I have spent a decade working with companies of all shapes and sizes. The second I walk into an office I can tell whether that company is thriving or dying. I’m sure you are familiar with the typical clues: Are the grounds kept? Is the receptionist ornery? Is the restroom clean? Is the decor updated? In any case, I believe that a company’s growth potential is reflected right in front of your eyes. A company’s success is often advertised proudly on its walls and on the faces of the employees.

Success is driven from the top down. Is executive leadership wiling to embrace technology and change or are they stuck in the old way of doing things? Those that do not prioritize change, especially product development dependent organizations, will eventually be left behind. Companies who are not willing to adapt or accept change as a part of their growth process will diminish like the fading paint on their lobby walls.

In many companies, addressing change is often pushed to the back burner as urgent matters often take precedence. I find that many view change as a manual necessity versus an opportunity for productivity gains and growth. As a result, few companies have mastered the art of change. As the saying goes: “Like a plant, you’re either growing or dying.”

The willingness to change is also true in our personal lives. We either embrace change or resist it. The good news is that change can be learned! According to the research of Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, Professor of Psychology at UC Riverside, attitude is derived from 3 parts. 50% of your attitude is predisposed at birth through genetics. 10% is attributed to circumstances (success, health, family, money, etc.) The remaining 40% is left up to what’s called “intentional behavior”. These are learned behaviors, and by exercising these behaviors, your mindset can be changed.

Someone, smarter than I, once shared with me a strong piece of advice about living in a rut. He said, “The past only has power in your mind. Let your mind be a dream center for change, not a museum of the past.”

Click here for more about Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s Documentary on the Study of Happiness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_(2011_film)

No, I do not mean the game. I mean those engineers “back in the day” that would make sure every drawing released from engineering was as correct and accurate as humanly possible.

Longer ago than I care to mention, I started out in the engineering field as a draftsman. I started out using lead pencils and electric erasers, if that gives you a clue as to how long ago this was. In a very large room with many drafting desks I was the low man of the group. At the top there were Checkers. These were the top of the engineering group at the time. They had the most experience and were some of the highest paid people in Engineering. A drawing of any type could not be released for production or customer consumption without one of the checkers first reviewing it. What stands out the most for me is that there were very few, if any, drawings that did not get some sort of red markup on them. I know, because when I started out I was the guy stuck fixing all the mistakes the checkers found. Keep in mind that they were not only checking the aesthetics of the drawings, but they were also checking all the geometry, equations, mass properties, interferences, and many other aspects of the design. They would even check if it was accomplishing the design intent for the overall project. At the end of the day I rarely heard of manufacturing having to come back to engineering for missed dimensions, or interference issues or anything else for that matter. It did happen of course, but not as much as I see in today’s engineering / manufacturing companies.

Now let’s jump ahead to the current day in most small to mid-size engineering / manufacturing companies, and even some large companies. I can’t tell you the last time I have seen anyone in a Checker role. Yes, I have seen companies do peer reviews, design review meetings and things like that. But there is no one dedicated to insure that nothing leaves engineering until it is thoroughly reviewed for mistakes or issues. Over the last few decades have engineers become perfect? I know of some that may think so, but no…that is not the case. What I see happening is manufacturing is now the group that is indirectly checking the work of the engineers. How many times have you seen manufacturing coming back to engineering to request a dimension change, or with other issues with the drawing or design? Sometimes it is minor issues, but other times it is a major design flaw. By the time manufacturing finds one of these major issues you could have significant money already spent on tooling, raw materials, man hours, etc. Think about how many recalls we have seen from major companies over the last few years? How many mistakes are not caught by manufacturing at all? In many cases it is not until the product is built and shipped before the issue is found. Think about the cost to the company in those cases.

The fact remains that in the overall corporate view, you are now relying on manufacturing to make sure you are not releasing flawed products to the world. As far as the so called time savings…what do you think takes more time? Having the checker verifying all engineering work, and then making a requested drawing or model change before it is released…or…Releasing designs to manufacturing, then manufacturing finds an issue. Now a formal change request is sent to the engineer. A change process is started. Dispositions must be made for any raw materials already acquired and so on and so on until the change has been properly addressed. If someone took the time to analyze the real cost behind all minor and major changes, taking into account man hours, material and time cost, I think you would be surprised at what you would find. Assuming a checker would catch 75% of these issues before they were released, I am betting the amount you would come up with would cover the cost of the checker role.

Some of this checking can now be done with today’s modern CAD software, or add-ons to them. Such as Creo and Model Check. So some of the more basic things checkers used to check can be done with software if configured correctly. This would save what would be the modern checker significant time. Plus there are even more tools available that require human interaction that could help them check and review designs more efficiently. Like Creo View Design Check. So the time it did take checkers could be drastically reduced, further justifying the need for this role again for all sizes of engineering companies.

I am not naïve enough to say a checker would catch all mistakes. Even a checker is human, mistakes will still happen. I am saying the number of engineering mistakes released would be dramatically less.

I would love to hear comments or feedback on this. What does your company do to ensure engineering releases are as accurate as possible? How much is caught doing peer reviews? How thorough are your design reviews? How many minor undocumented changes are brought to engineering by manufacturing to be corrected? How many major issues does your manufacturing department find? Do you feel there is still a need for checkers in today engineering companies of any size?

As we visit companies performing assessments and providing consulting services, we commonly experience some level of resistance to change.  That is to be expected.  First it is well understood that change is difficult to embrace.   Moreover, we are often working with active or former engineers for whom skepticism is a recognized strength.  And although there is often a shared perception among our clients’ employees that things need to change, there is usually significantly differing perceptions on the specifics of what must change and how it should change.
It is interesting to us that when we encounter similar individuals in other environments there is a distinct shift in their receptiveness to change.  One other environment is at seminar events that EAC sponsors a dozen or so times per year.  At the seminars, we are consistently engaged by thoughtful product development leaders and contributors who are looking to discover insights that can be used to improve their systems.

A part of the cause of this change is clearly that the work environment is consumed by practicality, while the seminar environment balances both theory and practice; good theory is after all the basis for good practice.  The engagement with theory creates an openness to learn, and an attendant openness to change.

Our hypothesis is that within the political structure of their own companies, individuals invest a significant amount of their energies defensively blocking efforts to create change until they can be sure that the proposed change is not ‘yet another dunderheaded idea that will actually make things worse’.  In the seminars’ external, neutral environment they are free to drop their committed defensiveness and to engage with less defensive positioning and more open-mindedness.  We should add that our seminar events are presented as learning events and not selling events in an attempt to create an environment that supports open-mindedness.

In our internal discussions on this idea, a collaborator shared the story of his experience with counseling.  After his divorce, he participated in a group therapy with a dozen other men who were all still married but having severe problems in their relationship with their spouses.  Our colleague was attending group therapy to work through the similar issues that led to the dissolution of his marriage.  Every week, he said, he would leave the session and spend the next day reflecting on the discussions and shared insights.  His twelve fellow group members would return to their difficult environments of a hostile relationship and relapse into habitual behaviors.  After a short period of time, feeling he had worked through his issues, our colleague made his goodbyes and graduated from the therapy sessions.  As he left, he felt that none of the other individuals had made any significant progress towards a better way of managing their situations.

In reflecting on this, we become concerned that the enthusiasm and commitment to improvement that we see at the end of our seminar events dissipates quickly when the attendees return to their less neutral environments.   To help extend the half-life of the positive bias carried out of our seminars, we are exploring additional services that can provide a buffer for post-seminar improvement advocates.  We have discussed delivering more seminars directly within companies rather than in public venues, to create an internal network of mutually supportive thinkers.  We have discussed organizing peer learning and discussion groups in our served regions where individuals from different companies can serve as an advisory board to one another.  As we explore our role in extending the half-life of enthusiasm and commitment, we would love to hear from you on how you think we could better serve this market need.

Managing change in an environment where the specifications originate outside the enterprise provides a unique set of challenges. This is the scenario for companies serving the engineered to order (ETO) marketplace. Communicating and tracking changes throughout the project’s life-cycle is critical to ensuring the solution meets the needs of the customer and is profitable for the supplier. The change can originate from multiple locations and at any time in the project. Changes initiated during the quote cycle will need a method for quick response so that the quote will reflect the request. Changes received after the order has been processed will need a method of review that will include costs and resource impacts.

One of the more challenging aspects of managing change for the ETO enterprise is the approval path for changes received after the order has been received. Sales will often push the change order through declaring that the proposed changes are within scope and should be “easy enough to do”. Or my personal favorite “can’t you just”. The decision on whether or not to accept the change needs to be a deliberate one. The change needs to be reviewed within the context and scope of the project by all functions that could possibly be affected. For most organizations this will cause significant delays, making schedule attainment nearly impossible. Instead the effects are dealt with as the project progresses, requiring huge effort to meet the demands of the schedule. The net effect is the amount of time and resources needed to complete the project will balloon. This will impact not only the project of immediate concern, but all other projects as well.

For a large number of businesses their ETO business represents a small overall portion of their total units sold. However that portion of the business often utilizes a disproportionate amount of the overall resources. Much of that wasted effort is expended closing the loop on the changes proposed by the customer as well as changes originating from within. Emails, phone calls, travel and sometimes even litigation are needed to resolve change issues. So why take on any ETO business? Most companies see it as a necessary evil, driven by a competitive environment and demanding customers. While I will not argue the need for customization here, I contend that the process does not have to be as uncertain as is practiced.

Changes from internal and external origins need to have a clear path for review and approval. The ability to measure the resource, cost, schedule and profit impacts, as part of the decision process will ensure that margin targets are met. While some may see this additional oversight as an impediment to responsiveness, the added control, associativity and transparency will drive increased efficiency. By making deliberate, informed decisions the development process will ultimately move forward more quickly.

A couple of themes that we regularly visit when consulting with companies are those of power-over versus power-to, and of the underutilized potential of common goals. In the lead up to Independence Day, these two themes again came to mind.

As is characteristic of most institutionally important characters, the stories of our founding fathers have been rendered as mythology. The generalized morals and values that we wish to perpetuate as inherent in our national character are played up, and the untidy, vulgar humanity of the founders is sanitized. Too bad, because the historical facts that surround the relationship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are both informative as well as confounding.

Adams and Jefferson were men of different backgrounds, different temperaments and held polar opposite views on the balance of power between the Federal government and the State governments. One was an arrogant, elitist New England farmer. The other was an erudite Virginia plantation master, architect, engineer and man of letters. And they were friends.

United by the common goal of breaking free of the perceived tyranny of King George, these two were assigned to the five person Independence Committee of the Continental Congress, and as a pair were assigned the action of drafting a statement declaring the secession and independence of the united American colonies.  Their work in articulating a broadly accepted and admired Declaration of Independence, and their positions in the conduct of the subsequent war and in the formation of the unique democratic experiment in government that resulted, established between them a deep respect for the purity of each other’s motives and a deep personal friendship.

Adams and Jefferson were ballot rivals when George Washington chose not to run for a third term.  Adams ran as a Federalist, Jefferson as a Democratic-Republican and Adams won by three electoral votes.  By quirk of how elections were conducted at that time, Jefferson from the competing party served as Adams’ vice president. The friendship that united them brought civility to their political disagreements. Specifically, they debated whether the federal government should control and build a dominant centralized power or whether it should distribute power to the states.

This debate continues to be played out today in the private sector as geographically dispersed corporations struggle with the balance point between the necessary controls maintained by headquarters and the degree of autonomy allowed to the distributed sites. Our personal bias is on the side of distributed management authority and autonomy in recognition that local effectiveness is in large measure contingent upon local control.

The mudslinging that characterizes modern politics and that makes the run up to elections so off putting is not modern at all.  The election of 1800 in which Jefferson defeated Adams in his attempt to secure a second term was so harsh with negative rumor and innuendo that it ruptured the bond between the two and bitterness filled the space between them.  These civil rivals became bitter rivals.

For eighteen years there was very little communication between Adams and Jefferson, but when Abigail, Adam’s wife of 54 years, died, a sympathetic exchange of letters opened up a ‘normalization of relationships’ between Jefferson and Adams. As the two again engaged in regular communication, the rivalry of their politics and their world views continued, but their exchanges were once again characterized by measured civility and respect.

As Adams and Jefferson became the sole survivors among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Adams volunteered that he was determined to live to see the 50^th anniversary of the signing in 1826. The human will is an amazingly powerful tool. When applied to control others the common result is a war of wills, and we often find that the ends are suboptimal, skewed by the confrontational means. But when our will power is turned on ourselves in acts of commitment and determination, it is astounding what can be achieved.

Willing himself to live to 90 years of age, at a time when such longevity was rare, Adams did survive to see the 50^th anniversary of the signing. Astonishingly, he lived to reach the 50^th anniversary, but he died on that day. His last words were a competitive lament that ‘Thomas Jefferson survives’.   Unknown to the dying Adams was the fact that Jefferson had passed away earlier that same day.  That these two polar rivals among the founding fathers, the two assigned drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the last survivors among its signers both passed away on its 50^th anniversary astounds.

In our modern world and our focused segment of product development, the balance point between control and distributed authority remains an important consideration in the pursuit of business success. And the use of will to motivate ourselves to high achievement supersedes its misapplication in attempts to control the behavior of others. The lessons from the relationship of Adams and Jefferson are instructive. Perhaps most valuable amongst them are that civility can exist in the discourse of diametrically opposed views, and that the great strength of the bonds built on the successful pursuit of common goals, once shattered, can be gracefully repaired by the recovery of humanity and the application of good will.

At a recent seminar we gave that touched on root cause problem solving, one of the attendees asked a question about a problem at their company. The problem involved two individuals who were in conflict, in essence, over the definition of the problem. I gave an answer that suggested assigning the solving of the problem to a third individual who had not taken a no-compromise dig-in-your-heels position on it. The attendee said that the problem was actually the intractable insistent stand taken by the two employees in conflict, and that the personal conflict was the problem they were struggling to solve.

Since the seminar, understanding that I had not given a very good answer to the question, I have spent some time thinking about this situation and will share my thoughts in this blog.

The problem is one that we are all likely familiar with. The market requirements for a development project insisted on a product feature whose shape and tolerances were beyond the current level of manufacturing capabilities. The two individuals squared off alternately insisting the feature was necessary and then the other that the feature could not be created according to the spec.

A couple of quick thoughts have occurred to me right off the top that helped me put my considerations into context. First off, I recalled Deming’s instruction that 95% of what appears to us to be a people conflict or a people problem is in fact a system problem that comes to the surface in the guise of a people problem. And the second thought is courtesy of Peter Senge who postulates in the second law of systems thinking that pressure (pushed ideas, pushed requirements) creates its own resistance.

As is often the case with problems that have hooked in combatants, there are short term measures that need to be taken to get past the current incarnation of the problem, and then in follow up, a root cause problem solving project should be executed to prevent or at least mitigate future recurrence.

Let me insert here a brief disclaimer. In the problem solving technique we teach, we apply the ‘learning first’ paradigm that those of you familiar with Mike Kennedy’s writings will recognize. The technique calls out a principle common in all applications of the Lean philosophy, that the first step is coming to an understanding of the problem by going to the gemba (or in product development by following genchi gembutsu), that is going to the location of the problem and experiencing it first-hand. We have not done that, so this discussion will be generalized rather than specific.

First is the band aid to get past the current standoff. Power struggles that show no sign of resolution need to be escalated to move things forward.

Then, to start, the requirement should be dissected.Is it a real requirement — a must-have or a should-have, or is it a nice to have — a could-have? If the requirement is legitimate, then the second step is to confirm the ability of manufacturing to hold the specified tolerances.  If in fact both individuals are correct – it is a legitimate requirement and manufacturing can’t hold the spec – then what Covey calls the 3^rd Alternative must be sought. Because both combatants are right, the position of each combatant relative to the other is wrong, and new thinking is required. A list of alternate options would be created, and the tradeoffs of the viable ones would be analyzed against each other. For example, outsourcing seems a logical option, but that option needs to be evaluated on a cost/benefit basis of the required feature. If it is a must-have (we don’t have a product without it) compromise is not possible and the best cost for the feature should be sought. If it is a should-have (the market values this and our product would be better positioned including it) then the cost/benefit may in fact drive to a compromise position.

In moving on to the long term solution for this problem, it is worth citing again Deming’s contention that this people problem is most likely a systems problem. If in this organization, like in many organizations, a marketing manager sets the requirements that a project manager must lead a team to satisfy and subsequently a production supervisor must see repeatedly manufactured, you have no natural constraint on the requirement setting. Even well intentioned product marketer can create a situation where it is impossible for other downstream leaders to succeed. Some organizations have set up a system where the individual responsible for setting the product requirements also runs the project and is thereby responsible for delivering against the requirements. This drives a natural rationality into the setting of the product requirements!

Other organizations have moved to the definition of product requirements as goals rather than as hard specs. In the case of must-haves, they are defined as technical specs. But for should-haves, a system of goals cascades from product level goals down to subsystem and assembly goals. This creates a more open design space for the development team, as opposed to the overly constrained space bounded by hard specs. It is common for product development organizations to adopt this practice on their path towards implementation of Set Based Design.

The best system level countermeasure to the cross functional conflict that we are discussing here is a product development system element that has been implemented in Japan, but to my knowledge no organization has implemented here. It requires extreme discipline and patience. This element is called a Kentou Phase, a study phase, inserted early into the development cycle. During it, cross functional team members share functional knowledge and functional need with other team members.  And the team members collectively study how to satisfy the goals of the project. In the end, this approach prevents even a strong individual pushing their ideas on the team ‘and building its own resistance’.

Resolving cross functional conflict is critically important, because quality problems arise on the interface between functions. Conflicts like the one that we are looking at here will result in a sub-optimal level of product quality if they are not successfully resolved.