The other day I was invited to attend a meeting as a technical resource. My involvement was very minimal, so for the most part I got to just sit back and observe. As the meeting progressed, the other attendees were discussing the details and minutia of improvements to be made to a business process.

The thing that struck me, while patiently listening, was the fact that this process was very convoluted. There were several instances of: “Well if it’s this way, we need to do one thing. If it’s this other way, we need to do something different.” Along with that there were a number of steps all performed by different people.

It was interesting for me, because as an outside observer, I was able to take a step back and see this tangled skein. However, applying it to my own experience, I know that I have been on the other side of that meeting. I was so caught up in the details, that I couldn’t see the larger picture.

There is a tool in the lean business toolbox that would really help here. Don’t let the “lean” word scare you. If you’re like me, you are a bit mystified by things such as the “Lean” or “Six Sigma.” I work with people who know these things well. The simplified version of all of these management tools is they are there to help find and improve areas of a business that are wasteful.

The area of the business might be a supply ordering process or manufacturing the latest widget. The hardest part of the part of the lean process is knowing what tool to apply in what situation. In this case, I thought the choice was obvious, a spaghetti diagram.

No, it’s not a blueprint for a nice pasta dinner. A spaghetti diagram is essentially a map that follows the flow of information or an item through a process. If you sent a package from LA to New York, the spaghetti diagram would look like a a line snaking its’ way across the country from your house, through the carrier’s facilities, and finally it’s destination.

In business terms, it works the same way. The easiest thing to imagine this way is order processing. An order comes in, starts processing, goes to fulfillment, shipping and is sent out. The diagram would follow the path of the order from start to finish.

I know a number of readers are thinking, “I have a small business, I can’t apply this.” The truth of the matter is sometimes you can’t see your business through the spaghetti. Yes, you can see the wonderful spices and sauce that make up the details of your processes, but it’s hard to step back and see the whole plate.

So I challenge you to step back, and look at the things you do every day and think about how many little details go into getting your daily work done. Think about if you had to describe how your business works to somebody else. Would describing it look more like a line across the country, or more like a bowl of pasta?

Where there are loops on the diagram there are potential areas of improvement. If things are crossing the path more than once, that is an area where you need to ask yourself, “How can I get this done at one time instead of two?” For example, if you made a diagram of you order fulfillment process you might find you use your computer at three different places. You could then ask yourself how you can make only one visit to you computer.

Remember time is money. If you can eliminate even a little time or chaos from the way you do things, you will have it free to do something else or just take it easy. Who knows? You might even save enough money to have dinner at Olive Garden.

Continuous Improvement, TQM, Seven Habits, Six Sigma, Five Whatever…

All of these are good concepts aimed to improve results, instill greater productivity or profitability.  Unfortunately most of those processes ended up in three ringed binders that were put on the shelf until the next new process came along because the last one didn’t work.  Sometimes the leadership in organizations becomes mesmerized by that shiny object, caught in the lure that this process will really get the organization in shape and position it for the future.

Employees on the other hand, translate the “next big thing” as “Flavor of the Month.”  They work under the assumption that if they ride it out and go through the motions, management will get bored and it will go away and they won’t have to change.  After all, by playing it safe and “going along” they don’t become career road-kill when the shiny new process becomes unpopular or doesn’t succeed.

Unfortunately, accountability hasn’t been considered the “next big idea” because it’s not  “flashy.”  There are no “bragging rights” about implementing an accountability process.  After all, accountability means people would need to change, rather than a system or process that needs to change.  And who wants to be accountable if it means having to personally change?

Lack of Accountability Leads to Loss
On the other hand we’ve seen what happens when there’s no accountability for leading people or processes:

• The dot-com bust, Enron, Katrina, FEMA…
• Scandals everywhere: politics, religion, sports…
• Bernie Madoff, bailouts and industries collapsing… Product recalls, contaminated foods, greed, waste and excess.

Granted these are gross examples of lack of accountability, but every organization has their own version of excess, sacred cows or lack of oversight.  When things don’t work, it’s usually due to a lack of ownership or accountability for the decisions that led to those results. Whether it’s lost customers or members, loss of market share or defective products or crummy service, someone was making decisions or communicating information that resulted in those losses.  It can be a lack of decision-making or communication that creates the loss.  But the bottom line is someone is not being accountable.

Reviving Fundamentals Not Magic Formulas
Somehow we’ve lost sight of the basics.  The New Normal is about reviving some fundamental principles such as people are accountable to do the work for which they are hired.  Whether it’s a management position or not, it doesn’t make any difference, you are accountable.

The New Normal is about having clarity about expectations and following through. When a person accepts a job, there’s an implied agreement to perform the work for which they are hired.  If a person says they didn’t know what was expected, why did they accept the job?

Sometimes it’s easy to blame the boss for not explaining what’s expected or for not providing training to do parts of the job but that’s not a good excuse to slack off. If you don’t know what you are supposed to do why don’t you ask?  What are you waiting for?

There’s no magic formula for success.  It’s really very simple: Success comes from being accountable.

A Manager’s Best Friend: Job Descriptions
Job descriptions are a manager’s best tool in the toolbox for successful management and leadership.  They are a great place to start The New Normal for Accountability. Collectively, job descriptions reflect how work flows within a department and throughout an organization and what each position is accountable for doing.

Individually, they can be used to hire, train, evaluate and coach employees.
That’s why it’s important to have accurate job descriptions. They will reflect the major accountabilities of each position and why the position is integral to the success of the organization.  (It’s not “flashy” – but it works.)

If you can’t explain why the position is important, then maybe it’s not critical to the success of the organization. The accountabilities should be congruent, or a logical grouping of activities for the incumbent to perform. Make sure the job description fits the needs of the organization, and is not written to match an employee’s skills.

Four Easy Steps to Holding People Accountable
First, use the job description as the basis for hiring or promoting people into a position.  It’s an objective way screen candidates and assure they will have the skills and experience to do the job.

Second, share the job description with the incumbent so they know their accountabilities and let them know this will be used for training, coaching and performance feedback.

Third, have objective ways to measure and monitor performance and communicate those methods to the people performing the jobs.  Follow though by providing feedback about performance.  Successful managers know it’s their job to manage both people and processes.  They communicate expectations, monitor the key performance indicators to assure things are on track and communicate information on a timely basis.

Fourth, provide training and coaching opportunities to enhance performance.

Overcompensating for Underperformers
Here’s the deal:  Holding people accountable isn’t always easy, particularly with people who are underperforming.  Sometimes managers think it’s easier to do the work themselves, or they can do it better, or it will take less time than to train and monitor and coach someone else.

The question then becomes, is it easier to do your work as a manager and their work or to hold them accountable?

Unless you are willing to communicate expectations, provide the resources for people to do their jobs and hold your people accountable, you’re the one who is underperforming.

Clarity of Vision and Structures to Support It
Living The New Normal means that organizations understand that the ways things have been done in the past necessarily won’t work in the future.  They understand workforce demographics and expectations are changing dramatically and consumers are making more conscious choices about how to spend their time and money.

These organizations will meet these changing needs, internally and externally, with a clear vision, decision making with accountability and communicating in ways that really reach their constituents. From the fundamentals of holding individual employees and managers accountable for their job descriptions to holding larger portions of the company and its processes accountable, these organizations will have the systems and structures in place to support their vision, mission and core values.  The result will be alignment and integrity.

That’s accountability. That’s success.

About the Author
Marty Stanley, President of Dynamic Dialog, Inc. (http://www.alteringoutcomes.com) is an author, national speaker and facilitator who helps organizations create their New Normal. Her book and signature program, Get Out of B.E.D. (Blame, Excuses and Denial): Change Your Outlook – Alter Your Outcomes provides the process for success.

These strategies are based on analysis of data and statistics, which is in turn used to increase operational performance. All the steps involved in these processes required a serious commitment of both funds and time.

Since the early days, however, the idea behind Six Sigma implementation has become the focus, rather than the rules. This means that small businesses have found that they can implement the features of Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.

Using these features, a small business can regulate work with proper standards regardless of its size.

Advantages
Small businesses actually have a few advantages of large ones when it comes to employing Six Sigma.

First of all, the small size means that the implementation of Six Sigma can be significantly sped up. There are fewer layers in the hierarchy, a more flexible flow of processes, and quick access to those at the top of the ladder.

Training lead times within the small business can also be a lot faster.

Cost Factors
Now, it is important to keep in mind that less expense does not mean no expense.

There are still high costs when it comes to Six Sigma training, so it is important to take a look first at the savings that will result for the first set of projects which use the Six Sigma strategies.

These gains are typically quite quickly accessed in smaller organizations; this means that more can be achieved as trainers and trainees working in the same area can demonstrate live execution of the procedures.

Employees can therefore observe the process errors which occur, and come up with innovations to improve productivity. The advantage here is that process issues can be looked at in two different ways at all times.

This will help the Six Sigma process continue to flow rather than become stagnant.

In other words, it is easier to make a smaller number of employees within the same area see things a little bit differently. In a large corporation, companies have to keep a large number of employees over a vast number of areas moving with the vision at all times.

There are still some disadvantages that need to be considered when it comes to small businesses and their use of Six Sigma. First of all is, of course, the issue of funds.

Hand in hand with that issues is the cost of trained Black Belts themselves.

These professionals charge quite highly for their services, and most small businesses prefer to place these funds into marketing efforts instead.

About the Author:
Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions – Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

It will help you improve the marketing process by providing tools & techniques for identifying what the marketing process is, including suppliers, inputs, process steps, outputs, and customers. Six Sigma helps you understand the need to determine who owns the process and helps the process owner determine how to improve it. It provides a framework for improving all aspects of this process. It does much more as well.

The converse is also true, marketing can help Six Sigma. Both marketing and Six Sigma focus on customers. Marketing is a management discipline dedicated to understanding customer demands, how to design products meet them, and how to let potential customers know what’s available.

In Six Sigma training for Black Belts and Green Belts, students typically learn a number of tools that are borrowed directly from marketing, such as the analytic hierarchical process, quality function deployment and Pugh matrices. Master Blacks use conjoint analysis, a quasi-designed experiment approach to measuring customer importance weights.

Design for Six Sigma is all about integrating the design process across marketing, engineering, and production to better meet implicit and explicit customer demands.

Beyond the technical tools, when Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma is well done it begins with understanding what customers are solving for, then helping them achieve their goals by improving the processes you use to provide them with service. This is truly an integration of marketing and Six Sigma.

In the end, all organizations are solving for the same thing, stakeholder goals. Marketing’s primary focus is on the demands of the customer stakeholder. Six Sigma’s focus is on the processes that create and deliver products to meet these demands. The synergy between Six Sigma and Marketing is inescapable.

About the Author:
Thomas Pyzdek is the author of numerous books, including The Six Sigma Handbook. He has worked with large and small organizations around the world for over 40 years in industries as diverse as health care, call centers and high tech manufacturing. Pyzdek offers Six Sigma Training and Certification in live, online, and blended formats. Pyzdek, and his team of expert associates can help you meet your organization’s quality and process improvement goals. Support includes consulting, training, and coaching for your entire team, from executives to the change agents working in the trenches.