Tag: culture of quality

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Fear of Improvement

Health and fitness coaches often have to overcome their clients’ resistance to improving. Teams can resist improvement as well.

How many people don’t improve because they are afraid of leaving the herd?

What is culture but the shared beliefs and values of a group of people … because we are talking about a culture of quality we should look into what it takes to move your personal culture to a higher standard.

I have a good friend who is a health coach and she told me about a client of hers that hesitated to make the first step on that “road to improvement” … because she didn’t want her SO to feel like he was a slacker for not getting his own act together.

Health and fitness coaches often have to overcome their clients’ resistance to improving .. not because their clients don’t want to improve … they do. But their clients are afraid that they will embarrass or antagonize their families and/or friends – those who are not improving … or even those who are actively, intentionally spiraling into the turf on their race to the bottom physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Note that this is often what they think might happen when they embark on a program of improvement. Note: if you think that your family or friends are going to resent you for improving then you want to consider whether your opinion of them is lower than deserved … or if you have actually received negative feedback from them because you are trying to improve (so your opinion is justified) then you need to consider what to do about the toxicity of your relationships.

Take one of your favorite recreational activities … do you want to improve at it? I like to play hockey … and chess … both involve checking and boards … but anyway, I want to improve at both of those. I will never be a professional at either of them – so I have no illusion that I could ever be “the best” … but I do want to become better at those activities. So I do the things needed to become better…

On a more personal level, improving physical fitness, losing weight, for example, can sometimes be perceived as a threat to those who may aspire to improve themselves, but lack the strength of will to do so. Those who perceive your desire for improvement as a threat may try to manipulate you into failure … so that they don’t feel badly about themselves.

OK, so how does this apply to quality – especially software quality?

Because software is a team sport, (Yes, all of you techy introverts out there … you have to interact with actual people to get the job done :wink:) … the team’s culture is a mix of the individual cultures people bring with them. A sports team is (well, it used to be) a strict meritocracy – the better you are, the better you make the team, the more likely that you will stay. Individuals on the team have to individually improve and help the team improve as well.

A team that is focused on continual improvement will have members who do not get into a defensive crouch whenever their work product or process is critiqued. Of course such critiques should be directed at the work product and not the producer … but unless your team has mastered the art of “egoless programming,” it is not unusual for code reviews to be perceived as an attack. And if that happens, you can watch your team not just fail to improve, but actively, intentionally spiral into the turf on their race to the bottom technically, productively, and culturally.

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Quality Culture – Part 2

If a real culture of quality is one in which the individuals truly care about the quality of their work then it is important for the individuals to actually care. The organization cannot care more about quality than the individuals that make up the organization.

Before you sit back and wait for your organization to adopt a quality culture … look to what you can do on your own!

Last time we looked at a quality culture from the point-of-view of the organization; today we’ll focus on the individual – that would be you … and me.We work with a software system the production version of which was delivered with 2 different UI/UX standards. It is jarring. How could any self-respecting software company release such a thing? There are also buttons that when clicked, result in an error pop-up … even the most rudimentary testing would have shown these problems.

A culture of “it’s good enough” is hard to fight at the individual level. Quickly and carelessly “hacking” code and being rewarded for it because one is getting a lot done quickly creates an environment – a culture – where quality is not valued.

A culture is a social phenomenon requiring group interactions for its expression. The individual either replicates and reinforces the cultural norms or alters and modifies them. Here are three ways that you can participate in those group interactions:

  • Habit – formed in response to a long process of learning and adopting social norms
  • Imitation – where your behaviors copy those of the people around you, like a group walking together that adopts a common gait (have you ever walked “with” somebody who is oblivious to this?)
  • Calculated risk – the power to either strengthen or change cultural norms resides at the individual level, for it is this level where control over the cultural phenomenon resides to the extent that it can be controlled at all.

Digging deeper … what role does quality play in your personal life? Do you demand better from yourself even in – or especially in – your recreational activities? It is not (just) competitiveness, although, for me, there is that … It is a drive for improvement … a willingness to work on improving. If you believe that you deserve “better” then you are also obliged to be – or become – better … or work toward that.

So, perhaps you can take a calculated risk and ask the question: “How can we release this software to our customers when it so obviously ‘draws hard vacuum’?” Well, our release schedule says this has to go out this month. Why is the schedule more important than the quality of the product? Because marketing has promised a new release every quarter. But why would releasing a defective product fulfill that promise? Because …

You see what I did there? As an individual, you can bring the 5 whys to bear on high leverage situations. What if you don’t want to risk raising the quality culture of your organization? Well, why would you want to work in a job where you don’t care about the quality culture of the organization?

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Quality Culture – Part I

Quality isn’t just free … it’s profitable.

“A company with a highly developed ‘culture of quality’ spends, on average, $350M less annually fixing mistakes than a company with a poorly developed one.” HBRHarvard Business Review, in an article “Creating a Culture of Quality” from 2014, defined a “true culture of quality” as “an environment in which employees not only follow quality guidelines but also consistently see others taking quality-focused actions, hear others talking about quality, and feel quality all around them.”

The study was focused on big businesses – hence the $350M number – basically, it was discovered that between the bottom 5th and top 5th (quality culture), the top saved $13,400 annually per employee compared to the bottom.

The culture of quality includes four factors that drive quality as a cultural value:

1. Leadership emphasis; Managers are told that quality is a leadership priority. Managers “walk the talk” on quality. When evaluating employees, bosses emphasize the importance of quality.

2. Message Credibility; Messages are delivered by respected sources. Workers find that communications appeal to them personally. Messages are consistent and easy to understand.

3. Peer Involvement; Most employees have a strong network of peers for guidance. Peers routinely raise quality as a topic for team discussion. Like members of a sports team, peers hold one another accountable.

4. Employee Ownership; Workers clearly understand how quality fits with the job. Workers are empowered to make quality decisions. Workers are comfortable raising concerns about quality violations and challenging directives that detract from quality.

How do you know that your organization has weak culture of quality?

  • Lacks formal mechanisms for collecting and analyzing customer feedback
  • Experiences frequent, perhaps minor, setbacks owing to inconsistent quality
  • Training and development do no emphasize quality
  • Performance evaluation metrics have little/no mention of quality goals
  • Managers fail to consistently emphasize quality or resistant to quality initiatives

OK, fine for big businesses, but what does that mean for us, mere mortals? Small businesses? Stay tuned for part II!