Previously we challenged you to “Decide if your company really wants to improve quality!” This week we’ll reveal how a company can de-emphasize quality without even realizing, and what to do about it. Quality is often viewed very differently from company leadership and various functional groups. Making strides in Quality requires such an uphill battle of incremental improvements and constant pushing & aligning of functional teams. Quality is rarely a topic of management meetings and metrics often lack quality improvement goals. It is as if leadership says “Quality’s not that important”. Follow these steps to regain your quality focus, and to drive several strategic and tactical changes to turn things around at your company.

Remote work - you love it for the flexibility, convenience, and time & cost savings, but have you thought about the longer term impact it's having on your career advancement? As we all know, the world has changed. Working from home several days per week (or working in a different city from your teammates) means that the traditional informal mentoring system has broken down. Face to face interactions are far less frequent and spontaneously bumping into someone is even rarer. That way of expanding skills and influence simply doesn't exist anymore. To deal with this problem, actively cultivate a mentor-protégé relationship with your manager, senior colleague, or external coaches from CAEDENCE. And if you’re a manager, facilitate these relationships with your team.

Making a customer presentation requires significant planning and coordination. Your team will need to address the following questions and actions: -What is the reason for meeting? -What topics will be discussed? -What information is required? -Collect relevant info. -Analyze information & draw conclusions. -Organize storyline. -Integrate materials. -Iterate and finalize. -Fine tune presentation. Commonly missed areas that are critical to success include: -Agreeing on the agenda with the internal team. -Agreeing on the agenda with the customer to set expectations prior to the meeting. -Team members taking ownership of their contributions to the overall deck. -Incomplete, confusing, or missing Journey Map™ -Providing the deck to the customer 1 day prior to the meeting.

A problem we see all too often is teams not finding the right balance between information-gathering and decision-making. Some teams take unwarranted leaps with nowhere near enough relevant information, driven by real or imagined deadlines, thus inadvertently taking on huge risks. Other teams become “stuck” – unable to make progress because they are (rightly) motivated to be very rigorous, but lose track of their schedule obligations; this is “analysis paralysis”, which also puts projects at risk. We’ve developed the heuristic shown in this infographic based on our experience in automotive, aerospace, heavy vehicle, semiconductor, electronics, and other industries to help teams find the right balance between schedule pressure and rigor.

Successful people are distinguished from unsuccessful people not by consistent self-motivation, but by sustained self-discipline over time. No matter how motivated you are, every role comes with undesirable tasks, and every person has “bad days” sometimes. Of course, progress is easier (and more fun) when people and teams are motivated, but you cannot rely on motivation alone to get the job done. Self-discipline is the ability to pursue what you think is right, despite temptations to abandon it. The take-away lesson: Don’t wait for motivation - make it a point to make (at least a little) progress toward your top priorities each and every day (it adds up!).

Leadership isn’t developed in a vacuum – as managers, we need to foster the development of leadership skills and give people opportunities (and support) to thrive in challenging positions. We’ve used this approach successfully for many years in different organizations. It takes a little courage to hand over the reins (they won’t do things the same way as you, and probably not as well, at least at first), but it’s well worth it!

People will do what they’re being measured on without regard for the big picture. And, to avoid non-productive “local optimizations”, it is essential to have a designated champion with the authority to hold people accountable to the overarching goal.

Language and word choice influence thinking and behavior! Here are two examples.

Most major accomplishments throughout human history have required dedication to a mission: traveling to the moon, winning a major sports championship, writing a novel, or painting a great work of art. Completing a significant project at work is no different. A brilliant project manager I had the pleasure of working with used to say, “The mission is the mission.” I love this expression because it encapsulates so much of the focus and drive that made the teams he led so consistently successful.