Dr Manu K Vora of Illinois honored with Distinguished Alumnus Award by Banaras Hindu University - Dla times

Dr Manu K Vora of Illinois honored with Distinguished Alumnus Award by Banaras Hindu University - Dla times

Talking To The C-Suite About Quality

This blog post is in response to November 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "Talking To The C-Suite About Quality"a guest post  written by Dr. Suresh Gettala, a Director at ASQ India at:
http://asq.org/blog/2015/11/talking-to-the-c-suite-about-quality/

In his post Dr. Gettala made the following key points to move quality at C-Suite Level: 

1. The Long Term - Short Term Continuum
2. The Language of Metrics
3. Economic Case for Quality
4. Success Anecdotes
5. The Big Q Approach

Let me offer my thoughts on above points as follows:

     1. The Long-Term - Short Term Continuum:

For C-Level executives it is imperative that they focus on long-term (3-5 years) and short-term (6 months - 12 months) business plan tactics when they develop Vision, Mission, Values, and Strategies (VMVS) for an organization. However, they need to be nimble enough to reevaluate VMVS when there are market, regulatory, or technological disruptions. 

Quality should be a common denominator while using SWOT Analysis for strategic planning. During regular reviews of strategic plan a focus should be on achieving results through continuous process improvements using a Balanced Scorecard approach.

     2.  The Language of Metrics:

As we are familiar with a Baldrige winner's phrase "In God we trust, everyone else, please bring the data". C-Suites should be made aware of critical dashboard metrics on Customers, Employees, Processes, and Finance (Balanced Scorecard) for a given strategy. Again quality is an integral part of the Balanced Scorecard metrics

     3.  Economic Case for Quality:

The easiest way to connect with C-Suites is using Cost of Quality approach. The Cost of Quality tool lets the executives know where is the waste in the system due to External and Internal Failures and how to address them through Prevention and Appraisals. As management understand the language of money, they are amenable to provide necessary resources to reduce the Cost of Quality through continuous process improvements.

     4. Success Anecdotes:

Another good phrase from a Baldrige winner is "It is OK to steal shamelessly, just provide credit". The central idea is Not to Reinvent the Wheel. If there are best practices available, understand and adopt them in your organizations as applicable. This is where one needs to work top management to harness the power of Benchmarking. We can certainly leverage best practice examples of US Baldrige Winners whose profiles are available at (1999-2014) at:

http://patapsco.nist.gov/Award_Recipients/index.cfm

     5. The Big Q Approach:

At AT&T Bell Laboratories under the leadership of Senior Vice President Mr. Don Leonard in the Switching Systems Business Unit there was a major focus was on Big Q = Small q (performance) x Schedule (timeliness) x Cost (budget) . Provide customers what they want, when they want it, at an affordable price. The obligation for all employees is to focus on the above three metrics in their day-to-day work to achieve Big Q for the organization. It is easy to strike up a conversation at C-Level when one speaks of key efforts directed at achieving Big Q for the organization.

I would like to share few references as follows:

• Manu Vora Discusses Government Quality in India (2014) at:      

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnII-BSt45Y&feature=youtu.be 

• Manu K. Vora (2015). "Selling Quality": Expert Answers, Quality Progress, Page 8, December at: http://asq.org/quality-progress/2015/12/expert-answers.html 

I am looking forward to your experience in talking to the C-Suite about Quality.    

Does Mission Matter?

This blog post is in response to September 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "Does Mission Matter?"a guest post  written by Pat La Londe, incoming ASQ board chair at:
http://asq.org/blog/2015/08/does-mission-matter/

I concur with Pat's guest post. Here is my experience around a mission in for-profits, non-profits, and academic teaching in business schools globally.

Let me begin with my blog post for September 2014 on "Charting A Strategy for Quality-and Beyond" at: http://voraonquality.blogspot.com/2014/09/charting-strategy-for-quality-and-beyond.html.

Let us look at definition of Vision, Mission, and Values first.

Vision/ Mission/ Values Definitions: 

Vision (Long-term Dream, Destination):

¨Is it inspiring?

¨Is it clear and vivid?

Mission (Purpose of being, Path to your vision):

¨Why you exist? (business purpose)

¨What you hope to achieve in the future?

¨Does the Mission provide focus and inspiration?

¨Does the Mission provide criteria for strategic choices?

Values (Guiding Principles):

¨What is important to people?

¨How will people work together? 

Few quick observations:

1). Mission is developed as a part of the strategic planning process by the senior leadership team.

2). Mission should link to the organization's vision. It is a path to achieve organization's vision.

3). It is critical to share the Vision, Mission, and Values widely across the entire organization including all stakeholders. This is the obligation of senior leadership team.

4). When business conditions change, the organization's strategic plan should be reviewed to address changes in the environment.

5). The mission should be realistic and not a pie-in-the-sky statement. 

6). The strategic plan should lead to developing key strategic initiatives and which need to be prioritized and staffed with competent people. A regular review of key strategies is essential to measure the progress and success of key strategies using a Balanced Scorecard.

I want to share an example of Mission for the Blind Foundation for India (BFI), USA  established in 1989 to support over 15 million blind people in India accounting for 1/3rd of the world's blind population. The BFI mission is: "To prevent and cure blindness, and educate and rehabilitate permanently blind people in India".

I look forward to your views on Mission of your organization.

Creating a Performance Culture: What Not To Do

This blog post is in response to August 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "Creating a Performance Culture: What Not To Do" written by James Lawther.

From the U. S. Baldrige perspective, enterprise-wide performance excellence is key to sustainable growth and prosperity. This sounds nice on paper, however to achieve performance excellence it calls for enlightened leadership. When leaders surround themselves with competent and positive attitude associates, a journey of sustainable transformation begins. 

According Prof. Emeritus John P. Kotter from Harvard Business School (Change Management Guru), there is a Eight-Stage Process of Transformation Journey ("Leading Change" 2nd Edition, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, MA, 2012). 

The Eight Stages of Transformation are:   

1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
4. Communicating the Change Vision
5. Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture 

In the eighth stage, he suggests that a new culture will emerge which needs to be weaved into new corporate style encompassing leadership development and succession planning.

Here are some Don'ts for building a Performance Culture for a Sustainable Transformation:

1. Do not launch a change initiative without establishing a sense of urgency which leads to too much complacency.
2. Do not to proceed until you have a powerful guiding coalition (team) consisting of leaders at all levels.
3. Do not create complicated or blurry Vision of Change to be useful. Need a clear and compelling statement to be effective.
4. Do not under-communicate the change vision. Need credible communication, and a lot of it to engage hearts and minds of employees.
5. Do not permit obstacles to block the new change vision. Need to change organizational structure and/or performance-appraisal systems for employees to take actions.
6. Do not hope for short-term wins (passive), but must create compelling evidence (active) within six to eight months that the journey is producing expected results.
7. Do not declare victory too soon. For the entire company it may take three to ten years to sink changes deeply into the culture.
8. Do not neglect to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture. Reinforce specific behaviors and attitudes that helped improve performance. May require reshaping promotion criteria and succession planning.

I look forward to your views to build a performance culture.

How a Charity is Using Baldrige to Serve the Blind

Delighted to see a blog about use of Baldrige Performance Excellence framework and tools in non-profit (Blind Foundation for India) on Blogrige by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), US Department of Commerce - courtesy Dawn M. Bailey, NIST.

How a Charity is Using Baldrige to Serve the Blind | Blogrige The Official Baldrige Blog

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How a Charity is Using Baldrige to Serve the Blind

Baldrige Focus Quality Tools to Manage a Non-Profit Organization

This blog post is in response to June 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "Using Quality Tools in Everyday Life".

In 1989, we established "Blind Foundation for India (BFI)" in Naperville, Illinois, USA as 501 (c) (3) charitable organization to serve over 15 million blind people in India. The BFI Mission is to prevent and cure blindness and educate and rehabilitate permanently blind people in India. India is home to one third of world's blind population.

Working in the quality management area at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Naperville, IL and being familiar with the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, we decided to use various quality tools to manage BFI right from its inception.

• Leadership - Vision, Mission, Values, Ethics, Governance, Social Responsibility, Lean Board of Directors (6 members), PDSA

• Strategic Planning - SWOT Analysis, Balanced Scorecard, and Hoshin Planning

• Customer Focus - Voice of the Customer (VOC), single yearly update to donors (Lean)

• Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management - Benchmarking with other non-profit organizations

• Workforce Focus - Recognition of Donors and Volunteers

• Operations Focus - Brainstorming, Affinity Diagram, Pareto Principle, Ishikawa Diagram, Lean, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), Process Mapping, SIPOC, Problem Solving, Medical Partner development in India

• Results - Feedback Reports to Donors, Gantt Chart, Critical Path Method (CPM), Risk Matrix

Use of the above mentioned tools have served BFI well for the last 26 plus years. So far, the BFI team has raised over $4.0 million and performed 125,000 free Cataract operations, donated 10,000 Braille kits to blind children for their education, and funded 115 vans to transport doctors and patients. Additionally, on the prevention front, examined eyesight of over 750,000 school-going children and provided necessary interventions such as eye drops, glasses, Vitamin A, and in rare cases Cataract removal. 

For more information on BFI, visit: http://www.blindfoundation.org

You can also listen to my TEDxIIT Chicago talk on "Exponential Power of the Gift of Giving" at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fmkivYcVg&feature=share

Bottom line is, quality tools find application in our day-to-day life. We need to proactively use quality tools as appropriate to achieve desired results.

I am looking forward to your experience using quality tools in everyday life.

What's the Future of Quality?

This blog post is in response to May 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "What's the Future of Quality?".

The 2015 Future of Quality report is entitled “Quality Throughout.” After review of the 2015 Future of Quality report, I selected Health Care sector. The report shares an inspiring story of Dr. Devi Shetty, a renowned cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Health, India. He offered his view of challenges facing any effort to expand care throughout the developing world (see pages 34 to 39 of 2015 Future of Quality report).

The Health Care sector can make tremendous strides here in the USA and also around the world. Being a student of supply chain management, I would say the health care sector is a giant supply chain which is broken and needs major overhaul. There are too many players in the health care supply chain including pharmaceutical and medical device companies, insurance agencies, hospitals, physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), The Joint Commission (TJC), and various regulatory agencies at local, state, and federal levels. Unfortunately, the incentives are misaligned among these supply chain partners leading to local optimizations. Ultimately, the real customer (patient) ends up with a lot of runaround to get proper diagnosis and needed treatment to alleviate his/her sufferings.

In 2014, the US Heath Care cost was $3.8 Trillion with GDP of  $17.42 Trillion. This puts the US health care cost at 21.8% of GDP. Globally, the US spends maximum amount of money on health care, however, the US health care outcomes are not the best in the world.

We can learn best practices from the US Baldrige in Health Care winners since 2002. All 19 winners are listed below including their year of founding in parenthesis. Their Award Application Summaries can be used as Health Care best practices using the link provided. (http://patapsco.nist.gov/Award_Recipients/index.cfm).

         Ø2002 – SSM Health Care, St. Louis, MO (1872)

         Ø2003 – Baptist Hospital, Inc., Pensacola, FL (1951)

          Ø2003 – Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, Kansas City, MO (1882)

          Ø2004 – Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton, Hamilton, NJ (1940)

        Ø2005 – Bronson Methodist Hospital, Kalamazoo, MI (1900)

        Ø2006 – North Mississippi Medical Center, Tupelo, MS (1937)

          Ø2007 – Mercy Health System, Janesville, WI (1989)

          Ø2007 – Sharp HealthCare, San Diego, CA (1955)

          Ø2008 – Poudre Valley Health System, Fort Collins, CO (1925)

Ø2009 – AtlantiCare, Egg Harbor Township, NJ (1975)

Ø2009 – Heartland Health, St. Joseph, MO (1984)

Ø2010 – Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital, Downers Grove, IL (1976)

Ø2011 – Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI (1915)

Ø2011 – Schneck Medical Center, Seymour, IN (1911)

Ø2011– Southcentral Foundation, Anchorage, AK (1982)

Ø2012 – North Mississippi Health Services, Tupelo, MS (1937)

Ø2013 – Sutter Davis Hospital, Davis, CA (1981)

Ø2014 – Hill County Memorial, Fredericksburg, TX (1971)

Ø2014 – St. David’s  HealthCare, Austin, TX (1924)

The definition of Health Care Quality practiced by the above winning organizations are:

       ØCaring and Compassionate Healing
ØProvide the Right Care, in the Right Setting, at the Right Time, at an Affordable Cost
ØPatient Satisfaction/ Delight
ØTimely Health Care Delivery
ØPositive Outcomes
ØMinimum Adverse Incidents (Zero Defects)
ØReduction in Mortality and Morbidity Rates
ØCost Efficacy
ØMeeting Compliance Standards

I look forward to hear your thoughts on Future of Quality in the Health Care Sector.