way you can be sure that a very successful person will continue to be successful. Qualifications, experience and skill may have a Strong relationship with the past and present but have no bearing on his future performance.

6. When you hire a person hire him for attitude, aptitude and character and not for skill and experience. Skill and experience can be given or acquired but character , attitude and aptitude can not be given or acquired . Either you have them or do not have them.

7. The only way to develop loyalty and trust is to train and develop employees. At the worker level it would be better to have unskilled workers and then train and develop them for different jobs in the organization. Use job rotation to help them develop and learn different skills and utilize them in different jobs. Reward them as they acquire different skills . These rewards could be monetary, public recognition and even promotions. The biggest advantage that the organization can derive is that it will have a large workforce of trained and skilled workers who can be asked to perform any job. Thus shortages of skilled workers at any given time is easily looked after as other trained persons are available to do the job.

8. We tried this approach in our organization where all the work force in the factories were unskilled, no previous experience and between 18 to 22 years of age. They were trained in the factory and mostly on the job with job rotation such that each worker gets a chance to learn and work on all the machines. The result was a growth rate of 40-45% for 10 consecutive years and a turn over ratio of workforce of less than 0.5%. Most importantly it helped us to build a high degree of loyalty and trust between workers , supervisors and managers.

9. It is the same thing when you say that you are the best company and the best people working for you but fail to realise that what you are going to do after you have the best people. People will leave your organization to go and work in other companies which in their opinion are better than yours. We fail to understand that it is the ' best syndrome' which is keeping us at the same level and eventually may pull us down when complacency sets in. It would be advisable to concentrate on continuously train , develop the employees so that they can become better and better, as there is no limit to this process of development. What you get back is not only a better performance but also a loyal and trustworthy employee.

Reward Mistakes

1. Reward mistakes, sounds outrageous, ridiculous and may be unreasonable. How can you reward mistakes? The normal concept is to punish mistakes. That is why rules/ laws are there to tell the people that you have made a mistake by not following so and so rule and hence deserve punishment. The punishment is to act as a deterrent with the hope that the mistake will not be repeated in future. But unfortunately the hope remains a hope and the mistake is repeated if not by the same person then by somebody else.

 2. This happens because people do not wish to talk about their mistakes and learn or to teach others from the mistake due to the fear that they will be ridiculed and punished. When a mistake is made you become human rater than the super manager you have projected yourself to be. It is the "FEAR", False Evidence Appearing Real", that prompts the persons to hide their mistakes , sweep it under the carpet or put it in a cold bag. But unfortunately the mistakes only grows bigger and keep getting repeated by other persons. Ultimately this mistake creates a crisis and leads one to do crisis management and claim the rewards that go with it ,but the damage is done and only repairs are possible. We rarely get down and ask the question as to "What led to this crisis"?, Why did we allow this crisis to develop? We only believe in doing firefighting. Why do not we concentrate on the cause that led to this crisis and not on the symptoms. 

3. Why do not we try to reward mistakes? Rewarding mistakes does not mean that people should be allowed to deliberately make mistakes and claim rewards. One needs to distinguish between genuine and deliberate, intentional and habitual mistakes. The concept of rewarding mistakes applies only to genuine mistakes and the others still need to be punished. Reward the courage to report a mistake, reward the process of identifying the cause that led to this mistake , reward the process of communicating to other people about the mistakes , its causes and the remedial actions required to prevent its recurrence. It takes courage to admit a mistake. to stand in front of others and say " I made a mistake", or " I was wrong". It is the courage that you should be rewarding

. 4. Courage is about facing fear, the fear of losing face, the fear of shame, the fear of loosing importance, the fear of being ridiculed, the fear of loosing the peer group , thee fear of financial loss , career, promotion and power. Unless one is given the courage to report and admit that he has made a mistake the mistakes will keep on repeating. it is an excellent policy to say that we have an "Open door policy" and anybody can walk in and report a mistake or talk on any matter, process , product or improvements. But we should sit down and ponder whether we have given the courage to our subordinates/ colleagues to walk through the door up to you and say " I made a mistake". The corrective action starts after the mistake is reported. And it is this courage that needs to be inculcated , encouraged and rewarded. This is the basis concept of rewarding mistakes. 

 

5. There is an Arabic saying:- " If mountain can not come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to mountain" If the workers can not speak out or report a mistake due to fear or they do not have the courage to walk through the door of your office then one should go to the workers and talk to them and give them courage to speak out. They may not feel comfortable in your air conditioned office and may not be able to speak out in such a surroundings. In their own work place and environment which they are used to, they might feel comfortable and open up to talk about their problems and difficulties, and it is here where the mistakes may occur. They may even discuss about their mistakes, suggest how they have rectified them and come out with improvements in the process and suggest safeguards to prevent their recurrence. Listen to them, discuss improvements and precautions and implement the suggestions but always make sure that you keep them informed and give due credit to the person openly. Always make sure that the decisions are given as fast as possible and if time permits then on the spot. Once workers know that you listen to them , try to solve their problems and your focus is on correction and preventing recurrence rather than punishment then they will have the courage to speak freely and will even come to your office and discuss their mistakes and problems.

 6. To identify the cause keep asking the questions till you get to the cause:- (a) What we did that led to this mistake? (b) Did we miss out something? Some important step, some symptom. (c) Why did it happen? (d) Is the process or procedure correctly spelt out and followed? (e) Is the process of doing things correct and safe? 

7. The important point is the emphasis on 'WE" rather than on you. After this we need to concentrate on:- (a) What we could do or avoid doing that will negate this mistake? (b) Could we add or subs tract something to make it mistake proof and not fool proof? (c) Could we do things differently? (d) How are we going to make this mistake a learning experience for self and others? (e) And lastly what all we should do so that this mistake does not happen in future? 

8. Avoid asking questions as to who did what and who is to blame. Do not try to fix the blame , fix the problem or mistake so that it does not happen again. The moment you try to fix the blame you shut all doors to your open door policy. It will become just another slogan on the wall. You convey a message that one should report a mistake as he will be blame for it. You take away the courage which a person will need to report a mistake. Remember that the mistake could be due to a fault in the process, system rather than on by someone.