Changing the CTQ (Critical To Quality)

Wonder if you've heard or read about CTQ.  It is a critical part of six sigma jargon and you are unlikely to find anyone who is familiar with six sigma and is not aware of this term.  It's short for Critical To Quality.  However, few people outside the esoteric world of six sigma have heard about this term.  And that's a pity.

For, any executive who is serious about operational excellence, is handicapped if s/he is not using this concept in some shape or form.  CTQs are the internal critical quality parameters that relate to the requirements of the customer. CTQ is the quality, for which customer pays. It links internal processes to the requirements or needs of the customer. They are not the same as CTCs (Critical to Customer), though the two are often confused.  CTCs are what is important to the customer; CTQs are what’s important to the quality of the process or service to ensure the things that are important to the customer are delivered without fail.  For instance, the sound made by closing a car door might be a CTC, while the dimensional tolerances and cushioning needed to produce those conditions are CTQs for the auto maker.  (http://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/critical-to-quality-ctq/).  In Six Sigma, a quality function deployment (QFD) or CTQ tree is used to map the CTQs to the CTCs.

  Of course, this post is not intended to be a primer for CTQ.  You will find plenty of that on various six sigma websites.  Rather, the idea is highlight and open up for discussion the power of the CTQ in our search for Operations Excellence.  As I said above, CTQ is often used to identify the changes that need to be made in a process to meet customer requirements better, faster, cheaper.  It is typically treated as relatively static -- unless of course customer requirements themselves change.  That's plain vanilla.

I believe, however, the power of the concept is released -- and better realized -- when it is treated dynamically.  What I mean is that Operations Executives need to take the C more literally.  In a dynamic / fast moving environment, whether on the factory floor or in an office, operations tend to lag and lead on different factors resulting in higher variability in output.  For example, after an attack of employee attrition, when the floor is manned by newbies, certain types of errors may be seen more often.  Alternatively, when a different brand of input / raw material is used in a process, it may have an unintended impact on the output.  Such factors are then required to be managed more closely and, possibly, other changes made in the process, other inputs or even in customer expectations to restore normalcy, or stabilize the process.

In such situations, it is highly recommended that the CTQs be revisited.  Yes, the CTC has not changed.  But the change in inputs or their sources has impacted output and unless the focus of operations is shifs, it is not possible to bring the process back on track.  It is in such circumstances that one needs to consider a change in CTQs -- even though the customers or their CTCs have not changed. 

Another opportunity to change your CTQ occurs when you want to move from customer satisfaction to customer delight.  Assume you have already accomplished customer satisfaction and are now looking to delight your customers with new features or a richer experience (which, the customer may not have specifically required).  It would be best to revisit your CTQs at this stage; this time, along with identifying the new feature as a CTC.

I believe this is what justifies using the term "critical". The specific dictionary meaning I would pick for this term in this context would be "of or forming a crisis; crucial; decisive: a critical operation" and "urgently needed: critical medical supplies".  The point is that changed circumstances have made something else critical today.  To bring the same process focus on to the impact of such change, it is important to identify its impact on the output, customer satisfaction and identify different CTQs to focus on. 

Of course, the job does not end with identifying the new CTQ.  What it does is to focus organizational energy on the new CTQ, which gets measured, highlighted and worked upon.  Going back to the example of newbies on the floor, changing the CTQ to, say, "compliance with internal guidelines", will enable a sharper focus on measuring variance vis-a-vis compliance guidelines and enable introduction of re-training, poka-yokes, huddles and the like to ensure the process reverts to normalcy.

To sum up, CTQs work best when they are revisited occasionally -- especially when there are other changes in inputs or suppliers, or when Management decides on adding higher value to the output.

-- Sri
SigMax-e

Leaders vs. Successful People

Did you notice how all successful people seem to qualify as “Leaders”?  

Leadership seminars often invite personally successful people, even though they may not have led more than their housemaid.  We see many presentations on leadership carrying quotable quotes from “successful leaders” that include the likes of Pele, Albert Einstein and Shah Rukh Khan (Bollywood actor).

 Don’t get me wrong.  I respect all these people.  They have achieved huge success in whatever they attempted and are great role models for generations.  But, the question is, can we really call them “Leaders”.  Can we take their views on how to lead, as a guide in our own quest for leadership? 
There is indeed no doubt that one cannot achieve success without focus, determination, hard work, sacrifice, etc.  It may also be difficult to argue (against) the case that such qualities shape good leaders.  However, to equate all success with leadership would be to confuse issues and blur the concept of leadership.  

This takes us to the logical question, does leadership necessarily mean leading others?  Is someone who exhibits great personal leadership and achieves world-wide recognition and success in her chosen field a Leader?  Just to make sure, I did some Googling on the term “Leader”.  See the box alongside for my findings.  the images above are part of what came up on Google images for "Leaders".  They seem to confirm my 'limiting' view of Leadership... you really need to lead someone else to be called one.  
My concern is that one could end up learning the wrong lessons if one followed the views of such “successful non-leaders”!   For, very often, such successful people are great executors, thinkers, creators, etc -- traits which do not necessarily sit well with leadership. For example, we all know that a key function and quality of leadership is the ability to delegate, motivate, control results, etc.  All of these qualities would seem alien to someone who led only himself.

Similarly, we also know of leaders who have been thrust into leadership positions due to totally accidental circumstances -- and without necessarily having to exercise the noble qualities of personal success that we described above.  Examples that quickly come to mind are political... Sonia Gandhi in India and Kim Jong Un in North Korea. 
  

The point is, though successful people seem a lot like good leaders and should definitely be celebrated and feted equally, they are very different.  The qualities and experiences they bring to the table are only partially relevant to good leadership.  In fact they cannot even be treated as a subset of “Leadership”, for some of their qualities may not be very helpful in the making of a good leader.  One might even question whether their experiences belong in the literature on Management and Leadership.  I would rather represent Successful People and Leaders by the Venn diagram shown here.
-- Sri
www.sigmax-e.com 

Less Known Leadership Qualities

We all know that Leadership defies formulas – despite the myriad books and articles that keep trying to sell us the newest and latest.  Personally, I'd rather celebrate the great variety of leaders and leadership styles.  For, just as I am internalizing the great qualities of one leader, comes along another, who has anything but that.
Do we celebrate Gandhi’s consideration for his fellows or ‘Neutron Jack’s toughness? Narayana Murthy’s softness and humility or Steve Jobs’ near-cruelty? (tempted to add a dozen more here, but let’s leave that for the list makers).
Precisely for this reason, situational leadership has held me in its sway for a long time.  History is replete with the failures of celebrated leaders, when presented with a different set of demands – often of their own seeking.   ‘Rebellious’ political leaders have often found it difficult to govern the same people they have led to victory.  Great start-up entrepreneurs have struggled to manage a mature enterprise... (list, please!)
 

Expectations and Change Management
Another dimension to leadership is the expectations of those they lead, or even those that stand and watch.  Consider the failures of successive leaders at companies such as Yahoo! Or HP.  Obviously, if the measure of success (KPI) in such situations is the turning around of a “sick” company, arguably, it is not leadership that is needed but a mere viable value proposition.  I would argue against equating the two.  I can understand the argument that a great leader should be able to develop and implement a value proposition for an ailing business.  But that expectation suffers from a very idealistic, even wishful, definition of leadership.  I could make a case that an ingenious product developer could well dream up a powerful value proposition and, given pre-existing internal steam put in place by a previous ‘leader’, well succeed in turning such a company around.  Who, in such a case, would the real leader be?  I suspect the market, having kicked out the previous ‘failed’ leader, would not hesitate in embracing the new comer as a visionary leader.  I would pause and reconsider.
 
Span of Leadership Influence
Somewhat on the edge of leadership, is a leader’s grasp of the span of his reach.  He needs to realize that he alone cannot influence the entire target population directly.  He needs to develop a whole hierarchy of leaders to reach all the way to the grass roots.  I have seen any number of organizations, where good leadership stops at level two.  That is, the big leader picks a good team that has the intellectual understanding of the task on hand, but not the EQ to be leaders themselves.  They fail to initiate change at their level and below.  The real failure here is that of the big guy in his inability to understand the span of his influence.  He needs to understand that his direct influence can (at least in most cases) reach at best two or three levels below him.  Unless these 2-3 top levels can pick up the signals and amplify them to reach further, noise is bound to kill the signal.  Gandhi, had leaders like Nehru, Krishna Menon, Sarojini Naidu and Patel to amplify his signal to reach across India.  Jack Welch had his famous winning team, Immelt, McNerney and Nardelli, among others, to carry and amplify his message across a huge conglomerate. 

Such development of leadership is often discussed as part of succession planning.  I want to make the point that this is not about succession planning at all.  This is just being an effective leader today.  The leader needs a realistic appreciation of the strength of his signal and the extent of background noise.  Only then can he breed the right kind of leaders and the depth of the hierarchy that is needed to reach the grass roots.
Hanging in There
Here’s another: The ability to stay in the position of leadership.  One may look at it as hanging on to power.  It often is.  But, one does come across situations occasionally, where it is important for a leader to hang in there for the change he has initiated to take shape.  If by his own actions or due to lack of political acumen he is unseated, it can be a loss for all concerned.  Chandrababu Naidu, the ex-Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, in India comes to mind.  He initiated so many positive, powerful changes that he forgot he also needed to appease his voters (read customers) and was booted out by the electorate.  
On the flip side is the Dalai Lama.  A reporter wanted to know why he did not stay back in Tibet and launch his anti-China movement from there.  He responded: if he had stayed back, it would have taken no time for the Chinese to capture him; and that would likely be the last the world would have heard about him.  

Quality Leadership - Dalai Lama with world leaders

Importantly, he would not have been able to carry on the kind of campaign he has been waging against China -- essentially becoming a one-man thorn in the side of a global super power.  My point is that, it is part of Leadership to be able to position oneself for maximum impact.  If this means taking a step back or making a seemingly cowardly, even unethical move, that could well become part of the tactics and strategy a leader may have to adopt to achieve the goal.
Cause-based Leadership
Finally, I have recently come across a very different type of leadership that has perhaps not been studied adequately.  Resisting the temptation of naming it, let me describe it.
A situation calls for change.  The current leader either doesn’t read the signal or is clearly incapable of addressing it.  A "common man" reads the signal.  But he is “leader” enough to understand his own limitations and strengths.  He is also able to conceptualise the kind of leader needed to make it happen.  He goes on a hunt to look for the ‘appropriate’ leader; finds one after several attempts; “sells” the idea to this 'appropriate’ leader; positions himself as a 'side-kick', providing back-office support and brain power to this ‘appropriate’ leader.  He does not hesitate to call the shots, or even to take the heat when called for.  To cut a long story short, he ends up making a nationwide movement by driving another ‘visible’ leader to launch a campaign designed by him!
To me, this is an amazing example of leadership.  In fact, I’d rate it even higher that ‘direct’ leadership that we see most often.  To be passionate enough about a cause, to be able to know oneself enough to understand that a different kind of person is needed to ‘front’ it and then stay behind and guide the movement, takes the kind of maturity and leadership that’s seen extremely rarely.  I would like to call it Cause-based leadership.  (Yeah, admittedly a lame name.  Feel free to suggest a batter one!) 

Kejriwal burns a copy of the Lokpal Bill at a protest near New Delhi

Team Leadership.  Kejriwal: 40 winks with the team

The man I am talking about is Arvind Kejriwal, the man who managed to shake an entrenched and corrupt political establishment on both sides of the political divide in India.  Here is a short abstract from the Indian magazine The Caravan, on the man I am talking about.

“This man was Arvind Kejriwal, a 43-year-old social activist from East Delhi. Though (Anna) Hazare is the recognised face of an anti-corruption campaign that began with his fast on 5 April, Kejriwal is the architect of the movement—the man journalists swarm to, seeking an interview. At press briefings, he often sits next to Hazare and helps the self-styled Gandhian handle tough questions: Kejriwal whispers into Hazare’s ear or scribbles key points on a piece of paper lying between them. When questions are posed to Kejriwal, he responds like an impassioned professor explaining a complicated problem—piling detail upon detail with the supreme confidence that his answer is the correct one. His essential message never changes: only a powerful independent anti-corruption agency, with wide-ranging authority and minimal government interference, can cure the plague of graft—and anything less will fail.”

(Read more here)

The hallmarks of “Cause-based” leadership are:
•    The only thing that matters is the cause.  Even the leader is an instrument for the cause. 
•    The visible leader may not be the real leader
•    Rather, the real leader is the driver and he may well be at the back of the vehicle, among the passengers!

All this tells me, we are a long way from understanding leadership, much less training leaders.  But then, part of leadership is to make do with inadequate information!
- Sri
www.sigmax-e.com

Customer Service and Brand Promise

I recently experienced a different kind of customer service.  This was at a popular Italian restaurant called Zachary's Chicago Pizza in Berkeley, CA.  The place is known for its ‘Chicago-style deep dish pizza’.  It was not a big restaurant; just one big hall with a parapet wall running all along the side, leaving a narrow lane for customers to reach the cashier’s counter in the far corner.  The same counter serves as the take-out and payment point.

We were asked to wait some 20 minutes.  There were others in line and we fell in line too.  There was no waiting room as such and the waiting customers just hung around in the narrow lane, squeezing themselves against the wall every time someone had to pass by.  Pretty inconvenient, if you ask me.  But the customers did not seem to mind – and importantly, nobody walked away.  They just hung around or stepped outside if they wanted a smoke.

Soon a waiter turned up and introduced himself (“Hi! I’m Joe, I will be your waiter today.”)  He then apologized for the delay and told us that the pizzas normally take 20 minutes to cook and that if we did not mind, we could place our order right away.  We agreed (again like everyone else!) and he promptly handed us a menu each, saying we could order drinks mean time.  We did that too.  The drinks came in a few minutes and, in what seemed to be reasonable time, the waiter appeared and informed us that our table was now ready.  Of course, our order arrived almost as soon as we sat down.  The food was good and we had a good time. 

Compare this with the more typical scenario.  You arrive early or find a long line.  Waiter greets and tells you it will take 20 minutes and asks you to be seated.  There normally is a small sitting place reserved for such situations.  You sit down.  Perhaps the waiter gives you a menu to help you occupy yourself, perhaps not.  You wait for 20 minutes making a call or twiddling your thumbs.  Your turn comes… and so on.

Service Rating

You will agree, Zachary’s did a couple of things differently:
•    Was not too concerned about the inconvenience to waiting customers
•    Focused on optimizing customers’ time by taking their order right there
•    Improved his own turnover by reducing customers’ time at the table – by eliminating time taken to settle down and selecting from the menu
•    Increased working space by eliminating the unproductive ‘waiting area’; instead adding to capacity by substituting it with dinner tables.

Certainly not what most customer service experts and consultants would advise.  So what’s the secret?

To my mind, it really boils down to brand perception.  I think, as Steve Jobs showed us so often, if the brand perception is right, customers don’t seem to mind inconvenience.  In fact, they are willing to go through a lot of it!

Of course, building that kind of brand is not easy!  It needs excellence in an area of the customer experience that matters even more to the customer.  What Jobs and Zachary are telling us from very different industries is that if you have a deep understanding of customers’ real needs (especially unexpressed, or even unknown) and are able to deliver on those needs significantly better than competition, customer’s do not mind inconvenience.

Wait a minute… I suspect it’s even worse.  What Jobs has done is to make the ‘inconvenience’ part of the overall experience.  The exasperation of the typical wait has been converted to the excitement of waiting for that ‘cool gadget’; so it’s cool to sleep on the street to be among the first to own an iPad2!

While not with as much pizzazz (sic), Zachary too achieved similar results.  It make’s no bones about the possible wait.  Here’s a prominent notice it puts up on its website:

There are some preconditions to be able to pull this off, though…
1.    You need to make sure you deliver on the core promise extremely well,
2.    You need to consciously build the brand and make the ‘inconvenience’ a part of the excitement of owning the brand,
3.    The ‘inconvenience’ needs to be carefully managed.  The customer should perceive it as a natural consequence of the popularity of the brand.

 Of course, to make real sense the ‘inconvenience’ should also yield some critical benefit to the business, whether in terms of costs or additional revenue. 

How best, and to what extent, you can leverage the brand to inconvenience the customer and how you benefit from it is the tricky part.  You are the lucky one in a million, if you are able to achieve it intuitively.  For the rest of us who have to look for a tool, I would recommend beginning by mapping the customer experience end to end and then brainstorm on each component to identify areas for delighting and areas for ‘inconveniencing’.

Brand Promise

What would be some inconveniences that could be engineered into some other products and services?

1.    A consultant who is so busy, he is not available for weeks or months, but his advice is so valuable, customers are happy to put up with it.  Think Ram Charan
2.    Patients waiting for hours in the waiting room of a trusted neighborhood doctor (primary physician).
3.    Customers willingly viewing boring repeated commercials for seeing their favorite program on TV…

One way to look at it is to think of convenience as part of the overall value proposition, just like functionality, price, package, access or pride.  By providing one of these values in “delightful” proportions to the customer, you can please other stake holders (e.g., share holders or employees) by shaving off a few points in other values.





- Sri Vadrevu
SigMax-e Consulting