quality Archives - Dennis E. Gilbert

14
Sep 21
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Protected Ideas Halt Forward Motion

Are there protected ideas in your workplace? Those ideas that are on sacred ground, untouchable, or off-the-table?

While some thoughts or ideas may be off-the-table due to legal concerns with protected classes, discrimination, or even harassment, others are often felt to be untouchable without good reason.

Protected ideas are not open to the consideration of new ideas. In these cases, new ideas are blocked, refused, or otherwise disregarded because they might upset the rhythm or flow of processes or systems, or worse.

Quality systems sometimes struggle to find the balance between locked in for specifications, and the opportunity of innovation.

Quality systems expect the exact. The exact should be able to be replicated a million times or more.

Innovation expects development, change, and new directions.

Then the idea of continuous improvement surfaces and that adds stress to the quality system.

A tug-of-war.

Are you protecting old ideas?

Protected Ideas

Productivity and growth are often halted when the effort is spent on defending and protecting, in leu of exploring.

There is often a counterproductive mindset of, lock everything in place and never change. Yet, change is a requirement for progress.

It may be possible to explore a new path without sacrificing an old way. Just because the old way has been proven effective does not mean that it will always be the best way.

Fast moving businesses and organizations discovered this to be factual during the early days (and on-going) of the 2020 pandemic.

Perhaps there is a balance, a happy medium, or a method to embrace both the tested and the unexplored.

People say that it is so, but where is the proof?

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

24
May 21
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Time Data Anchor, Has It Impacted You?

Tags : career quality skills time time management

Have you come to realize the time data anchor? Time has value and your expectations for its use might be impacting everything you do.

How much time do you spend doing laundry, cutting the lawn, or shopping for groceries?

What about professional growth, studying a topical area, or how many years until you retire?

When you take your car for repair, there is an estimate on time. Sign up for the workshop and you’ll know a start time and end time.

In the workplace, there may be a time parameter for processing an order, talking with a customer, or a staff meeting.

In life and in business we cling to data anchors. That data or parameter sets the stage for how much, how long, or how often.

The expectation of time can be both a blessing and a curse. While it may provide some meaningful measurement is it limiting expectations or setting too lofty of a goal?

Time Data Anchor

Time is often measured with averages. The average time it takes for the car repair, your average wait for customer representative, or the average length of time to attain an advanced certificate or degree.

When the average becomes the anchor, everyone has a similar expectation and a similar result.

Why should the meeting last an hour? Would 47 minutes be better, or should it be 16? If you decided to meet for two and a half hours, do you get a more impactful result?

In some cases, the measurement of quality is calculated by the investment in time. If you whip up a chocolate cake in thirty minutes, is it as delightful as one that was created in two hours?

It is similar for craftsman, artists, and book authors. In some cases longer is perceived as better.

The opposite side of course is shorter. The drive-through restaurant, the boot-up of your computer, or the load time of the website.

How you spend your time may have a significant impact on your professional skills, your career goals, and what you will accomplish in the next decade.

When you spend more time on something that provides value with more use, it creates a better end result. You’ll have something better than average. Consider your job skills, the artist’s painting, and perhaps your fitness program.

The time spent in the drive-through line likely isn’t going to improve your meal, your earning potential, or your waistline.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

11
Feb 21
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Leveling Up Is What You Really Want

Tags : customer satisfaction decline growth quality

Do you see lazy effort among your colleagues? Have businesses you once favored declined in quality or offerings? Leveling up may be what most people are looking for, yet it is often different from what is received.

I love the pizza shop around the corner but every pizza they make seems really different. Some are great, others not so much.

Do you like our logo? We paid the best graphic design firm in the city big bucks yet it feels like something a four-year-old might whip up.

We went to the most prominent kitchen remodeler in the area. Look at our countertops, they aren’t even level.

Does the customer service you experience ever shift to the lowest possible delivery? Does it feel like you’re receiving the quality of work that is just barely enough to get by without a complaint?

It happens to the restaurant, the car repair shop, and even the local hardware store. Some remain in business for decades or more, and others seem more like a flash in the pan.

There is a fine balance between constructive feedback and critical criticism. The recipient always gets to decide what to ignore and what to change. When you are convinced that the feedback you receive doesn’t matter, it may be time to reassess the direction you are heading.

Leveling Up

The moment an employee or the entire business decides things are absolutely perfect and that they shouldn’t change a thing is likely the same moment that things start to decline.

When corrective actions, different tastes, quality, quantity, and colorful options stop. The business hasn’t only stalled, it’s now in decline.

It is relevant for your job or career.

It is relevant for your favorite restaurant across town.

Even at the barbershop, the fitness center, and the book store. The business of leveling up is the difference-maker.

Coasting means you’re moving, but for how long?

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

23
Dec 20
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Customer Requirements Are About Knowledge

Tags : customer requirements expectations quality service value

Are you meeting customer requirements? How do you know?

Perhaps the first step in analyzing whether the requirement has been met is to be certain you understand who the customer is. Not all customers are external, and not all customers are the end-user or consumer.

When you ask someone quickly about a customer, they often connect with the idea of retail shopping. The simple concept is, a person walks in, inquires or purchases goods, and at some point, leaves the store.

There are many assessments of customer touchpoints. Everything from websites to telephone calls to the receipt of goods shipped.

Customer service is a broad subject to say the least.

Are you meeting the requirements?

Customer Requirements

In the workplace, people are often suggesting that they did their best work. They tried hard, worked extra, and now take pride in the finished product.

However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they met or exceeded customer expectations.

Building a good product or delivering exceptional service is always judged by the customer, not the builder.

Yet, every day the builder attempts to communicate the delightfulness of their goods or services.

It is challenging for the builder. They really have to know and understand the customer. This is exactly why many businesses are built around users of products or services in an attempt to make it better than the current best offering available.

Build a better car, a better television streaming experience, a better cell phone, a computing device, or even a better dish washer.

It may be challenging to build a better shovel, a better garden rake, or even a better ceramic coffee mug. Commodity products are often defined by the service associated with the sale.

Quality intersects with value.

It all begins with understanding the customer requirements.

Does every employee of your organization understand the customer requirements?

This is always the best place to start getting better.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

10
Jun 20
-

Customer Hustle, Is That What Sells?

Tags : customer service fast-paced hustle quality sales

Energy is contagious and often inspiring. Business minded people often like the idea of fast-paced, work-hard, play-hard, and win. Is it all about the customer hustle?

The act of hustling generally has a stigma of negativity. It may be perceived as trickery, deception, or even fraud. Largely though, in business circles, it represents a feeling of move fast, solve problems, and achieve goals.

Why is there so much focus on the customer hustle?

Time is a precious resource and when people know what they want, they want it now.

They don’t want to place an order for a car and have it delivered in six or eight weeks. When they want an ice cream treat, they expect to find it, quickly and conveniently. It’s true for getting a pizza and it’s true for an order from Amazon.

Customer Hustle

When a business fulfills a customer need or desire, it wins. It is expected to be replicated, modeled, and the competition works hard to exceed the previous best experience.

The moment anyone clicks anything on-line it starts a reaction. Search engines favor it over others, the word spreads, and action happens.

Speed seems to matter most. Timely means immediate.

The unfortunate other side of the customer hustle is that it is a short-run game.

Short-Run or Long-Run?

Short-run works okay for McDonald’s drive through, or the local pizza shop, but not so well in long-run products or services.

A dentist should be thorough, accurate, and complete, no exceptions. It’s a long-run game.

An expensive automobile or home, same thing, it’s a long-run game.

Yet it is often about the war of clicks. Fueled and offered to the public via a friendly search engine algorithm.

Does the long-run game still sell?

What’s Selling?

People talk about home appliances and suggest that they aren’t built like they once were. The same is often true for heavy equipment, electronics, or a garden tool .

The pressure and force connected with the customer hustle has driven a mind-set of fast and now, instead of good and lasting.

What is connected with the work that you do?

Is it built to last, or built for right now?

We don’t seem to find both.

It’s often a hustle.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

20
Apr 20
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Measuring Information Quality and Outcomes

Tags : communication effectiveness information meetings quality

Are you a good communicator? Are you or the people around you measuring information quality, and if so, how?

There is a tendency to measure information quality by its likability factor.

In other words, if you like what you hear or read, it is good information. If you don’t agree or dislike the information it is bad.

Information should not be judged by its likability.

Quality Judgement

In the workplace people tend to lack comfort in the meeting that puts them on the spot. The meeting that makes them more responsible and accountable, or the one that examines performance.

The information exchange in these cases may be considered good or bad, yet it is often judged by the likability factor. If you like it, it was good, otherwise it was bad.

If your doctor suggests losing some weight, or the dentist has to recommend a root canal. Was this bad information?

Quality should not be a measurement of its content.

Measuring Information Quality

Workplace leaders can and should take special care when delivering information. Especially information that may be unpopular or performance improvement oriented.

Telling people what they want to hear may create a happier moment, yet it is not sustainable.

The best communicators are able to deliver all information, good or bad, with professionalism.

They often do this with honesty, integrity, and with high levels of transparency. Trust becomes a long-term factor for information quality.

If you’re judging the quality of information by the likability factor, you’re going to face a lot of disappointment or the consequences of misleading those around you.

What is worse? Trust will diminish or be non-existent.

Measure information quality by its honesty and integrity. Consider the professionalism involved in both the passion and compassion of the message.

Care about the quality.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

17
Feb 20
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Workplace Pace, Getting Things Right Before Fast

Tags : perfection quality time tolerances workplace pace

Are you moving at the appropriate workplace pace? Is time part of the metric you’ve grown to love, or love to hate?

Time matters to everyone. It especially matters for the work that you do.

The business needs the metric of time to calculate and anticipate revenue, production, and quality.

Are you doing things fast or are you doing them with the highest quality? Do you measure quality first or speed?

Many people will quickly express quality comes first, yet, in practice if you sacrifice speed for quality the measurement of performance is suggested to decline.

Which way is it?

Time vs Perfection

A pastry chef creates a masterful wedding cake. From the nearby table it looks absolutely perfect. On the back side there is an icing patch, a place where the icing spatula slipped. Hard to see unless the lighting is just right and you look very closely.

The carpenter does amazing work. The house looks perfectly square. If you look closer and measure corner to corner you notice it is off by an inch on one side.

An author grinds out a book. The work is published. Twenty-five thousand words. The perfectionist notices two typo’s and some questionable grammar.

All of these scenarios share something in common. The closer you look the more problems you find.

You may also suggest that given enough time all imperfections may be able to be removed or eliminated.

There is an intersection with quality and time.

Workplace Pace

Everything you do, and especially the things you do well may be up for critique.

There are times when everything needs to be perfect. There is also what we call tolerance. An acceptable balance between perfect and trash.

In your job, whatever you are building, creating, or especially replicating, it is a race against time.

Time matters and there is a deadline because the quest for perfection followed by replication seemingly never stops.

Think more about what you’re able to accomplish within the dimensions of tolerance and time.

That is the pace you’re racing against.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

11
Feb 20
-

Better Service Is Typically Not Cheaper

Tags : leadership marketing price quality value

Are you prepared to deliver better service? In your workplace, at your job, for the customer, or because you care?

It sometimes appears that everyone is dumbing things down.

Does it make sense? If it does, for whom?

Doing It Cheaper

Why send a direct mail piece when you can send an email? Why walk into the grocery store when you can order ahead and pick it up at the curb? No need for a face-to-face meeting, let’s stay in our offices or cubicles and meet through technology.

Is less expensive better?

On the flip side, someone is always looking for the expensive car, the high priced bottle of wine, or a pair of shoes with a red sole.

When is better, better, and cheaper, cheaper?

The answer is pretty easy, “Always.”

For your commute to work you may not need the most expensive car. A nice tasting wine may not necessarily come with the highest price tag. And, there is a good chance you can make a great impression around the office without wearing Louboutin.

While all three may be great and make you feel like a million bucks (literally) they are not a requirement.

Better Service

There is a difference when you get to the bottom though. The cheapest of the cheapest feels, well, cheap.

We wonder why there is so much frustration with the tech support hotline. We wonder why the burger just doesn’t taste like a burger. For the business, they wonder why no quality candidates will apply for their job opportunities.

The answer is simple.

Some things are good enough and some things are better.

The lowest price is probably the wrong option.

The cheapest will always be the cheapest.

Every time.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

22
Nov 19
-

Are You Finished or Just Out of Time?

Tags : finished measurement project quality time

Many people accomplish a lot during their workday. For the project, new product development, or the marketing campaign, is the work finished or are you simply running out of time?

Procrastinating students do it, they wait too long to start and they must turn in their work on time. It may be true for your workout, doing your hair, or brushing your teeth. There is a deadline, and then everything stops.

I believe it was the famous American football coach, Vince Lombardi, who said, “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.”

It happens for the blog post, the graduate dissertation, and the cabinet maker. One axis of measurement for the product always seems to be connected to time. When time is up, it is finished.

If we are almost out of time, the quality or level of innovation may suffer.

Standards or Efficiency?

Consider that your standards are your standards, and how you measure quality is conditioned by time.

It happens in manufacturing and it happens in healthcare. Time is always working against quality and is inclusive for the measurement of efficiency.

People claim, “We need more time.”

The response in one form or another often is, “Time is money.”

What is the most useful metric? What axis of measurement are you using?

Are You Finished?

The best work always seems to happen when the builder claims the work is finished. An alternate claim is, “I ran out of time, and so, I’m finished.” When this happens, something suffered.

For your next project, brainstorming session, or the report you are about to turn in to your boss, ask yourself how it would be different if you removed the axis of time.

Will it change the finished work? Should it?

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

13
Jun 19
-

Workplace Speed, Advantage or Disadvantage?

Tags : buy-in pace quality quantity speed

Are there consequences to workplace speed?

Hurry to finish that project. Skip lunch and work late, it must be finished by tomorrow morning. Don’t read the directions, it is a waste of time.

It seems that everyone knows time is money. Additionally, most would quickly suggest that productivity and efficiency are key indicators for success.

Is speed always an advantage?

It probably always boils down to one question, “What are you giving up?”

Workplace Speed

Most pros have a con, most cons a pro. Speed may not always be the most valuable factor in your workplace contribution.

Here are five examples:

1. Finish the project in the final hours.

Pro: Less waste if the project becomes unnecessary. Allows changes up to the final minute.

Con: Procrastination may lead to inferior work. Not enough time was allocated. Mistakes made by being hurried.

2. No talking, just work.

Pro: Assumed productivity increases. Working means movement, movement means results.

Con: Failed or ineffective communication creates rejected work or rework.

3. Email is a waste of time; a quick scan will suffice.

Pro: The box is checked. Email is read and return email actions are up-to-date. Time saved by scanning.

Con: Scanning creates miscommunication. Critical or vital information is missed or assumptions are made.

4. Don’t ask any questions just get started.

Pro: No time wasted reviewing details that may not be relevant for the work at hand.

Con: Misunderstandings create a bad customer experience. Incomplete or inaccurate work creates additional waste.

5. Faster workers finish slower workers assignments.

Pro: It is teamwork. This is a team. Everyone contributes what they can.

Con: Demotivating to those who put in more effort. Slower workers use this as a crutch for everyday behavior.

Have you recognized the advantages and disadvantages of workplace speed?

Perhaps patience should be a core team value.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Tag Archives: quality

Sep 21

-

Protected Ideas

May 21

-

Time Data Anchor

Feb 21

-

Leveling Up

Dec 20

-

Customer Requirements

Jun 20

-

Customer Hustle

Short-Run or Long-Run?

What’s Selling?

Apr 20

-

Quality Judgement

Measuring Information Quality

Feb 20

-

Time vs Perfection

Workplace Pace

Feb 20

-

Doing It Cheaper

Better Service

Nov 19

-

Standards or Efficiency?

Are You Finished?

Jun 19

-

Workplace Speed

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