"The Nudge" (or "Unlocking Potential")
As a young engineer I recall complaining to my manager about an assignment – if I fix “A” than “B” stops working right, but when I change “B” then “C” can’t be kept within specification, etc. He leaned back in his chair, looked me in the eye, and said “You know that’s why we pay you, right?” That simple comment stayed with me for decades – if it was easy, anyone could do it and my job wouldn’t exist – it inspired me to “dig deeper” to try to overcome obstacles throughout my career.
Years later, as a manager myself, I noticed that a promising early-career engineer in my group would show up to our weekly meetings with problems clearly defined, hypotheses validated with rigorous data, and well thought out plans for resolving any issues. Each week I would say, “Yes; that makes sense; go ahead.” One day I said “Y’know, I trust your judgement. Every meeting you come into my office with all your ducks in a row. You don’t need to ask my permission to go do the right thing.” It was a turning point – from solid performer to star. She seemed far more comfortable taking initiative after that conversation, and her career blossomed. She took on increasing responsibilities and today is a trusted Sr. Director. Learn the personalities of your team members - sometimes a single, well-placed comment, or a subtle nudge is all it takes to unlock great potential.
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Over the years we’ve been exposed to Six Sigma, Juran, Deming PDCA, 8D, Dale Carnegie, A3, Shainin, and more. Each technique works pretty well, and has been demonstrated many times in a wide variety of industries and circumstances. At the core they are all essentially the same!
Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
The differences between the paradigms resides in supplementary steps and toolkits. For example, 8D contains the important “In
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Your primary role as a manager is to ensure your team’s success. Internalize this. Make sure your team members know this. Build an environment of trust and collaboration. A direct report of mine would frequently leave me out of the loop as problems escalated, preferring instead to “work harder”. It was clear that he felt uncomfortable delivering bad news to me (his boss) when things were not going according to plan. Let me tell you the rest of the story.
