Coaching quality improvement through current behaviors

 

Working with a manufacturing company on developing a Quality Improvement Culture within their organization. Not liking the term ‘culture’ – we agreed to call what they see as culture, ‘Current Behaviors‘.

When someone calls something ‘part of our culture’ it is no longer open for discussion, even when the majority of people hate the behavior and know that this culture is broken.

When we try to examine the culture it’s quickly called undiscussable and people who are behaving in way that are hurting the company or team do not need to be held responsible for their behavior. – Mike Cardus

As we moved from culture to Current Behaviors we focused on differentiating quality assurance from quality improvement. This proved to be relatively simple, we focused on the boundaries of each pulling ourselves back to observed behaviors within the work teams and customers.

Using the following framing questions to guide our discussions and planning proved useful:

Current Behaviors

1. What are we choosing to keep, maintain, enhance?
2. What are we choosing to alter?
3. What are we choosing to let go?
4. If these are deliberate decisions made by the team, then there is an opportunity to make purposeful adjustments, and frame them in the context of “What are we striving for?”

“Create an Environment that allows the team members to thrive and develop through coaching and continuous development in everything we do.” – The Lean Thinker

Processes and work – Quality Improvement

1. What kind / type of business do you want more of?
2. What is currently attracting that business?
3. What is currently repelling that business?
4. How did you make the attractors work?
5. How did you make the repellents work?
6. What kind / type of business do you not want more of?
7. What is currently attracting that business?
8. What is currently repelling that business?
9. How did you make the attractors work?
10. How did you make the repellents work?

Understanding that we cannot borrow best-practices from someone else, we needed to define Quality Improvement Current Behaviors within the context of the current organizations capacity, resources, attractors, repellents, and skills. Working, as a team, through the questions and responses we arrived at a shared vision and co-constructed plan.

When you work to change the culture of an organization you are fighting a losing battle.

When you work to change the current behaviors of an organization you stand greater odds for success.

WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?

If we’re to make any progress, it needs describe the day to day experience of the average worker.

WORK CULTURE A COLLECTION OF THE EXPLICIT ACTIONS OF HOW WORK GETS DONE:

• Employee onboarding
• Meeting management
• Payroll process
• Goal setting
• Promotion
• Policy & procedures
• etc…

WORK CULTURE IS A COLLECTION OF THE IMPLICIT ACTIONS OF HOW WORK GETS DONE:

• Power & authority
• Corner office perks
• Unspoken issues
• Favoritism & how to win favor
• Workarounds due to excessive bureaucracy
• etc…

Using the word “culture” promotes dysfunctional behaviors into an area of being undiscussable. Then we make the undiscussableness undiscussable, reinforcing a series of bad behaviors.

“We don’t set long term goals. It’s not part of our culture.”  OR “We don’t document our work. It’s not part of our culture.”  OR “We don’t share staff and resources. It’s not part of our culture.” 

When someone calls something ‘part of our culture’ it is no longer open for discussion, even when the majority of people hate the behavior and know that this culture is broken.

When we try to examine the culture it’s quickly called undiscussable & people who are behaving in way that are hurting the company or team do not need to be held responsible for their behavior.

WHAT TO DO?

STOP USING “CULTURE”. INSTEAD USE “CURRENT BEHAVIOR”.

Shifting the word to Current Behavior will allow everyone to access the systems that are driving the behaviors. Through the discussion you cancreate small steps to change current behaviors into future behaviors of doing better work.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Reflecting upon what you see as organizational culture, what happens when you switch to Current Behaviors? How does that change your discussion and ideas for progress?