THE CAEDENCE BLOG

Why isn't my team taking action on this hot issue?

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Why isn't my team taking action on this hot issue?

Why isn't my team taking action on this hot issue? You might be using the wrong mode of communicating.

Just because you delivered your message does not mean it was received!

If you want your message to land, it's essential to select the correct mode of communication. What's the correct mode? It depends.

Communication methods can be broadly classified into 2 categories: "asynchronous" (two or more events not happening at the same time) and "synchronous" (occurring at the same time). In this context, the events we're referring to are: when the message is delivered, and when it is received. Email and text are asynchronous, while meetings and calls are synchronous.

The key characteristics of asynchronous modes like email and text are: People get the information when (and if) they read it. Your intended message may be missed, delayed, or misinterpreted. Feedback from recipients can fragment into multiple threads.

Asynchronous communication does have its place. It's best for: Pre-meeting alignment, including providing an agenda & distributing data for review, and post-meeting summaries like meeting minutes & action item lists. Asynchronous modes are terrible at conveying urgency or calming emotion.

In contrast, consider synchronous modes like online meetings and teleconferencing. Communicating by these methods, everyone gets the same info at the same time and feedback from participants comes real-time and is heard by everyone.

Synchronous communication is best for analysis, review, & debate, decision-making, and conveying urgency. It's not good for communicating large data sets or leaving a "paper trail".

Face-to-face in-person is the ultimate form of synchronous communication because it adds advantages over online meetings and calls. In person, you can "read the room”, picking up on body language and other non-verbal cues to tailor your delivery and messaging on the fly. For technical projects, in-person allows you to see a production process or prototype design with a level of depth that remote communication just can't do.

In-person synchronous communication is best for ensuring engagement, building relationships, calming emotion, seeing parts and witnessing processes. It has the same drawbacks as the other synchronous modes.

There is no single "best" mode of communicating, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Want to share a data set for review? Email it. Want to rally a team to deal with a crisis? Have a meeting (in person, if possible).

Communicating with clarity and influence at all organizational levels and with customers is a hallmark of effective teams, a key career differentiator, and a CAEDENCE Consulting LLC specialty. Our novel, highlight interactive, role-play based workshop will equip your team to communicate effectively even under the toughest, highest-pressure circumstances. Our experts will fine tune that mission-critical management presentation for you to have maximum impact.

How can I impact product quality when I'm not the one building the product?

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:00:00 GMT

How can I impact product quality when I'm not the one building the product?

How can I impact product quality when I'm not the one building the product? Your decisions and actions as managers and engineers have a huge impact on quality!

“Quality does not happen by accident.”

- Joseph Juran, Romanian-American management consultant and engineer

Operations Manager: "We've had a lot of scrap on the production line this month." Engineer: "Well, the operators keep making mistakes." If this bit of dialogue sounds familiar, read on.

Joseph Juran analyzed numerous studies across many industries. He found errors were:

operator-controllable: 20%
engineering*-controllable: 80%

*Juran actually wrote "management" rather than "engineering", but I've always found that wording just gives the engineers another way to duck accountability. They can't blame the operators for issues anymore, but now they can blame management. And, for sure, management plays an absolutely essential role. But for the purposes of this post, we're going to focus on the example of a physical production process, where the process, manufacturing, and design engineers have an outsized influence on how the operation runs.

The late Joseph Juran remains an icon in quality circles, and for good reason. His philosophy (that quality should be managed as an integral part of business strategy involving all levels of leadership) was massively influential in establishing Japanese electronics and automotive dominance in the 1970's-1990's. His teachings were subsequently adopted by companies everywhere. (I first encountered them at Texas Instruments in the mid-90's). And they remain highly relevant to this day.

Juran realized that all defects can be classified as "operator-controllable" or “engineering (management)-controllable".

Defects are "operator-controllable" if operators have the following 3 things:

A way of knowing exactly what is expected of them e.g., clear process specifications and visual aids, comprehensive training, etc.
A way to know their actual performance against the expectation e.g. visual inspection or measurements by themselves, or by others communicated to them, etc.
A way to adjust what they are doing if it is not meeting the expectation e.g. knobs on a machine, pressing harder on an assembly, etc.

Only if all 3 conditions are met with no exceptions do operators have everything they need to do good work. If defects occur anyway, they are classified as "operator-controllable".

If any of the above criteria have not been met, it is because the engineering (management) job is not complete. In that case, resulting defects are classified as “engineering controllable".

“Engineering" includes all functions who are not touch-labor: process engineers, design engineers, project managers, technicians, quality assurance, line supervisors, managers, etc.

If you extend the thinking beyond hands-on manufacturing to include business processes, product development, supplier management, and other practices within a business, you can see why Juran chose the word "management". If errors are occurring in ANY type of process, look first to the designer of the process, not to the person executing the process.

More about Juran:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M._Juran

Do you realize people may dislike you immediately?

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 15:00:00 GMT

Do you realize people may dislike you immediately?

Networking and communication build and sustain the relationships that make business work. Dropping the ball in any one of these areas would be a real career progress blocker.

These are the 5 reasons people will dislike you within minutes:

1. Not demonstrating real empathy

Did you ever immediately respond with an experience similar to the person speaking? It may feel like you're confirming a similarity, but it can come across as one-upmanship and a lack of empathy. Instead, show genuine interest by asking follow up questions.

2. Being impatient

Have you found yourself jumping into a conversation before the other person has finished talking? You might think you're showing enthusiasm, but you're sending disrespectful signals that you think what you have to say is more important. Patience is a better approach. Listen well, pause, and ask relevant questions. Once you've understood their point, then it may be appropriate to respond.

3. Acting like a know-it-all

While you might indeed be more knowledgeable than the person speaking, interjecting "Well, ACTUALLY..." isn't going to win anyone over. Being right isn't the goal of conversation, being friendly and likeable builds lasting relationships. It's okay to disagree, but do it tactfully, and when possible, privately.

4. Constantly complaining

There's always plenty to complain about, but it's the go-to move of the lazy conversationalist. It's boring and sucks the energy from the room. Instead, find areas of common interest that people can get excited about. You want them to look forward to talking with you, not to dread it.

5. Paying attention to your phone

Okay, we've all done it, but when you're standing in front of someone, checking your phone (or worse, interacting with it), it signals that you're looking to get out of the conversation. ("Maybe something more important or interesting has popped up.") Be present, connect with the person you're talking with. Those notifications can wait a few minutes.

It takes a bit of practice, but avoiding these bad habits will pay dividends in your networking, project execution, and leadership.

What are 5 Skills People Learn Too Late?

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:00:00 GMT

What are 5 Skills People Learn Too Late?

You worked hard to get where you are. But the harsh reality is that the skills you learned in school are only a fraction of what your employer needs from you. The skills you're lacking will hold you back.

If you follow the typical learning curve, you might be ready to make significant contributions in a few years. It's worse than that: Every day, AI is getting better and better at the skills you were taught.

Mastering the missing skills quickly maximizes your productivity and influence, which in turn enhances both job security and advancement potential.

Here's our top 5 list of skills every professional should strive to master as early in their career as possible:

(1) GOAL SETTING, PRIORITIZATION, AND TIME MANAGEMENT:

This skillset is absolutely fundamental to every professional and technical role in every business. Lots of people think they're good at multi-tasking; they aren't. Understanding which work really matters, avoiding distraction, and driving asks to completion before moving on are the foundation of productivity.

(2) STRUCTURED PROBLEM SOLVING METHODS & TOOLS:

The key here is "structured". We see people jump to conclusions based on assumptions all the time; it rarely ends well. Structured approaches like 8D, Six Sigma, CAPA, etc. provide guidance to ensure the problem is clearly defined, investigations are rigorous, and solutions are permanent.

(3) INFLUENTIAL COMMUNICATION:

At the intersection of clarity and credibility, this skill requires applying empathy to build trust, paying attention to detail, and meeting people at their level of understanding.

(4) PROJECT MANAGEMENT INCLUDING SCOPE CREEP MANAGEMENT:

A project is an enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. Businesses are full of projects large and small. Coordinating resources, keeping people on track, ensuring metrics are achieved, mitigating risks, and dealing with the seemingly inevitable tendency of customers and stakeholders to change expectations or add requirements after kickoff are essential to success.

(5) UNDERSTANDING CASH FLOW ANALYSIS:

No matter your role, the better you understand how money flows through your business, the better decisions you'll be able to make, and the better equipped you'll be to have meaningful conversation with management.

What should you share with every early-career engineer you know?

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 18:59:03 GMT

What should you share with every early-career engineer you know?

A very smart and eager young engineer I was mentoring asked me to review a drawing. They had specified extremely tight tolerances across the board. With a short conversation, I completely re-shaped their understanding of the role of the design engineer.

Me: “Why are these tolerances so tight?” / A: “I want the best part we can get.”

Me: “But what tolerances are necessary for the part to perform its function without issues?” / A: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Can any suppliers achieve the tolerances you have specified?” / A: “I haven’t checked.”

I explained that the goal in designing any component was to make it perform flawlessly at the best cost and with the surest supply. Overly tight specifications would make it harder to find suppliers who could make the part and would drive up costs.

After that interaction, their entire approach changed. They were diligent with tolerance stack studies and simulations to determine the loosest tolerances that would still get the job done. As they say, “Anybody can make it work, it takes an engineer to make it work on a budget.”

How do I effectively respond to a customer request?

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 14:00:00 GMT

How do I effectively respond to a customer request?

Preparing for a presentation is vital in enabling team members to convey critical points, and influence outcomes with customers and management. Struggling teams have disorganized information, lists of actions without clear purpose, and lack a cohesive narrative.

When the storyline is unclear or missing, time is wasted responding to questions as the audience desperately tries to figure out the meaning of what is being said (distracting from meaningful discussion).

How good are you at conveying a coherent narrative? Probably not as good as you think!

Here are the steps involved in preparing to tell a clear story::

Define “Why is the question being asked?” The customer asked a question motivating your update. If you don't understand why they asked, you won't be able to give them what they need in a form they'll understand.

Outline “What is needed to answer it?”. Do you need data? Do you need to speak to colleagues to gather opinions? How can you put yourself in a position to answer the question fully?

Collect relevant information. Compile test results, data, expert inputs, statistical analyses, etc.. Make sure your info is relevant to the question at hand.

Analyze. "Conclusions" are different from "results". Results simply report what happened (e.g., group A performed 10% better in strength testing than group B). Conclusions convey the meaning of the results (e.g., on the basis of the strength testing, we recommend using the group A material for improved safety margin, even though it will increase unit cost by 5%).

Organize Your Narrative. The info must be sequenced to bring the audience through the details without getting lost. Organize the information into a distinct path starting with context, and conclusions, then filling in the results supporting the conclusions.

Create Slides or Reports. Use the conclusion as your title; don’t make the listener wait and wonder. Include annotated graphs & charts to clarify. Know that your slides, reports, and emails will be forwarded to people beyond the working project team. If your work can't be understood by reading (without you there to explain it), then it's not clear enough.

Use templates. A template can align the audience to a consistent flow of info and help clarify. This helps the customer or management understand more quickly and reduces time spent figuring things out.

Practice. Take time to practice your presentation, review content with team members beforehand, and refine your message. Practice may not make perfect, but it sure can help.

Following these steps will dramatically improve your ability to communicate effectively with customers and management. Influential communication is a career enhancer, and it's one of the areas we're most frequently asked to coach.

What’s the Nuanced Formula for Managing Tough Customers?

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 14:00:00 GMT

What’s the Nuanced Formula for Managing Tough Customers?

When customer tensions rise, the right approach can turn friction into collaboration. At CAEDENCE, we call it the 3C’s: Calm, Clarify, Control. Here’s how each pillar elevates your customer communication and accelerates issue resolution.

1. Calm the Emotional Charge

Listen Actively, mirror their concerns, and pause before responding.
Demonstrate Empathy “I can see why this impacts you; that matters to us.”
Ground the Conversation: Keep your tone steady and focused on solutions, never defensiveness.

2. Clarify to Reduce Cognitive Load

Simplify Complex Information: Break data into bullet points, diagrams, or simple analogies.
Confirm Understanding: Ask, “Does this make sense?” and invite questions.
Align Expectations: Restate agreed priorities before moving on.

3. Control the Path to Resolution

Define Clear Roles and Next Steps: Who does what by when? Spell it out.
Schedule Actions: Set realistic deadlines and checkpoints.
Guide the Narrative: Recap decisions, document commitments, and share updates promptly.

Mastering these 3 pillars transforms customer conflict into lasting trust. Which “C” do you rely on most when conversations get tough?

Will AI Replace Direct Customer Communication? Absolutely Not!

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:00:00 GMT

Will AI Replace Direct Customer Communication? Absolutely Not!

In an age of chatbots and algorithms, the highest-impact discussions still happen person-to-person. Customer communication is a high-touch, highly strategic activity that drives satisfaction, profitability, and shareholder value. Here’s why AI can’t do it alone and what human-led dialogue adds to the mix.

1. Storytelling that Resonates

Weave your customer’s journey into a narrative they recognize
Use real-world examples and shared experiences to build empathy
Link challenges to outcomes with memorable, personal stories from lived experience

2. Influence through Authenticity

Show genuine curiosity about their needs and constraints
Adapt your tone and approach to match their communication style
Leverage credibility built from past successes and proven methods

3. Trust Earned in the Moment

Read subtle cues: tone, hesitation, follow-up questions and respond in real time
Demonstrate reliability by honoring commitments promptly
Acknowledge uncertainties and co-create solutions together

4. Nuance Beyond the Data

Blend facts with emotional intelligence to frame compelling insights
Prioritize context over raw metrics; every customer’s situation is unique
Navigate complex negotiations with tact; be flexible and use judgement when applying templates

AI can streamline data gathering and suggest responses, but it can’t replicate the human touchpoints that shape long-term partnerships. The most successful teams blend technology with refined communication skills to deliver exceptional experiences.

What are the top 5 Secrets to Success Managing Tough B2B Customers?

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 04:00:00 GMT

What are the top 5 Secrets to Success Managing Tough B2B Customers?

No one ever said B2B customer relationships would be a breeze, especially when deadlines loom and stakes are high. Over the years, we’ve navigated hundreds of challenging accounts and distilled five secrets that consistently turn friction into forward motion.

1. Listen to Understand

Pause all assumptions and let your customer speak first
Mirror their priorities back: “So your top concern is…”
Validate feelings before diving into solutions

2. Frame the Issue Clearly

Break down complex problems into simple, shared definitions
Use visual aids to map pain points
Confirm alignment: “Does that capture the challenge we need to solve?”

3. Co-Create the Solution

Involve your customer in brainstorming sessions
Offer 2–3 vetted options, not just one “perfect” plan
Invite feedback on feasibility, risks, and timelines

4. Commit and Document

Spell out who’s responsible for each action item and by when
Send a concise summary email within hours of your call
Keep commitments visible in a shared project tracker

5. Reflect and Iterate

Schedule a quick checkpoint one week after resolution
Ask: “What went well? Where can we improve?”
Use insights to refine your playbook for next time

Which secret resonates most when you’re in a tough customer conversation?

The Beauty of Questions – How can I develop my team?

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 14:18:51 GMT

The Beauty of Questions – How can I develop my team?

Ever notice how a quick fix from the top can feel like a shortcut, but it ends up stunting your team’s growth?

When managers rush to answers, they inadvertently:

Undermine critical thinking
Reduce team ownership
Signal that questions slow things down, leaving the impression that the team shouldn't question things

Instead of supplying the solution, great leaders ask insightful questions. Over time, your team learns to recognize your inquiry patterns, anticipates them, and comes primed with data, options, and creative approaches.

Questions like:

“What outcomes are we really chasing here?”
“What assumptions are we making?”
“How might we validate that idea before building it?

They shift the expectation from “Here’s the answer” to “Let’s uncover the answer together.”

When managers have all the solutions, team members may hesitate to speak up (even if they have better ideas or new data). Psychological safety is fragile. It thrives on encouragement, not directives.

Next time you’re tempted to swoop in with your own fix, pause and ask yourself:

What am I assuming?
What questions could help my team discover a better path?
Am I inviting dissent, or shutting it down?

Cultivating curiosity through questions isn’t just a leadership nicety, it’s a game-changer for innovation, ownership, and team confidence.

What’s one powerful question you’ve used to unlock new thinking in your team?

What is the biggest misconception in selecting a problem solving methodology?

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 20:12:03 GMT

The Biggest Misconception in Selecting a Problem Solving Methodology

Here at CAEDENCE we’re big fans of structured problem-solving. A quick search will yield at least half a dozen problem-solving methodologies. As a rule, adherents to each one will claim it’s the best one, and sell it as the latest ”shiny object”. Invariably, they’ll disparage all the other methods. That’s nonsense!

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 “Interim Containment Action” step (to protect the customer from the symptoms of the issue before the root cause is known) that is not generally seen among the other systems. Meanwhile, Six Sigma is loaded with statistical data analysis tools generally absent from the others. Shainin provides good tools around looking at best and worst performers and component swaps to find the issue. These are apparent but not critical differences - hardly reason to reject any approach outright.

To become the most effective problem solver you can be, avoid zealotry – use whichever of the paradigm you prefer (after all, the logic and steps are so similar) and borrow supplementary steps and tools as-needed from any of the other approaches - mix and match as needed. Remember, your goal is to solve problems – it would be foolish to ignore a potentially helpful tool because it happened to be part of a different toolkit. Use what works best for your particular situation.

Note: If you are implementing structured problem-solving across an organization, we do recommend you pick one paradigm as “primary” - this is because each approach comes with unique jargon and it can be confusing when there are several phrases for what is essentially the same concept - you want to make sure your team members can communicate seamlessly. You can (and should) introduce the supplementary steps or specific tools from the rival systems as-needed, but do it within the framework of your chosen primary approach.

We’re here to help solve your toughest problems, and set up systems to prevent future problems. Message us any time.

What can I do if poor problem solving execution is costing me a fortune?

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 20:01:59 GMT

What can I do if poor problem solving execution is costing me a fortune?

When ineffective problem-solving costs a fortune, it impacts your business and your bottom line.

Your team is marching through the tools of your company's chosen problem-solving approach. This is time not spent on growing your business or delivering cost reductions. Yet your customers are suffering, and they're not shy about letting you know it! Why isn't it working? Where's the disconnect?

Executed correctly, any of the industry-accepted problem-solving approaches can eventually get your team to a suitable solution. After all, each method follows essentially the same underlying logic. The various paradigms differ only in their specific toolkits and in which elements of the problem-solving process they emphasize. Your company's chosen approach isn't the problem - it's how your team is executing. What's provoking your customers to escalations and painful daily update calls is lapses in communication, both internal and customer-facing.

Visual 8D™/Visual CAPA™ is the answer. Readily customizable to your company's preferred paradigm and terminology, our straightforward Powerpoint-based templates guide teams through ANY problem-solving process while seamlessly producing easy-to-follow visual outputs that customers love. Leveraging the similarity of the most popular issue-resolution approaches, V8D™/V-CAPA™ integrates seamlessly into your systems without disruption. There's no need to scrap or re-invent your chosen approach and there's no need to retrain your staff.

V8D™/V-CAPA™ facilitates internal planning and communication, allowing teams to move much faster. There's no extra work; the normal problem-solving work products are easily created using simple templates that both guide critical thinking. Work products come out in a customer-friendly, easy to follow format. Customers who can see that your team is doing all the right things to protect them and resolve their issue remain calm and confident. This means fewer escalations and much less contentious meetings. It also means getting your team back to delivering your top priorities.

How do I improve my team's speed during problem solving?

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 19:56:14 GMT

Are your teams not fast enough during problem solving?

Does your team struggle to deliver the kind of rapid and effective problem-solving your business requires? Can you really afford the unhappy customers, wasted engineering hours, cost of poor quality, and lost opportunities?

Teams can improve their problem solving and issue resolution cycle time with Visual 8D™ / Visual CAPA™.

THE PAIN: An issue-resolution team had wrestled with a complicated problem for 18 months without finding the root cause. It was costing millions in time wasted on inconclusive tests and unhelpful customer update meetings. It was distracting the team from new product development and cost reduction priorities. It was an expensive mess!

THE CAUSE: Although they used traditional tools like Is / Is Not, 5-Why, and Fishbone, the team lacked the structure to clarify and sequence their hypotheses – they were chasing every random idea and getting nowhere. Without strong linkage between hypothesis and test plan, they weren't defining effective tests to rule-in or rule-out ideas and establish root cause. Without the right structure they were never going to converge on a solution.

THE VISION: We needed a way to ensure both the internal and customer teams could see the connections between hypotheses and actions, the sequencing of those actions, and progress. Everyone had to understand how their activity was contributing to the determination of the root cause (or change direction if it wasn't). How could we organize the team and the work to ensure focus on key actions that drive root cause determination?

THE SOLUTION: By applying Visual 8D™ / Visual CAPA™ the root cause was found within just 3 months - saving over 75% of the cycle time to closure. Visual 8D™/Visual CAPA™ was simple to customize to the company's problem-solving paradigm and terminology. The straightforward templates guided the team through the problem-solving process while seamlessly producing easy-to-follow visual outputs that customers love.

Your company's chosen approach isn't the problem - it's how your team is executing. V8D™/V-CAPA™ facilitates internal planning, communication, and execution, allowing teams to move much faster.

How do you satisfy customers during issue resolution?

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 19:50:57 GMT

How do you satisfy customers during issue resolution?

You satisfy annoyed customers with the Visual 8D™ / Visual CAPA™.

Negative customer experiences can destroy your business! Have you been faced with any angry customers this year? If so, read on.

THE PAIN: I recall thinking during one particular unresolved quality issue: “Not again! 10AM, time to get screamed at by the customer.” My team's daily update calls were a total disaster.

THE CAUSE: Our team was just reacting to random customer questions. Meeting agendas were unclear. The customer didn't understand our action plan. The customer began driving the action, not us. We'd lost control of the issue response!

THE VISION: If only we had been able to take charge, showing curated agendas, communicating not just action lists but visual diagrams to clarify our plans and demonstrate the evidence of our progress. We needed a better way!

THE SOLUTION: CAEDENCE's Visual 8D™ / Visual CAPA™ enhanced problem-solving toolkit was the answer. It integrated seamlessly with our existing problem-solving approach and systems. The customer loved it! Without any extra effort, my team was instantly creating work products the customer could understand and an update storyline they could have confidence in.

It's not your customer's bad attitude, it's how you're communicating your approach to issue resolution.

How do I build trust with my team?

Fri, 09 May 2025 21:23:22 GMT

Reality Check

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.

One day at our weekly sit-down, I explained that my role as manager was to facilitate his success, but to do that effectively I needed to know what was going on, emphasizing that when I heard nothing, what I imagined was almost certainly far worse than what was actually happening. Therefore, it would be better for him to make sure I had a clear grasp on the reality of the situation, even if things were not perfect. Plus, if we could openly discuss bad news, we could jointly develop ideas and solutions to fix the problem.

At the end of our talk, in the small notebook he always carried around he jotted down a single word – “Reality”. Our collaboration improved significantly after that day.

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.

Want it done? – schedule it!

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:44:22 GMT

Want it done? – schedule it!

I was struggling to get updates from my regional project management directors. We had asked each region to submit their monthly written updates by the first week of the following month. Some sites were chronically missing the deadline and there was a lack of consistency across all sites.

Sensing my frustration at having to constantly repeat my (apparently futile) requests to the team to provide their updates consistently, my boss suggested, “If you want something done, schedule it.”

He meant that if updates are needed at a specific time, actually schedule them directly on people's calendars, making the expectation and reminder "automatic" each month, and emphasizing the importance of the updates by turning them into meetings – people tend not to show up empty handed to meetings where they're expected to present.

Scheduling removed a bit of "friction" and created a sense of urgency that resulted in real progress. Amazingly, they didn’t miss any updates after that point!

Sometimes a simple nudge in the right direction can have a major impact on group behavior.

Developing leaders – When should you delegate?

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:39:20 GMT

Developing leaders – When should you delegate?

One of the best bits of advice I received when I first became a manager was to “delegate a task when your team member is 70% as good at it as you are, not 99%.”

Many times, people are promoted to management positions because of their strong performance as individual contributors, but then they’re shocked to learn that a whole separate set of skills is required to succeed in their new role. Delegation is high on this list of new skills.

Delegation means handing off tasks for someone else to do them. A common mistake is to only hand off a task when the team member is as good as you are at it. This is a trap! While it may seem like a good idea to protect the quality of the task, it doesn’t work in practice – here's why:

First, if you continue to perform the individual contributor tasks, you won’t have sufficient time to perform your new manager tasks (the one’s you’re being measured on) and your performance will suffer.

Second, a major part of your managerial assignment is to develop your team members. They will learn best by doing – you have to let them try. Most people will “step up” in the face of a new challenge. By delegating a task you’re great at, you challenge the team member to learn. Sure, they’ll make some mistakes the first few times, but you’ll be there to course-correct and mentor.

Importantly, by handing off some of your old responsibilities in this way, your time will be freed up to learn the new tasks and skills that will enhance your career growth.

Delegating is a skill. It requires a certain amount of trust in your team members and a certain amount of faith that they’ll be able to pick up the ball and run with it. By expanding their skills, you improve the versatility and performance of your team (and as a manger, the performance of your team is what you are being measured on) and you improve your capacity to learn and to move on to bigger and better things.

Agile Project Planning - what are the planning myths?

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 14:00:00 GMT

Agile Project Planning - what are the planning myths?

Don’t be fooled by the latest fad in project management, Agile. Agile is pitched as a revolutionary method, but the fact is, it simply DOES NOT GET THE RESULTS that visual waterfall approaches do. Period.

We see team after team fail using Agile methods, for very specific reasons. Let’s look at the painful TRUTHs of using Agile methods:

To optimize project speed, a variety of tools are needed, not just sprints and standup meetings. Mapping the critical path, finding all dependencies, and visually laying out the path forward are all critical elements of success. In fact, they are absolutely REQUIRED to execute effectively and achieve goals. This is true even for highly innovative projects where details are not known a priori and flexibility is needed. The Agile methodology strips away some of the most critical, proven project management tools, leaving teams "flying blind". This leads to unnecessary chaos that radically slows progress.

All planning techniques must adapt to change. Agile is not a magical method that allows for teams to react to change in a way that other methods do not. The reality is that all project teams must work dynamically. If a change to intermediate or end goals is needed, or an innovation or market shift drives a change of direction, teams must re-scope and get the change immediately into the planning. (That is, if they cannot eliminate or defer the scope creep.)

Agile tools are nothing new. In fact, they're just a rebranded subset of techniques the best project managers have been using for decades. For example, sprints serve to keep the team focused on achieving near-term deliverables. Effective PM's always keep near term deliverables front-and-center and hold people accountable to the deadlines. Another example is the stand-up meeting, again, something effective PM's have always used for rapid-fire daily updates to drive urgency without getting bogged down. Standup meetings are only truly effective within the context of a detailed plan – team members must understand and report on those actions due each week to achieve the critical path milestone deadlines.

Agile project management DOES NOT provide visibility to top-level project goals and dependencies among deliverables. Sprints are fine, but projects are often complex marathons. A team making sprints without seeing the master plan and context is just spinning its wheels. Teams that sprint from point to point without a clear idea of the big-picture route lose their way, wasting precious time and resources. Agile methods completely fail to "connect the dots" among dependencies (the waterfall), leading to avoidable delays. Sadly, we see it all the time.

Action is not the same as progress. Agile is deceptive because it provides the illusion of speed, while actually causing confusion, thereby slowing things down. Agile methods keep teams busy, but their activity is often not aligned with top-level project goals. Misaligned actions that don't drive toward the desired business goals are the very definition of wasted resources.

Team organization is TERRIBLE with Agile. Teams get stuck closing out tickets with no vision of the overall project roadmap. It's like a fog has descended – no one can explain the importance of assigned deliverables and no one is clear on what the milestones are. This leads to a lack of accountability for results. How many software teams have you tried to manage where all actions are hidden inside a ticketing tool (such as Jira), resulting in poor ability to predict outcomes or track progress to deadlines, and no visibility to recognize if things are going off track so you can quickly course-correct? We have to re-set teams all the time and generate highly visible plans using waterfall techniques to drive alignment, accountability, and progress.

In summary, don’t let your organization be fooled by the latest fad in project management. Re-branding a subset of project management tools into “Agile” is not a novel magic bullet. In fact, it's entirely counterproductive. Project managers navigate the toughest of projects using ALL of the best tools available; when done right, they always include a waterfall approach that drives visibility and accountability.

"Plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable." – Dwight Eisenhower

Visual 8D - A Problem Solving Breakthrough

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 14:00:00 GMT

Visual 8D - A Problem Solving Breakthrough

Problem-solving methods haven’t changed in over 20 years, and some methods have been around for 30-50 years without significant improvement. CAEDENCE has released a novel improvement to problem-solving that overcomes shortfalls in existing methods.

Applicable to all structured problem-solving approaches, Visual 8D™ enables teams to execute the familiar problem-solving steps (with no additional effort), while capturing plans and progress in easy-to-follow diagrams. Visual 8D™ puts teams in the position of providing answers to management and customer questions before being asked, resulting in improved control of the situation and minimizing time wasted on extraneous actions.

Backdrop: Communicating effectively is important at all times in business, but perhaps never more so than during issue resolution. When quality problems intensify, the customer applies pressure, management gets upset, and emotions run high. Quality and business leaders need to solve problems faster and improve their customers' experience.

Commonly used in industry, structured problem-solving methods (e.g., 8D, DMAIC, PDCA, etc.) provide structure to drive activity during issue resolution, but the traditional toolkits have a glaring gap – they fail to facilitate clear and timely communication of the critical information needed to maintain customer confidence throughout a crisis. That's where Visual 8D™ really shines!

Ready, Fire, Aim – Why do people and organizations skip to solutions before thinking through the problem?

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 14:00:01 GMT

Ready, Fire, Aim – Why do people and organizations skip to solutions before thinking through the problem?

Being action-oriented is a good thing, right? Well, yes and no. There's a big difference between learning and adjusting quickly ("failing fast") and wasting time and resources by "rushing off half cocked".

Executives and teams alike are eager to be (and be seen) "doing something", but they often fail to recognize the distinction between 'activity' and 'progress'. As a result, they act upon the first reasonable idea that comes along. The trouble with acting on the first reasonable idea is twofold. First, there might have been much better ideas, and second, once you start working on the first idea, you stop looking for the better ones. Outcomes are often sub-optimal – problems not solved, product not launched, etc.

Want to dramatically improve your team's odds of achieving consistently strong outcomes? Next time everyone's ready to run with the first reasonable idea, set aside just 30 minutes and challenge the group with this 3-step process:

Can we think of at least 5 other options? Take 10 minutes to REALLY challenge yourselves with this one. Team members' minds are already falling in love with the first idea and will play tricks on them; they want to go-go-go! Pro tip: Don't just estimate the 10 minutes, use a timer.

What are the risks associated with the first idea? Take 10 minutes to write down reasons why it might not work. Really go at it. Pretend a rival of yours posted the idea on the internet and you want to embarrass them in the comments!

With the final 10 minutes, make a plan. An idea is seductive; if you think it will solve your problem, you become blind to the effort required to pull it off. Create a table of the intermediate actions and milestones between where the team is and completing execution. Add realistic time estimates to the table. Pro tip: Then add 10-50% to each estimated duration.

A variety of proven tools and techniques exist to help teams perform these steps thoroughly and efficiently, but for now, focus on challenging yourself and your team using these 3 10-minute steps. Try it out a couple of times and watch the quality of your ideas (and results) soar! When you're ready to take it to the next level with your team or organization, get in touch – we're here to help.

Team Leadership – who’s in charge?

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 17:36:42 GMT

Team Leadership – who’s in charge?

I was asked to take over the redesign project as lead engineer after a team from another site had struggled and failed to meet the financial target. The assignment came with one condition (which, in hindsight, should have been a big red flag): “Don’t let the original leader know he’s not in charge anymore, we need to keep him engaged.”

As you might have guessed, the subsequent 24 months were not fun. It was nearly impossible to get alignment on any decision. We had so many meetings discussing and re-discussing the same issues ad nauseum. We kept up the pretense and slogged through the work, ultimately delivering a successful cost-reduced redesign. However, if I had it to do over again, I’m quite certain we could have delivered on the goal in half the time if team leadership had been clearly defined.

Management made several fundamental errors with this team:

(1) They should have recognized the original project was not on track and intervened to course-correct much sooner.

(2) They should have trusted the original team leader to act professionally and contribute despite being displaced, rather than feel it necessary to deceive him.

(3) They should have made the leadership responsibilities unambiguous to everyone involved.

This and so many other hard-won lessons have culminated in the approach used in CAEDENCE's "Lead On!™" leadership development program. Check it out here:

https://www.caedenceconsulting.com/services (scroll down and click on Leadership Development Program for Individuals and Groups )

What's the best approach to developing the next generation of leaders?

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 15:00:00 GMT

What's the best approach to developing the next generation of leaders? Polish a Diamond.

Some years ago, a bright young engineer was assigned to my group. He was very capable, energetic, and technically sharp, but a bit “rough around the edges” when it came to dealing with people. He made no secret of his career ambitions (he thought he’d get from entry level to CEO in less than 5 years), and could be kind of pushy rather than persuasive. He was also known to be rather tactless when giving feedback to others. Nevertheless, his potential was apparent.

My job was to “polish the diamond-in-the-rough”, to teach him the soft skills he would need to succeed. I provided one-on-one feedback after attending his meetings to help him see how his abrasive style was holding him back, and to offer some alternative ways of communicating that would not only get the tasks done but also nurture long-term allies who would want to help him again in the future.

I think the best advice I ever gave him was, “If you want to be considered for promotion, the managers and directors have to think of you as a peer.” This comment was a turning point – he really started to internalize that his overly aggressive approach was viewed as a sign of immaturity.

Nowadays, he’s a C-suite executive. A bit late on his 5-year plan perhaps, but likely not achievable at all before my intervention. This and so many other success stories have culminated in the approach used in CAEDENCE's "Lead On!™" leadership development program.

Leading a team? Stack the deck in your favor to optimize collaboration and results!

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 15:00:00 GMT

Leading a team? Stack the deck in your favor to optimize collaboration and results!

I needed advice, and I knew just where to get it - the strongest project manager (PM) I had ever worked with.

We first met when he inherited responsibility for a troubled team (of which I was a member). Within days he had everyone focused on the big-picture objective and “pulling in the same direction”. It soon gelled into one of the highest performing teams I’ve ever had the privilege to be part of – his influence seemed almost magical.

A few years later, both of us were on different projects, and I was leading the resolution of a particularly tricky technical issue for a key customer. My team was chock-full of high performing individual contributors, but it was like herding cats! Everyone had their own idea of what was most important and what to do next. So, I stopped by the PM’s office; I was ready to receive the wisdom. How had he gotten all those people to collaborate so effectively, so quickly, all those years ago?

He said, “Y’know, I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, and that’s the only time that ever happened. Normally you just have to slog through it.” I was CRUSHED!

While there are a lot of great leadership techniques and tips out there, it turns out there is no magic bullet that works every time for every situation. You have to apply the best practices with consistency and integrity. You have to build environments of trust and common purpose. You have to measure and check. Doing so will not guarantee success, but it will stack the deck in your favor, maximizing your chances of succeeding.

Are you keeping your foot on the gas to drive continuous improvement?

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 15:00:00 GMT

Are you keeping your foot on the gas to drive continuous improvement?

Several years ago, the supplier quality engineer at one of our largest customers was a pit bull. His extremely high expectations never relented. Initially the relationship soured due to his daily demands on our performance and response. He was seen as an overbearing, nitpicky task-master. Every day we had updates to make and actions to close.

Over time, we expected his demands to lessen as we improved. This was not the case - he continued to ask for more. He would not let go of his desire for additional improvements. Our performance continued to improve and we began to understand why he was so insistent. After a couple years of work, we established a much stronger relationship and jointly drove new actions. We became a better supplier and our customer was very pleased with our performance. We ended up winning new businesses with that company for years to come.

Continuous improvement in a business is not a one-time action. It comes from a series of smaller actions taken over a long period of time. Driving improvement requires steadfast attention and a drive to achieve excellence. It can take months or years to make permanent improvements and change a culture. In your projects and initiatives, are you keeping your ‘foot on the gas’ to change the long-term outcomes?

What is the right way to structure a cost reduction initiative?

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 15:00:00 GMT

What is the right way to structure a cost reduction initiative?

Leverage CAEDENCE's Engineered Cost Reduction Approach (ECRA)™ - it addresses all aspects of planning and execution and can be easily tailored to suit your needs.

Executing an effective cost reduction initiative goes beyond simply identifying a need, communicating a dollar value, and holding workshops.

Cost reduction initiatives must start with a broader review of gap areas across the entire enterprise (considering existing and acquired sites) and definition of the future state goals. Buy-in must be secured among the key stakeholders and participants. The steps and metrics needed to ensure engagement before, and accountability beyond, the initiative kickoff must be planned.

Three stages are needed to execute a strong cost reduction program:

1) Preparation and Kickoff: Set the overarching strategy, set goals, align stakeholders and teams, and create an execution plan.

2) Site Workshops: Complete needed pre-work, create a pilot program, fine tune the initiative based on the pilot, and define a coordinated rollout plan.

3) Control: It is critical to set up an accountability plan with KPIs and owners, set periodic steering team meetings, and monitor progress.

CAEDENCE can support you every step of the way from program planning to control and accountability. Let us help manage your cost reduction initiative to achieve the optimal results for your company. Our Engineered Cost Reduction Approach (ECRA)™ addresses all aspects of planning and execution. It can be easily tailored to suit your needs.

Ideas are Cheap; Execution is Everything

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:02:31 GMT

Ideas are Cheap; Execution is Everything

Why are ideas cheap? Supply and demand – there are lots of ideas out there – everyone fancies themself an innovator, the supply far outstrips the demand. BUT, coming up with a good idea is only 1% of the success of a business. The hard part remains….

Why does execution matter more? Once an idea is created, there are hundreds of steps needed to turn it into a viable product backed by a viable business model, such as:

Understand the market need
Develop a list of potential customers and engage with them
Create a business plan
Assess financial viability
Develop the idea into a working product or service
Sell it!
Iterate the product/service to perform at the right level
Develop the production process and produce it
Understand distribution and shipping

The big challenge lies in getting over all of these hurdles effectively and efficiently. To succeed, you've got to get to market on time with a high performing product to beat your competition, and you need to do it with the minimum of resources and lowest spend to develop and maintain an advantage. Driving rigor at speed through the product development, marketing and sales, pre-launch, and production ramp processes is what will make your business successful.

Rigor at speed is what CAEDENCE is all about. We improve your bottom line by leading issue resolution & prevention in product development & introduction for your company and supply chain. We address your most pressing issues related to customer satisfaction, product development, launch readiness, quality and manufacturing, business processes, and strategic initiative rollouts. In addition to solving today's challenges, we strengthen your teams and systems for long-term success.

When communicating, what is the best way to ensure your message is received?

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 15:56:07 GMT

When communicating, what is the best way to ensure your message is received?

If you've got a favorite way of communicating (perhaps by text, email, or in-person) that you use most of the time, you are undermining the effectiveness of your communication! If you've ever been frustrated that your team or manager isn't taking action on what you've told them must be done – this post & infographic is for you.

Not all modes of communication are created equal. The way you communicate should be selected based on 3 situational factors:

Who you're communicating with
The gravity of your message
The outcome you're trying to achieve

1) The higher up the organization you go (from your buddy at the next desk to middle management to C-suite to customer) the more formality is expected. You might call your friend "dude", but not your boss' boss.

2) Different types of communication carry more or less weight. Sending someone a text is very different from sending them formal report, which is itself not as weighty as a signed contract. If you want someone to take action, choose a communication type with more "weight". You could easily ignore a text, but you wouldn't ignore a summons.

3) Phone and face-to-face (real or virtual) meetings are "synchronous" modes of communication; everyone gets the same message at the same time and can provide real-time feedback to everyone else.

E-mail and text are "asynchronous" (or out of phase) modes. Information flows in a chain, it isn't received by everyone simultaneously, and it isn't always understood in the same way by each person; feedback takes time and can get muddled in diverging streams.

Each mode has its strengths and weaknesses.

Synchronous modes are great for interactions, managing emotions and relationships, decision-making, getting buy-in and conveying urgency, but they're not a good choice for summarizing a lot of data.

Conversely, asynchronous modes work best for communicating data before a discussion, and for summarizing discussion results, but they're not a good choice for debates, making group decisions, or conveying urgency.

It's really boring to have someone reading a big table or list during a meeting. And it's really hard to get a group rallied to action in an email. A much better approach is emailing the info so people can read through it, and then having a meeting to get people motivated to act.

Choosing the the mode appropriate to your purpose will greatly enhance the impact of your messaging. Choosing the wrong mode can undermine what you're trying to accomplish by communicating.

Introducing the Visual 8D

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 16:01:21 GMT

Introducing the Visual 8D™

Communicating effectively is important at all times in business, but perhaps never more so than during issue resolution. When quality problems intensify, the customer applies pressure, management gets upset, and emotions run high. Quality and business leaders need to solve problems faster and improve their customers' experience.

CAEDENCE has developed a novel improvement to overcome the communication-based shortfalls in existing methods. Applicable to all structured problem-solving approaches, Visual 8D™ enables teams to execute the familiar problem-solving steps (with no additional effort), while capturing plans and progress in easy-to-follow diagrams. Visual 8D™ puts teams in the position of providing answers to management and customer questions before being asked, resulting in improved control of the situation and minimizing time wasted on extraneous actions.

What are the unseen dangers in NPD / NPI?

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:00:00 GMT

What are the unseen dangers in NPD / NPI?

Danger is lurking around every corner in a new product development / new product introduction project. Avoidable risks wind up blindsiding teams, always at the worst possible moment.

Risks blow up into problems because teams misjudge their nature and origin, and lack the right tools and processes to effectively identify, assess, and mitigate them.

Let CAEDENCE introduce you to a systematic approach and toolkit for managing and reducing risk in new product development and introduction.

De-Risk It – What are the best tools to reduce risk in NPD / NPI?

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 15:00:00 GMT

De-Risk It – What are the best tools to reduce risk in NPD / NPI?

There are dozens of tools for reducing risk in new product development and introduction. We know because we've used them to successfully launch dozens of new products in highly demanding industries like automotive and aerospace.

Let CAEDENCE show you a few of our favorite tools that you can use immediately to dramatically reduce the chances of disaster on your next NPD/NPI project.

Risky Business – What does unmanaged risk do to your projects?

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 14:00:00 GMT

Risky Business – What does unmanaged risk do to your projects?

Risk is inherent in new product development and introduction.

Regardless of your personal risk tolerance, it's critical to understand that unmanaged risk could ruin your business.

We're not saying "don't take risks". We're saying "take risks with your eyes open".

All new product products will involve "Necessary" or "Intentional" risk taking. After all, you're doing something that hasn't been done before. These risks are required to achieve the desired payoff. They are “calculated risks”, based on the potential return. But they still need to be managed and mitigated!

Worse are the "Unnecessary" or "Unintentional" risks people take. These result from inattention or inexperience. They are largely predictable because they tend to fall into the same categories regardless of the industry or type of product. These risks are avoidable & remediable using proven tactics & tools.

Let CAEDENCE introduce you to a systematic approach and toolkit for managing and reducing risk in new product development and introduction.

What are the Top 5 Hidden Risks in New Product Development?

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 23:52:46 GMT

What are the Top 5 Hidden Risks in New Product Development?

Many risks in NPD & NPI are visible. New process steps that must be implemented with caution and back-up plans. Unique product features that are challenging to accomplish. But there are other risks lurking. Things that can derail your project before you even realize.

5. Scope creep: You don't see it coming, but, little by little, each extra customer request adds up. Pretty soon you don't have enough resources and your launch schedule is in jeopardy.

4. Innovation: The further you stray from what's been done before, the higher the chance of failure. It might still be worth doing, but you've got to take precautions to avoid disaster.

3. Supply chain: Can the vendors of your key components really do what they promised when they promised? How do you really know?

2. Overoptimism: Developing and launching something new requires a certain amount of optimism - you've got to believe in what you're doing. However, too many teams put on rose-tinted glasses and ignore red flags during the development process. Consequences of this behavior can be catastrophic.

1. Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies: Clear headedness is your greatest ally in product development. However, even the smartest people are susceptible to flawed thinking that can derail a project. Here are some resources to help you recognize when faulty thinking is happening (in yourself and others):

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

https://yourbias.is/

A bit nervous now? You should be! But, don't worry. Let CAEDENCE introduce you to a systematic approach and toolkit for managing and reducing risk in new product development and introduction.

How do I Balance the Critical Deliverables for a Successful New Product Introduction?

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 23:48:16 GMT

How do I Balance the Critical Deliverables for a Successful New Product Introduction?

Successful new product development and introduction projects require carefully balancing dozens of critical parameters, any one of which could sink the ship. At the end of the day, each of those dozens of NPD/NPI success measures relates to an aspect of just 4 main stakeholder care-abouts:

Launch timing
Project budget
Product margin performance
Quality / delivery (customer experience)

Risks are anything that raises the probability of not achieving success in those 4 areas.

You have to be courageous to develop & introduce new products; there are numerous risks around every corner.

Let CAEDENCE introduce you to a systematic approach and toolkit for managing and reducing risk in new product development and introduction.

What makes CAEDENCE's workshops so effective?

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 16:21:51 GMT

What makes CAEDENCE's workshops so effective?

We often help clients out of crisis situations, but our passion is preventing crises from occurring in the first place. This means (a) establishing robust systems, (b) empowering leaders, and (c) upskilling teams.

This post reveals the science and art behind our approach to lasting skills development.

We’re practical people. It’s not enough for our students to understand theory. If they haven’t incorporated our proven techniques into their day-to-day behaviors, we have failed.

CÆDENCE has decoded decades of business experience to reveal the intuition and practices of top performing teams and individuals to radically accelerate people and teams toward excellence. We know the theory, but we've also lived everything we teach and honed best practices for decades. This arms us with tons of real-world examples to engage students and clarify techniques.

But being experts in engineering, quality, manufacturing, communication, and management isn't enough. We also understand teaching and learning. We know what it takes to guide students through the stages from becoming aware of a skill to having that skill engrained in their intuition to use flexibly and consistently. That's what's covered in this infographic. If you want to dive deeper, check out the links below.

References supporting teaching philosophy:

Motivation: https://eagleman.com/podcast/what-sticks-in-your-brain-and-what-doesnt/

Environment: https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/67/5/43/414732/Psychological-insights-for-improved-physics?searchresult=1

Communicating with non experts: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/42996216 and https://podcastaddict.com/episode/42996217

Design of materials for clarity: https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp

Spaced repetition: https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/did-ebbinghaus-invent-spaced-repetition and https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/ and https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03194050

Mentoring: https://www.caedenceconsulting.com/blog/don-t-train-do-this-instead and https://www.caedenceconsulting.com/blog/confucius-and-gladwell-were-partially-correct

How Can Binary Decision Making Improve Your Problem Solving Effectiveness?

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 19:36:25 GMT

How Can Binary Decision Making Improve Your Problem Solving Effectiveness?

We challenge our problem solving classes to play “20 questions” – can we guess a randomly selected word using just 20 yes/no questions? Engineers often say it’s impossible. But, 99 out of 100 times, we find the word! How? There’s no magic: what’s on display is the power of binary decision making, what we call “splitting the dictionary”. And you can apply it to all sorts of real-world problem-solving scenarios.

“Splitting the dictionary” is a problem scoping technique of asking the right questions to eliminate as many incorrect possibilities as you can, thus focusing your root cause search in the right area. In the case of guessing a random word, it’s a binary search: “Does the word start with any of the letters A through M?” If yes, then, “Does the word start with any of the letters A through G?, etc. The quantity of possible starting letters is halved with each question. It’s certain to get the starting letter in 5 guesses (26 letters narrowed to 13, to 7, to 4,…). The word’s 2nd and 3rd letters are made easier to guess by supplementing the binary search with knowledge of the language (e.g., some letter combinations are never used, like bx).

Far too often, we’ve encountered issue resolution teams mired in complex testing or analysis. Do yourself a favor, before heading down a complicated, expensive route (e.g., a DOE, Monte Carlo Simulation, etc.) consider “What question could eliminate half (or at least a large percentage) of the potential causes?” “Is there a quick document review, analysis, or simple test that can reduce the scope of where we need to look?”

We have used this technique many times analyzing failed electrical assemblies. Consider an assembly that can be physically split between “input” and “output” sides. By taking the “input” side of the failed device and pairing it with a known-good “output” side (and vice versa), we can see in which mix-and-matched assembly the symptom persists and then focus attention there.

It’s worked for us in scoping the origination of defective parts in a manufacturing setting too, by asking, “Are there defective components coming in from our supplier?” A simple inspection can check the supply chain integrity. This separates supply chain concerns from internal manufacturing issues and allows the team to focus on one area and not both.

Effective scoping is key to efficient problem-solving. Once the problem is clearly defined, think of the root cause as a needle in a haystack. Before you start examining hay, first ask “Am I on the right farm?”, then, “Which haystack should I search?”, then “Which portion of the chosen haystack is most likely to contain the needle?” Scoping out the possibilities with a simple tool or test can radically accelerate progress toward identifying the root cause by eliminating complex, time-wasting activity.

Where do teams go astray during issue resolution?

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 13:37:08 GMT

Where do teams go astray during issue resolution?

We help a lot of teams get back on track after they struggle to promptly and effectively resolve customer issues. This infographic summarizes the most common spots in the issue resolution process where we see teams lose their way.

Many teams and companies struggle to get the most out of structured problem solving methodologies because they make one or more of the common mistakes shown, and they don’t even realize they’re doing it! (We’ve shown the 8D process here, but whether your company uses 8D, Six Sigma DMAIC, PDCA, A3, or another paradigm doesn’t matter.) The issue is HOW any of those methodologies are used by real teams in real time in the real world.

When clients ask us to intervene, it’s because a problem has been going on for too long and their customer is upset. Invariably, we have to rectify several of the behaviors shown, usually starting with the issue resolution team structure and clarification of the problem statement. Driving containment, driving planning and rigor in root cause analysis, and unscrambling the garbled communication that undermines customer confidence are the typical next steps. We have yet to find an organization that does a truly robust job at preventing recurrence on related products.

CAEDENCE is here to help. Our team specializes in intervening in troubled projects and getting them on-track. Preventing the next catastrophe by strengthening clients’ design and process development, quality systems, and communication skills is where we really shine.

Our clientele ranges from startups to Fortune 500 companies and spans automotive, semiconductor, aerospace and other industries. DM us today for a free, no obligation discussion about the issues you’re facing.

Are you going to be a chicken or a pig?

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 19:35:19 GMT

Are you going to be a chicken or a pig?

“The people we nominate to help in this situation are either going to be the chicken or the pig.” The room went silent, but my mind was racing. Was I the only one who had no idea what she was talking about?!!??

It was a review with the senior executives. I was the least senior person in the room. We were strategizing how to address the issues that were brewing at a distant remote company site. Everyone realized the emerging problems were going to be big and painful and really challenging to get under control.

The “chicken or pig” comment came specifically in response to resistance someone had to sending some people to the remote site. After a pause, the executive went on to explain “when you are making breakfast, the chicken contributes, but the pig is committed”. Aha! It made sense now. We weren’t going to resolve this problem with remote and part-time help. To get the job done, we would have to send people truly committed to working hands-on and to staying abroad for weeks until the job was done.

The mindset in the room changed immediately. The leaders of the various functions got the message – they were now thinking more intently about getting committed help to the site for a dedicated period of time, including several of them getting on a plane themselves. After a few weeks of intense effort, several of the underlying issues were resolved and the situation was in control.

After that project, “chicken or pig” became team shorthand for level of commitment. Next time your team is faced with a big challenge, I strongly encourage you to reflect - are you and your team sufficiently committed for the team to succeed? Are you going to be chickens or pigs?

Your business process is not what you think it is

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:06:58 GMT

Your business process is not what you think it is

Deliveries were unpredictable at best, and months late at worst. Frustration at both locations was high, and finger-pointing was rampant. That was the situation when I was assigned to resolve an issue that had been nagging the organization for years. A US-based team was ordering sample assemblies from a production line in another country. No one was happy with how it was going.

I asked to review the instructions for the sample ordering process and quickly discovered that there weren’t any! Next, I individually asked each key stakeholder to put together a simple flow diagram of the process of defining, ordering, processing, and delivering samples. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised - the flow charts from the design engineer, technician, customer service rep, administrative assistant, manufacturing team, and new product development process leader were all quite different from each other.

Working with each stakeholder separately at first helped me understand the specifics of their individual frustrations, understand their view of the process, and ensure they knew they were being heard. Next, I integrated the various process flows into one (giant) document and then pulled the team together to correct and refine it. In doing so, we discovered many simple changes that allowed us to streamline the process (eliminating wasted steps and delays) and clarify how to handle different situations that might arise (reducing confusion). Finally, I documented instructions for all users, published them in a location accessible to everyone, and implemented a system of revision control. Then I organized a rollout/training meeting for the global team. Today there is one complete, clear, efficient, and (importantly) visible process instead of several fragmentary ones, a team who talks when things don’t go as expected, and much improved performance and morale.

Key take-away's from the experience: (1) Your actual process is never what you think it is. (2) If people see that you’re really listening to them, they will be open to listening to you.

Need help optimizing a manufacturing or business process? DM us – we've got tools and expertise ready to help.

Managing customer suggestions during issue resolution starts with 6 questions

Thu, 23 May 2024 22:04:58 GMT

Managing customer suggestions during issue resolution starts with 6 questions

In your weekly problem resolution status update meeting, your customer, despite their lack of detailed understanding of your product and process, keeps offering “helpful suggestions” about what to do next. Your team, not wanting to upset the customer, accepts all the extra work, regardless of whether they think the new activities will help solve the problem or not. Frustrating, right?

The heuristic described in this infographic is your first line of defense. Assessing each customer suggestion using the series of 6 criteria will help you determine whether or not to agree to follow up on it. Well-founded, testable suggestions can be considered for action. Implausible or unverifiable ones should be rejected.

Not sure how to go about telling your customer “no” without causing a backlash? Let us help! Our proven strategies, tactics, and tools enable teams to defend their precious time and stay focused on value-added actions while simultaneously maintaining customer confidence and good will.

What to do when a team member isn’t performing

Thu, 16 May 2024 19:11:02 GMT

What to do when a team member isn’t performing

Dealing with an underperforming team member is a “rite of passage” for any manager. Our 4-step approach will guide you through this challenge.

Consider the 4 likely reasons for low performance:

1) Expectations not understood or goals not clear

2) Skill gaps

3) Personal problems

4) Talent not suited for the role

1) When faced with an underperforming team member, we recommend first looking inward - did you do enough (a) to clarify the overall behavior expectations (taking initiative, following up, thinking creatively, etc.), and (b) to ensure the person's individual goals comply with all aspects of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable yet Aggressive, Relevant, Time-bound & Tracked), and (c) to get buy-in from the team member? Rectify any gaps in expectations, goals, and buy-in before proceeding to the subsequent steps.

2) If expectations and goals are clear, but results are still not forthcoming, examine the person's skillset and available tools. Do they have what they need to perform successfully? If supplemental or upgraded tools are needed, provide them. If there are specific skill gaps, explore training and mentoring options. Pairing a lower skilled person with an expert can be very effective (but only if the expert is guiding/developing, not doing the work for the unskilled person).

3) If expectations & goals are clear and skills/tools are adequate, it's possible the person is distracted by a serious personal problem. Obviously, such issues should only be discussed privately. Be compassionate and be as flexible as you can. Perhaps some work could be shifted to another person temporarily, etc. It’s the right thing to do, plus, people who understand that you really care about them will be highly motivated to help you when things return to normal for them.

4) If expectations and goals are clear, skills/tools are adequate, and there is no personal problem, it's possible the person is simply not a good fit for the role. This does not mean they are a bad person, or a bad professional, just that their style does not work well in your company's system. In this case, you may need to take action to address the performance gap. If the person's skills and attitude match another job better, maybe an internal move could make sense. If the person would not likely be successful in another role, then you may have to formally put them on a performance improvement plan. In the end, keeping a poor performer hurts the team and hurts the person. It's better for everyone if they find a role elsewhere in which they can thrive.

Note: Addressing poor performance is a vital management activity. It's a skill that you should develop. Acting swiftly in these cases is recognized by senior leaders as a positive management trait. Mastering this skill is important to career development and being viewed as an effective leader.

The Rest of the Story: How can I Make Quality a Top Priority?

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 18:54:36 GMT

The Rest of the Story: How to Make Quality a Top Priority

Previously we challenged you to “Decide if your company really wants to improve quality!” (See part 1 of this topic in the September 17, 2022 blog). This week we’ll reveal how a company can de-emphasize quality without even realizing, and what to do about it.

After 14 years managing corporate quality, I moved to a role with P&L responsibility and realized that quality is viewed very differently from “the business side”. Before, I was dedicated to making quality improvements and achieving 100% customer satisfaction, an uphill battle of incremental improvements requiring constant pushing & aligning of functional teams. Suddenly, running a multi-million dollar business unit, the priorities were revenue growth & profit margin. Quality was rarely a topic of management meetings and metrics lacked quality improvement goals. It was as if leadership was saying “Quality’s not that important”.

Upper management talked about quality not as a growth enabler or savings opportunity but as an area to quietly manage. To them, quality was about maintaining & reacting, not driving improvement. Discussions were about inspection costs, customer pain, slow root cause investigations, and irritating documentation – always negative aspects. “Don’t distract engineering - go handle it” was the unspoken (and at times spoken) sentiment for the Quality team. Peers in other groups didn’t want to work on quality issues, and who could blame them? - painful interactions with angry customers, torturous audits, and action items outside your expertise. Quality was viewed as a drain of time, energy, & money. Leaders without quality background were even more likely to diminish its importance. We had to make an extraordinary effort to regain our quality focus, driving several strategic and tactical changes to turn things around:

Holding an off-site leadership meeting to review quality performance and set short- and long-term goals
Aligning with upper management to own quality performance metrics
Implementing corporate-level quality KPIs & setting quality KPIs for all functional groups
Assigning each top-level functional manager to own a key customer’s experience and scorecard
Training engineering to understand the impact of design choices
Adding quality resources for each product life cycle phase (not just to create documentation and clean up emergencies)
Cross-pollinating engineers into quality roles – a great way to generate ownership of quality and develop fresh ideas
Proactive, planned, annual customer visits
Tracking COPQ (cost of poor quality), COPE (cost of poor engineering), COPPM (cost of poor project management) & making those impacts visible

These are just a few of the steps needed to make strides in quality performance. CAEDENCE can help you develop your plan to shift from de-emphasizing quality to putting it in its rightful place as a pillar of a successful business, on equal footing with other top business priorities.

How Remote Work is Holding Back Your Career

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 17:30:04 GMT

How Remote Work is Holding Back Your Career

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?

Traditionally, the skills you need to grow your career were transmitted by informal mentoring during daily face-to-face interactions with managers and colleagues. Skills development and influencing happened in offices, in the cafeteria, and during chance meetings in the hallway.

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.

So how should you deal with this problem? The first thing is to actively cultivate a mentor-protégé relationship with your manager or a senior colleague. (Or if you’re a manager, facilitate these relationships among others.)

When seeking a mentor, many people focus first on “what do they know”, but we find it’s ultimately more beneficial to focus on “do I trust them enough to open up and be candid about my concerns?”. (If you’re a manager matching mentors with protégés, weigh the interpersonal chemistry between the people higher than their specific skillsets.) Also, don’t expect your mentor to set meetings, establish agendas, or otherwise “drive” progress – that’s the protégé’s responsibility. Mentors are busy with their day jobs, and they’re already carving out time to guide you. Setting logistics and focus areas is up to you.

If you can’t find the right match with an internal mentor, or if you’ve exhausted their expertise (or as a manager if you just don’t have enough senior people to serve as mentors), consider getting some outside help to fill the gap. CAEDENCE provides experienced, high performing engineering and business leaders to mentor and coach up-and-coming high potential leaders.

Our leadership development program, "Lead On!™", is offered in affordable 3-month blocks. Based on our proprietary assessment tool, each participant receives a customized experience. We coach, setting high expectations and driving performance improvement and we mentor, developing leadership and management skills and drawing on our extensive catalog of workshop materials.

Packages are available suitable for companies or individuals in one-on-one or group formats. We are now accepting candidates for the next wave. Contact us for more information.

Customer Meeting Preparation

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 15:00:00 GMT

Customer Meeting Preparation

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.

Have a critical customer product development or issue resolution meeting coming up? We’re here to help your team prepare, leveraging the proven techniques and toolkit we’ve developed over decades working with the toughest customers in the most demanding industries.

How do I Overcome “Analysis Paralysis”?

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 17:41:40 GMT

How to Overcome “Analysis Paralysis”

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”

- Neil Peart, Canadian lyricist and drummer

We’ve been successfully developing and launching new products for decades. 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.

The key things to remember are:

• "Fail fast“: The wrong decision will drive learning, but you will learn nothing while waiting.

• Waiting for all the info necessary to be sure of a decision can create a bigger problem than just making a judgment, learning from mistakes, and then making adjustments as-needed.

• 60-70% of the desired info is usually enough to make a judgement and proceed. The bigger (more irreversible) the consequences of the decision, the more info you’ll want.

• Do not waste time re-visiting a decision unless new, relevant information becomes available.

• Verify: pay close attention to the results of the decision and adjust course if necessary.

Don't Wait for Motivation

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 15:00:43 GMT

Don't Wait for Motivation

“[Self] Motivation may be the single greatest cause of inactivity & procrastination in society.” - Influence Digest, Sept 2017

Successful people are distinguished from unsuccessful people not by consistent self-motivation, but by sustained self-discipline over time. I love this quote because on the surface it seems so counterintuitive, but consider:

Self motivation is about feeling .

Pushes you to work, but only when you feel like it.
People procrastinate until the next inspiration hits.
The resulting inconsistent progress destroys motivation.
It’s a downward spiral.

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.

Self discipline is about behavior .

Feelings are made irrelevant to the task at hand.
Successful people do not always feel motivated, but they stick to their long term plan, day after day, regardless of how they feel.
For example, successful athletes don’t practice only when they feel like it. They stick to a plan and improve their fitness and skill little by little.

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!).

Need help making, or sticking to, a plan? Get in touch - CAEDENCE is now accepting applicants for openings in our Leadership Development Coaching program for 2024.

How do I hand over the reins of my team? Developing up-and-coming leaders

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 15:00:00 GMT

Handing over the reins – developing up-and-coming leaders

Managers often ask, “How do I develop a high-potential employee into a strong leader?”. While it might seem like a complex topic, actually a few simple steps (revealed below) will put you well on your way to success.

First, give the person a chance to lead. Let them take on responsibility for a small project team and learn by doing (running meetings, steering to completion, etc.). Coach (guide, don’t prescribe) them through the project. They won’t be perfect on the first try, and that’s okay. Mistakes with feedback generate learning. Obviously, you’ll want to intervene to prevent any major disasters, but their occasional “dropping the ball” when the stakes are low, combined with your informative feedback, will set them up to know what to look out for in the future.

As they gain skills and confidence (and you see that you can trust their judgement), give them a more complex, higher-stakes project to facilitate growth. If they have the innate talent, and your guidance is effective, then after a few projects you should have a strong leader capable of bigger things.

The types of assignments well suited to “introduction to leadership” include:

allowing the person to manage 1-2 people before taking on a larger team

having the person lead a challenging customer engagement or problem resolution

assigning them projects with cross-functional team members (to broaden their exposure to other functional activity)

having them present at an industry symposium or large company event

having them take on a department-wide initiative

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!

Musical Chairs

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:00:00 GMT

Musical Chairs

The company had a sprawling campus with many partially-populated buildings. During an economic downturn, senior management wanted to save on real estate taxes by consolidating the people into fewer buildings, allowing for demolishing of remaining empty buildings. Directives came from the senior executives to each functional director, “move your teams into smaller spaces”. Unfortunately, this message failed to fully articulate the end goal, and there was no overarching champion in charge of coordinating these relocations to deliver the required vacant buildings by a specified deadline.

Predictably, as one team would shrink their footprint, another team would identify the newly emptied space as nicer than their own and move in. This game of "musical chairs” continued as dozens of teams were moved all over the site. Over a year later, not a single building had been vacated. Many teams were disrupted, significant moving costs were incurred, but buildings were all still partially filled, none could be demolished, and not a single penny of real estate taxes was saved.

I took two lessons forward in my career: People will do what they’re being measured on (“reduce my team’s footprint”) without regard for the big picture (“empty these 3 buildings by end of Q3”). 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.

How do word choice and language affect behaviors? Watch Your Language!

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 15:00:00 GMT

Watch Your Language!

From my office in the USA, I was remotely mentoring a Chinese manager who worked for an American company in China. One day he asked about the most effective ways to provide coaching feedback to his team members, so I shared tips from my experience (a topic for another post). At our next call he thanked me for the good advice and casually mentioned that it was much easier for him to give coaching feedback in English than in Mandarin. I had to learn more about this!

At that time, the Chinese business culture tended to be somewhat top-down directed (bosses telling employees what to do), while the American style was to empower the employees to make their own decisions. He told me that it sounded awkward to provide American-style coaching in Mandarin – the concepts were awkward to express in the language, so they sounded insincere. Ever since, I have remained aware of the effect that language has on thought and perception.

This concept applies even to the effect of word choice within a language. One time, a customer was complaining about device failures where a thin protective layer was disappearing from a product in use. Knowing that the protective layer was chemically inert, everyone began referring to “the erosion issue”.

After spending months unsuccessfully attempting to re-create an erosion mechanism, it was finally discovered that the protective layer itself was not failing, but an adhesion layer attaching the protective layer was being chemically attacked via tiny pores in the protective layer. By naming the issue “erosion” after the speculative cause, the thinking of the entire team was biased away from the true cause – it was “corrosion”, not “erosion”.

Lesson-learned: language and word choice influence thinking and behavior!

First Rule - The mission is the mission! or Eyes on the Prize

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 15:00:00 GMT

First Rule - The mission is the mission! or Eyes on the prize

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.

In a nutshell: The overall goal of your project must be clear; it must be quantified; it must be understood and agreed to by the stakeholders. And, importantly, any activities that don’t support the project goal must be delegated, postponed, or dropped altogether.

Some effective ways to stay focused on the mission include:

The desired outcomes and deliverables must be crystal clear. Use SMART goals to define the mission.

Make the mission and intermediate milestones visible to the team. Hold a kickoff meeting, and remind/refresh more often than you’d think you need to.

If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Have only one mission; discard secondary goals or delegate them to another team.

This theme, dedication to the mission, includes acting on new (better) ideas and removing barriers to success. When the standard way of doing things is getting in the way of the project goals, the standard should be questioned (and changed if it makes sense). When a single group’s imperatives or metrics run counter to the overall team’s project goals, they should be questioned and changed if necessary.

Remain focused on the mission and you will achieve great things!

Stop Start Continue

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 15:00:00 GMT

Stop Start Continue

“Well, THAT was awkward!” For the last few minutes of each team member’s annual performance review, I used to ask about how I was doing as their manager. While we had good relationships, there was nevertheless a bit of awkwardness when they were asked to critique me directly. Also, some of them were a little surprised by the request and had difficulty articulating their inputs. I was genuinely interested in learning from what they were thinking and needed a better way to get truly meaningful feedback from my team.

On the advice of my manager at the time, I adopted a slightly more structured approach that made a big difference. Rather than asking an open question about whether they had any comments about my performance, I asked 3 narrower questions:

(1) What have I been doing that really isn’t working and I should stop doing it?

(2) What is something you’ve seen other managers do that would work well in our group and I should start doing it?

(3) What is something I’m doing that works well and I should continue doing it?

This Stop-Start-Continue format was highly effective; the helpful feedback flowed. It worked because it focused the wide-open “how am I doing?” down to asking about just 3 specific behaviors. Further, the phrasing made clear that I was after suggestions that could be put into action straightaway. Re-scoping made it much easier for people to answer, and the focus on improving the group’s performance, rather than on me personally, made it more comfortable for them to answer candidly. I used this format regularly throughout my career, and implemented many of the suggested adjustments to my management style.

Vicious Cycle

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:00:00 GMT

Vicious Cycle

“How does this guy manage to create more tasks than he completes?!”

I once had a direct report who was “net negative” when it came to productivity. Although very smart, he was largely oblivious to the nuances of communication.

When a customer would ask for something, he was unable to see how their request fit in the broader picture. He couldn’t intuit what the customer “really” wanted to know. As a result, he would dutifully respond to the specific request without providing any context or influencing in any way, invariably provoking more customer questions that had to be followed up on.

It was a vicious cycle - at the end of each day, his list of customer questions and requests was longer than it had been the previous day.

As a manager you may have observed a similar behavior pattern in one of your direct reports. You can provide training, coaching, and real-time feedback to try to drive improvement. In my experience, such interventions either quickly “turn on the switch” and the person catches on, or no matter what you do the person doesn’t ever improve to any significant degree.

I believe that the ability to empathize (in this case, to see the world from the customer’s point of view and to act accordingly) is an inherent personality trait established at a young age. In the case of my employee, no matter how many times or different ways I tried to help him see the broader implications of a given request, he fell back on the literal response to the specific question. In the end, he was simply not a good fit for a customer-facing role.

The Rule of 3: How can I develop my team?

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:53:32 GMT

The Rule of 3

“Got any advice for me as I take on my first manager role?” “You absolutely must learn the ‘rule of 3’.” Surprised, I said, “You’ve never once mentioned the ‘rule of 3’ before, and now you’re saying it’s critically important!? What is it?”

He explained, “You will have a large, inexperienced team; many people will be clamoring for your attention. When someone comes to you with a problem, do not get involved or take action (yet). If they come back a second time, you can likely still wait before taking any action. If they come back a third time, it’s probably something important enough to get involved in.”

It was sage advice. I applied the “rule of 3” as a guideline for prioritizing pop-up requests from my team members all the time and it proved quite handy. It saved me from getting drawn into so many random requests that were not critical, allowing me to focus my attention on the truly high-level priorities. It also proved to help my team members, encouraging them take initiative and accelerating their development.

Of course, this way of filtering out less urgent and less important requests must be applied with some judgment. If you want to try using the rule of 3 with your team, consider the following caveats:

1) Some issues are obviously major and you should certainly jump in to help at the first request.

2) You have to get to know your people: some will come to you with every little thing (but if you don’t respond immediately they’ll usually figure things out themselves), while some will wait until the problem is nearly out of control (so you should not defer acting).

3) You must be tactful and preserve relationships, if you are not going to get involved, you have to be firm but also polite and supportive.

The Failure of Matrixed Organizations

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 21:42:38 GMT

The Failure of Matrixed Organizations

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “Matrixed Organization”, consider yourself lucky. In the interest of “agility”, many companies have adopted this structure - at their peril.

Matrixed Organizations:

* Arranged in a grid rather than a hierarchy

* Employees accountable to multiple bosses via two or more separate chains of command

* Responsibility for a given deliverable distributed across several directors

Matrixed organizations promised open communication between teams, facilitation of innovation, and reduced need for realignment for each new project. They have failed to deliver.

People, let’s stop the madness, shall we? This way of arranging an organization runs entirely counter to the goal of agility. Here’s why:

a) Matrixed Organizations exacerbate staffing issues.

In Matrixed Organizations individuals report to multiple leaders. Let’s pause right there. See the absurdity? In a time when companies are struggling to recruit enough individual contributors, they’re pivoting toward more “bosses” directing the activities of fewer “do-ers”. Matrixed Organizations exacerbate staffing issues!

b) Matrixed Organizations muddy accountability.

Giving someone more than one manager instantly results in a lack of clarity on their true priorities. People are either pulled in multiple directions, or left floating aimlessly. When people are given conflicting instructions, or don’t know what’s expected of them, it leads to chaos - progress isn’t made and frustration runs high. It’s a fatal flaw – Matrixed Organizations by their very nature undercut one of the most fundamental management principles – people must have clear goals. Matrixed Organizations muddy accountability!

c) Matrixed Organizations slow decision-making.

Establishing multiple middle and senior managers with overlapping spheres dramatically bogs down the decision-making process. With no one quite sure who is empowered to make a given call, but simultaneously no one wanting to miss a chance to weigh in and influence each outcome, even the simplest decisions take forever (if they can be made at all). Teams spend much more time getting buy in on every little thing, even when consensus is not needed. Matrixed Organizations slow down decision-making!

Matrixed Organizations are a failed experiment and it’s time to pull the plug. The idealized vision of overlapping departments functioning harmoniously is fundamentally flawed. By setting up top-heavy org. charts, obfuscating roles and responsibilities, and bogging down the decision-making process, the Matrixed Organization makes staffing more challenging, managing more difficult, and decision-making slower. Want a nimble, agile organization? Time to leave the Matrix for the real world.

What are the Top 6 WORST Things You Can Say to a Customer?

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 15:00:00 GMT

Top 6 WORST Things You Can Say to a Customer

Saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment can turn a challenging situation into a catastrophe. We've found that many teams struggle to maintain customer confidence during issue resolution. Let's examine what not to say (and why).

The 6 worst things you could say to a customer while dealing with an issue:

6) "It couldn’t be our fault"

Jumping immediately to a defensive position only causes the customer to push harder. Approach problems with an open mind - maybe the problem is on our side, maybe it's on the customer side – we're going to systematically explore the possible causes until we find the offender. You're going to need to collaborate with your customer to collect relevant evidence during your root cause investigation - don't alienate them right from the start.

5) "My supplier made the mistake, not me"

Excuses don't fly. You selected and qualified your supplier, therefore you are responsible for your supplier's performance. Managing your supply chain is your responsibility. Finger pointing is not going to help your position. The customer wants to see you taking responsibility. Note: This applies to both external suppliers (another company) and internal suppliers (your company but a different functional team, site, or department).

4) "We’re waiting for…"

The customer is in crisis due to an issue involving your product or service and your contribution is WAITING?!?! This will irritate the customer. Customers want to see proactivity. If you are in a situation where you need inputs, show the plan for how you're going to get the needed info/parts/etc. and the expected timing. "Waiting" is never a good look when there's a problem at hand.

3) "We're too busy..."

You're resource constrained. So is everyone else. This is not your customer's problem. Telling your customer you were too busy working on something else to help them will infuriate them – you're basically telling them they aren't important. That's the fastest way to get them looking for a new supplier. Instead, escalate within your organization to shift priorities or get the needed resources to address the issue with urgency.

2) "No"

If the customer has asked you to do something unfeasible, not valuable, distracting, or otherwise ill-advised, "Yes, but..." Is a much better strategy than "No." Show the customer the trade-offs involved in their request and focus attention on what you can do. "We could do [customer suggestion] but that would take resources away from [current plan] which we agreed was the best chance of success. Our recommendation is to stay the course until if and when the data suggests otherwise."

1) "Yes"

Many teams are quick to give in to customer demands and wind up over-promising. You might get out of the first meeting unscathed, but you're set up for tough times ahead when you can't deliver on commitments. The best strategy here is actually the same as for #2 above. Lay out the various options and collaborate with the customer to develop and agreed plan of action. Involving the customer in the planning helps them see what's involved in the investigation and issue resolution and tends to keep their requests reasonable.

How can I avoid the panic in tough situations? Try This Instead; think, plan, act

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Don't Panic .... Try This Instead!

With attention focused on panicking, little progress was occurring; my friend didn’t want to think about the possible bad outcome and thus took no action, exacerbating the potential problem.

Around the time I was learning the fundamentals of project management at my job, my friend was working to complete a PhD at a nearby university (in a field unrelated to my own) and was seriously stressed out about it. There were many activities required for thesis completion, but they had not written them down in one place, and certainly not in the form of any sort of plan or timeline. My friend worried about not finishing on time for the thesis defense (a fixed date).

I pointed out that it was only a potential problem; if everything was fine there was no need for worry. On the other hand, if the time crunch were real, it might still be possible to do something about it. First, we needed to determine if the worry was justified. Applying my recently acquired project management skills, I suggested we write down all the different actions and tasks necessary to finish, and take our best guess about how long each one might take.

While most tasks could be estimated easily enough, one was trickier. My friend knew that it would take a long time to manually process their raw experimental data into a useable form but struggled to quantify how long it might actually take. I suggested guesstimating the fastest (best-case) and slowest (worst-case) possible times required to process each data point. We multiplied by the number of data points and quickly realized the potential problem was in fact a real problem – even in the best-case scenario there weren’t enough hours in a day to finish the project on time.

Initially, this only reinforced the worrying, but then I pointed out that there was an entire department full of bright students who could be quickly trained to perform the data processing. Hiring some helpers for this time-consuming (but straightforward) part of the project got the schedule back on track. My friend graduated on time and became “doctor”.

Everybody worries; worrying consumes energy but doesn’t provide any tangible benefit. Invest some time to determine if the thing you’re worrying about is actually a problem. If not, no need to waste energy worrying about it!

If the problem is real, many people react by ignoring it, hoping it will go away. A much better strategy is to assess the nature and scope of the problem, lay out a plan, and take action! In my experience, in business people tend to be judged not on problems occurring, but on how effectively they deal with them when they do pop up.

Another common behavior is for people to try to deal with every aspect of a problem themselves, working harder and harder, stressing more and more. People don’t realize that it’s okay to ask for help (in this example that took the form of student data processors, but in other circumstances it might be suppliers or colleagues with needed expertise, etc.).

One final note. It was very interesting for me how the project management principles learned at my corporate engineering job applied perfectly to a problem in an entirely different venue and discipline. Keep an eye out for analogous patterns. This wouldn’t be the last time in my career that a concept from one area helped me solve a problem in a seemingly unrelated area.

Don't Train....Do This Instead!

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Don't Train.....Do This Instead!

No one ever says it out loud, but we all know it's true: most training seminars on their own are pretty much useless. You might be shocked to hear that coming from a company focused on talent development, but how many times have you seen people attend training but then never put what they "learned" into practice to improve their work? It happens far too often. Companies bring in training in hopes of effecting culture change, and they are routinely disappointed.

There are two necessary elements to making learning stick and positively changing behaviors for the long run: practice with feedback, and expectation-setting. Sadly, these essential aspects of culture change are frequently ignored.

First, training seminars should always be accompanied by exercises, and even better, putting the new skills to use in real-world situations under the guidance of a mentor or coach. To reinforce learning, students must synthesize using the new skills - but practice without feedback is a recipe for developing (and reinforcing) bad habits. Practice under the direction of an expert is essential to mastery. (In a related post back on Sept. 12th, we elaborated on the quote "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." (which, incidentally, we misattributed to Confucius -- in fact, the quote is from a different Chinese philosopher, Xunzi, and a more faithful translation is "Those who heard of something know better than those who never heard of it. Those who have seen it know better than those who only heard of it. And those who've practiced know better than those who saw it.". Thanks to our friend @Guanshi Li for the correction.))

Second, management plays an essential role in embedding learning from training into regular practice. Managers must become familiar with the skills and tools being taught, and then consistently ask for evidence of their use for the months and years following the training event. Fail to do this and you’ve wasted your training budget. Until the best practice taught at the training becomes the standard practice used day-in-day-out, you won’t see a penny of ROI from your training expense.

At CÆDENCE, facilitating your success is our only job. We work hands-on with your team to help you tackle your toughest project management, new product development, issue resolution, and quality challenges. We also want to ensure your problems don't recur – we develop teams and systems using skills workshops combined with expert mentoring to accelerate your team’s performance to excellence. We partner with your management team and provide the tools and support required to help them engrain skills into the company culture.

Where can I find an effective Six Sigma leader? Effective Six Sigma Green Belt

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Effective Six Sigma Green Belt

Not getting the results you need for customers and shareholders? Set your team up for success!

Don’t listen to people who discourage you from using Six Sigma DMAIC as your structured problem solving processes. Done right, it works! (To be fair, many companies have botched the rollout or deployment, leading to a lot of misunderstanding about the intent and core concepts of Six Sigma, and contributing to a backlash – but this is not the fault of the methodology or toolkit themselves.)

We know how to roll out and support Six Sigma right. We've done it successfully, and we’re eager to help others with their implementations.

Many companies have tried to deploy Six Sigma by quickly graduating hundreds of Black Belts, but they had few meaningful results to show for it. Done properly, you won’t be counting belts as your measure of success – you’ll be solving your company’s toughest problems and measuring the defect rate improvements and bottom-line dollars saved.

Structured problem solving is only worth adopting if it will deliver a big return on investment. Our goal is to make the most effective practice the normal practice for your teams. Take advantage of our Effective Six Sigma Green Belt course and implementation advice to learn the right way to deploy and use the DMAIC toolkit. Effective deployment & use includes:

Effective Deployment of Six Sigma:

Understanding your problem area and goals
Creating a master plan for the deployment
Making structured problem solving part of the company culture
Creating the mechanisms to reward real results, not belts

Effective Use of Six Sigma DMAIC:

Understanding the DMAIC thought process and toolkit (and adopting the most effective tools from “competing” problem-solving paradigms)
Scoping high payback projects
Leveraging critical thinking to ask the right questions
Right tool at the right time to get the desired outcome
Real-time project coaching by expert practitioners

How can I Manage Customer Engagements More Effectively? Remember “the 3 C’s”

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:22:41 GMT

Manage Customer Engagements Effectively by Remembering “the 3 C’s”

Skew the odds of success in customer interactions by remembering “the 3 C’s”. We frequently encounter teams who are doing good work, but struggling to get credit for their efforts and not controlling meeting outcomes. If your team is in this situation, focus on:

CALM: Calm the customer. Outwardly project a calm state (even if you’re panicking on the inside!) will reduce the risk of your customer reacting emotionally in a crisis. Demonstrate (with actions, not just words) your understanding of the customer’s concerns, and your team’s willingness and ability to address those concerns proactively (before being asked).

2) CLARIFY: People have finite attention spans and limited energy. Strive to make your materials crystal clear. You want to engage your customer in discussion of the meaning and implications of your update. You don’t want them spending lots of effort trying to “de-code” what your team is trying to communicate. Pro tip: Prefer visual information over words. Make sure all graphs are clearly labeled and annotated.

3) CONTROL: Control the outcome, Conveying a sense of control will help influence the customer’s perception and reaction. Take control of the flow of information by volunteering periodic updates to your customer. Ensure fresh information is fully vetted by the team before it is conveyed outside your organization. Manage the resources and action planning to drive swiftly toward the desired outcome.

We’ve resolved more than our fair share of crises with teams over the years, and we’ve taught hundreds of people the proven techniques to effectively manage customers when the pressure is on. We’d love to help your team get (and stay) on the right track.

Culture or Confusion?

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Culture or Confusion?

'The organization needs employees to help model the desired culture and teach new people what it means to be part of a high-performing organization.' - @Randy Pennington

How to tell if you have a high performing organization and thriving company culture:

Look back on the last 6 months and reflect. Have you have seen examples of these situations?

Employees confused on basic practices
Management re-explaining the company mission in an effort to motivate employees
Lack of systems to guide critical processes
Little or no internal (self-driven) mentoring and coaching

We have the expertise, tools, and experience to drive the needed steps in culture development so your company can focus on customers and sales, and not get lost in internal confusion.

CÆDENCE leads organizations and individuals to achieve their full potential through executive coaching, management mentoring, direct project interventions, and high-payback, high-impact, transformative talent development.

CÆDENCE has decoded years of business experience to reveal the intuition and practices of top performers to radically accelerate individuals and teams toward excellence.

Start a conversation today at info@caedenceconsulting.com

Confucius and Gladwell were Partially Correct

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Confucius and Gladwell were Partially Correct

The Chinese philosopher Confucius famously said, “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand” referring to the effectiveness of different modes of learning. He was emphasizing that acquiring new skills is not a passive process.

You may also know the old saying “practice makes perfect” or be familiar with the “10,000 hour rule” (made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers) which states that it takes 10 thousand hours of dedicated practice to master a new skill.

Both Confucius and Gladwell are correct, up to a point. In fact, both learning paradigms are incomplete – mentoring is missing.

To truly master a skill, hearing, seeing, doing, and practicing must be guided. You’ve got to hear and see the best technique. You’ve got to try it yourself and practice while receiving corrective feedback from an expert.

Practice without oversight is risky. You could be training yourself to make a habit of doing things the wrong (or at least sub-optimal) way. Real-time expert feedback is crucial to avoid engraining bad habits.

This is true whether you’re trying to improve your tennis swing, your problem solving, your communication, or your leadership skills. Top athletes don’t just practice randomly – they always have the guidance of a coach. Developing world-class technical and business skills is no different.

CAEDENCE helps teams and individuals optimize their skills with direct, real-time project interventions; novel, focused workshops; and goal-oriented coaching/mentoring. We’d love to chat about how we might help your team exceed expectations.

They made me an offer, should I refuse?

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 14:00:00 GMT

They made me an offer, should I refuse?

The core process of evaluating a job offer from a startup is no different than that of evaluating an offer from any company. You’ve got to do your homework. First, get to know yourself, then get to know the company, then decide if it’s a good match. With startups, however, getting to know the company can be a little trickier than with established companies.

In general terms, typical differences between startups and established companies include:

Startups offer higher risk and potentially higher reward; they have fewer support systems in place for getting your job done – you have to “wear many hats”

Established companies are: less likely to fail to meet payroll or disappear overnight, and more likely to have established benefits programs (e.g. education reimbursement, 401(k) matching, etc.); roles are likely to be more narrowly defined.

Know thyself:

We recommend finding a checklist (most university career services offices post such tools online) and taking inventory of your own personality and preferences. Such tools provide guidance for introspection on things like your interests, strengths and weaknesses, values, work style, etc. Do you have the risk tolerance for a startup? Does your financial situation allow for gaps in compensation?

Know the company:

There are countless resources available online for learning about established companies, but not for startups. Without a long-term track record and feedback from hundreds of current and former employees, even if they included startups, such resources wouldn’t be useful without significant data sets to draw from. To evaluate a startup, think like an investor (in a way you are one – investing time rather than cash). How confident are you in the product, the business model, the financing, and especially the management team?

One of the most important considerations, no matter where you decide to work, is your relationship with your direct supervisor. Is it a person who: can communicate clear priorities, is open minded and adjusts plans in response to new information, will “have your back” in a conflict situation, will actively support your education and career goals, can be an effective advocate for you, is someone you trust, will make time for you, you can learn from?

What are the Top 5 “Customer Wants” when an Issue Emerges?

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Top 5 “Customer Wants” when an Issue Emerges

Developing excellent customer influencing skills across your staff has an effect similar to having more people working on your team! It significantly impacts your ability to win new business, to keep existing customers happy, and to reduce non-value added work.

Strengthening this critical competency results in happier customers with increased confidence in your people and products, less stressful customer interactions, smoother execution with less second-guessing, and fewer “damage control” activities.

Every customer has “built-in” expectations for your team’s response to an issue. Meeting those expectations starts with understanding what they are:

1) Leader: A clearly identified leader / single point contact

2) Team: An empowered team to address the concern

3) Structure: A structured problem solving process

4) Content: Your rigorous work is the heart of any customer issue response.

5) Updates: No news is BAD news – keep your customer updated; show plans and incremental progress regularly. Demonstrate mastery of the situation, scope, time management, and responsibility for outcomes.

Two of CAEDENCE’s core specialties are Problem Solving and Customer Influencing. If you’re facing a daunting customer situation, get in touch: info@caedenceconsulting.com

Why is Hiring the Wrong Person Potentially Catastrophic?

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Hiring the Wrong Person could be Catastrophic

Hiring the wrong person could be catastrophic for your nascent company. You need to maximize the odds of bringing the right person on board. Effective interviewing is much more than a casual conversation to determine if you like someone. Here’s our brief step-by-step guide:

1) Great vision without great people is irrelevant. If you hire the wrong people, it doesn't matter where you try to lead them; you won't have a great company. Bringing in the right people means you can more easily adapt to dynamic circumstances. Reference: Good to Great by @Jim Collins

2) First consider the distinction between Talents and Skills. Talents are recurring behavior patterns & inclinations that cannot be learned; i.e. inherent personality traits. Talents are neither good nor bad, they are simply characteristics of an individual (e.g. “taking initiative” or “attention to detail”). Skills are job-specific knowledge & experience; skills can be learned (e.g. “solid modeling” or “financial analysis”). Many hiring managers overemphasize skills – this is a big mistake. Hire primarily for talent. Make a comprehensive wish list of all the Talents and Skills necessary for success in each role for which you’re hiring. Use this list as the basis for crafting your interview questions. Reference: First, Break All the Rules by @Marcus Buckingham and @Curt Coffman

3) Humans are hard-wired to jump to conclusions from first impressions. We have unconscious biases for and against people from different social groups. People also tend to view confidence as a sign of competence, when in fact they are not correlated. Many interviewers tend to seek someone exactly like themselves. Focus your questions on eliciting examples of candidates’ real-world behaviors - the best predictors of future behaviors – avoid hypotheticals. Use the same interview questions for each candidate for fairness and to facilitate comparisons. Have 3 or 4 interviewers meet with each candidate. Wait until everyone has documented their evaluation before discussing to avoid influencing each other.

Reference: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

4) Keep it legal: Under US federal and state laws, there are several types of questions that are not permissible to ask on an interview. Questions that don't directly relate to your open roles should be avoided.

References:

https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/what-shouldnt-i-ask-when-hiring

https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/4-what-cant-i-ask-when-hiring

CAEDENCE is ready to help you build your best team. Contact us: info@caedenceconsulting.com

First Step – Don’t Think about the Money!

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 14:00:00 GMT

First Step – Don’t Think about the Money!

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking “I need money to start my business”. They worry about finding investors before solidifying their product or service. However, before asking for money, new start-ups should be obsessed with creating and developing a product or service that meets the needs of customers.

Once you decide to start a business, step one is to create and develop the product/service to the point where you can share the concept and early prototypes with potential customers to receive feedback. Many products at this point get rejected by customers and need to be iterated or even scrapped altogether. Do not seek or spend excessive amounts of money before vetting your product in the market. Find customers who provide constructive feedback and lead to pre-orders. At this point in development, you are (very carefully) spending your own money. Use of, and effective management of, your personal funds shows future investors a) your commitment to the business and b) your ability to run a business (financial acumen).

Once the customer confirmation and demand (customer “pull”) is secured, it may be time to seek external funding to further develop the product and prepare for mass production. Many activities will be coordinated in parallel (product development, customer engagement, business planning, test marketing, and pre-launch planning). Far too often founders are obsessed with funding prior to the groundwork being done, but without the market feedback, product iteration, and customer pull in place, seeking financing is premature.

10 Steps to Get from Concept to Launch

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 14:00:00 GMT

10 Steps to Get from Concept to Launch

Here’s our 10-step outline. Note that there are literally hundreds of sub-actions to take along the way, and depending on the product or service you’re developing, some steps may be skipped or combined and the details may vary.

You may find some of the steps surprising, e.g., selling the product before finishing development, choosing to complete a business plan or perhaps not, and obtaining customer feedback before full product development.

1. Develop and draft the idea or concept

2. Produce prototypes or initial release(s) – several prototypes may be necessary to evaluate and find the best concept

3. Obtain customer feedback (to confirm the idea is worth pursuing and choose the best concept for further development)

4. Refine the product or service based on customer feedback and test the product under all conditions / use cases

5. Complete your business plan (if the business plan will help you – keep an eye out for our upcoming post on how to decide)

6. Fully document the product with drawings and specifications and establish a manufacturing plan

7. Ensure distribution and sales channels are in place and sell, sell, sell!

8. Finish product, process, and supply chain development

9. Produce the product

10. Ship the product / release the service

We’d love to chat and walk through the nuances of your particular situation. CAEDENCE can help you map your new product development, manage steps in the process, and prevent or overcome roadblocks as you turn your idea into reality.

Don't Follow Your Passion!

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 13:45:00 GMT

Don't Follow Your Passion!

You’ve probably heard the phrase “follow your passion and you won’t have to work a day in your life”. If you’re thinking about founding or getting aboard a startup, we think that blithely following this conventional wisdom is not likely to lead to success, but rather, unhappiness.

On the surface, the notion of aligning your work to your interests seems to make sense, but there are 2 problems:

First, as an entrepreneur, you’ll have to cover a lot of ground beyond your core idea. You’ll need to learn about, and spend time, on sales, marketing, finance, taxation, insurance, labor law, planning, management, quality control, etc. So while you might be excited about the product or service you want to develop, you may be frustrated by the lack of time you actually get to spend working in it.

Second, You could spend many years trying to find your passion, never getting around to starting start and growing your business. Many businesses start from a discovered need, a lucky break, an area you dabbled in, or an early job or project. If you’ve identified an unserved market need, we say “run with it”; you can cultivate your passion as you go.

Your passion is only one factor in starting a successful enterprise, alongside identifying a market niche and coping with the breadth of responsibilities every entrepreneur faces. “Follow your passion ONLY” is a recipe for failure and misery. Aligning your passion with available opportunities, and developing the resilience and discipline needed to deal with expected and unexpected challenges is a much better strategy.

Start Up - Summer Series

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 20:28:42 GMT

Start Up - Summer Series

Got a great idea for a product or business and don’t know how to get started?

Already have a fledgling business and need help developing and scaling?

In CAEDENCE’s Startup Summer Series postings, we’ll be talking about overcoming the challenges faced at each stage of startup growth.

How can I express myself with more confidence? Y'know ....and Stuff

Wed, 24 May 2023 14:05:39 GMT

Y'know....and Stuff

I once worked with a highly talented and diligent young engineer and was shocked when a customer complained to me that he was not doing a good job. Doubting this could be the case, I started attending customer calls with him. I noticed that he had a habit of ending statements with “throw-away” phrases like “…and stuff”, and “…y’know” which gave the impression that he didn’t have the technical detail to back up what he had just stated (although he actually did!).

After explaining to him the impact this was having on the customer’s perception of his competence, he made a concerted effort to express himself more confidently. There were no more customer complaints, and he went on to build very strong collaborative relationships with that customer. Problem solved!

The manner by which you express yourself matters a lot, even in “purely” technical or business environments. People will respond to the verbal and non-verbal cues you are emitting. It’s not enough to “know your stuff” - the listener needs to BELIEVE that you know your stuff. This belief is an emotional response formed in part by what you’re saying, but also by how you’re saying it.

Avoid phrases like "you know", "and stuff", "I think", "my guess is", "maybe we should try", "if you know what I mean", etc. You want to convey a sense of control and confidence, but these kind of phrases scream uncertainty and doubt. If you are, in fact, unsure about a given point you should certainly make that clear, however for things that are supported by data don't undermine your message.

Practice before your next meeting with a trusted confidante who can improve your awareness of your body language and phrasing...and stuff. A few little adjustments in your delivery could have major impact on how your message is received, y'know?

6 Common Symptoms of Underperforming Teams

Sun, 07 May 2023 14:50:30 GMT

6 Common Symptoms of an Underperforming Team

Recognizing when teams are underperforming is critical to business success. If a team is not hitting the mark, the likely outcomes include unsatisfied customers, disgruntled employees, delayed growth, reduced profit, and excessive time to market – overall lagging business results. There are tell-tail signs of a team in trouble – once you know how to identify them, it is possible to make needed adjustments and accelerate overall performance of the team and your company. Below are a few of the signs to watch for, ordered from team formation to project execution.

1. The team leader is not clearly identified. Teams are established in many ways, sometimes via management’s advance planning but other times spontaneously, such as when a big issue suddenly arises. When these spontaneous project teams form, there is a propensity for people to start working without naming a leader to coordinate the team, actions, and communication. This often results in chaos. Have you seen a customer emergency situation without a clear leader defined? It happens far too often. It’s much more effective to briefly pause and structure the team properly with all needed functions and sites represented, and of course to name the leader. The leader could come from any of a variety of functional groups in these situations. Don’t chose the leader based on the function they happen to perform; select the team leader based on the talents required to maximize the chances of success. Determine, for example, whether customer communication, technical knowledge, or organizational skills are the priority and select accordingly. Note that team leadership can (and should) be formally handed off as the issue evolves and different skill needs come to the fore.

2. Roles within the team are not defined or not clear. Roles within a team can develop based on many factors, including the type of team (e.g., problem solving, corrective action, new product development, continuous improvement, change management, etc.), its goals, the progress along the project plan, and the specific functions and activities involved. Best practice is establishment of a RASCI chart describing the default standard for each functional role. RASCI stands for Responsible (owner of a task or activity), Accountable (owner of overall project, control over allocating relevant resources), Supporting (providing assistance), Consulting (providing advice/guidance), Informed (need to be kept in the loop). RASCI’s help ensure everyone understands what’s expected of themselves and others when teams form. Having such a structure will allow all employees to follow a standard protocol, moving faster and reducing churn. However, please note that RASCI’s are just a starting guide. It is perfectly acceptable to team members to agree to blur or cross the lines on the RASCI when it makes sense to do so.

3. Action items and milestones are unclear. We frequently see team leader’s action lists that are unfocused, too long, or not sufficiently well-defined to drive action. Action lists should show the overarching plan for an entire project but individual actions should be very crisply defined. It’s critically important to include periodic milestone checkpoints to drive progress for each team member (we find weekly works best for most projects, but sometimes daily is required for very urgent issues). Action item lists that have targets set too far in the future often result in missed deadlines – people lose track without the reminder of an imminent deliverable. A balance must be struck: The team leader should be managing the critical upcoming deliverables and holding the team members accountable to deliver on time and with adequate quality, but they mustn’t fall into the trap of trying to micromanage everyone. There are several steps to improving team and project management execution (part of a specific CAEDENCE workshop, reach out for more details).

4. Team members stepping backwards instead of jumping in to tackle tough actions or assignments. We’ve all worked on a school project with that one person who doesn’t help at all; it stinks being one of the team members who actually cares. Guess what? Unfortunately, the same thing sometimes happens in almost all businesses. Poorly performing teams frequently have ‘passengers’, team members quietly listening without participating, not offering many inputs or actions. This can be highly de-motivating for the other colleagues. Teams like these can drift into stagnation, with people backing away from critical actions, not ‘jumping into the fire’ to tackle tough assignments, speak up, or lead. There are many reasons why someone might not help on the team. They might be afraid of the challenge itself, not recognize the tasks as their job, they might not have the necessary skills, or they might have competing priorities. Step one is communication – talk to the person one-on-one to clarify expectations, understand their concerns, and rearrange priorities if needed. If the issue persists, one of the best strategies is to make it more apparent: have team members present their updates at team meetings, set visible milestones for them to hit, have them present to management (or even customers) versus hiding behind others. If you still don’t see improvement, involve the passenger’s manager to support or coach them, or directly coach up their leadership skills yourself. If the situation persists, escalating the complaint to their management may be necessary.

5. Best practices not being followed (or unclear, or nonexistent). I recently saw this quote from American author Brandon Mull, “Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.” Strong teams don’t reinvent the wheel, they take advantage of the known best ways of doing things. If you see repeat issues in the same areas, “solving” the same problems again and again, these are signs that the team is not following a set of best practices. Is this a gap in company structure and training, or are individuals not seeking out the current practices? Without a systems-thinking culture, this problem will arise very quickly. Codifying the learning of various teams (both inside and outside your business/industry) and effectively deploying that learning pays off handsomely. Instituting things like structured problem-solving, standardized change management protocols, stage gate new product development, defined customer communication methods, and many other kinds of tools and templates can save huge amounts of time, effort, and resources. (CAEDENCE can lead your systems deployment or updates using years of documented best practices, see here for more info).

6. Results are falling short. Are milestones slipping on key projects? Do you see customers upset or lacking confidence in the team? Are the team’s KPIs (Key Process Indicators) behind typical performance for the broader business? Monitor outcomes and start digging into why the results are lagging. Managers should regularly monitor performance and step in to change the outcome if the team is headed ‘off the rails’. First, look for evidence of the other 5 symptoms to pinpoint the problem. Next, help the team overcome the gap through coaching or training, or investigate other ways to address the problem. Finally, continue to monitor performance by either attending some of the team meetings or asking for periodic reviews. (CAEDENCE can help you establish KPIs and dashboards well as defining remedial actions.)

In summary, it is vital to periodically assess team performance. Use the 6 symptoms of an underperforming team to recognize how a team is functioning. Take needed actions to close the gaps. Are you recognizing these symptoms and taking necessary actions to address them? If you need help to spot team disfunctions, actively coach a struggling team, or provide training to avoid or overcome these pitfalls, reach out to CAEDENCE – we can help!

Achieving Wow! in Your Business

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 00:59:03 GMT

Achieving Wow! in Your Business

One of the best examples of a stellar company culture I ever saw was a team that implemented Tom Peters’ “Wow!” workplace. Rather than prescribing detailed goals from a high level, the business leader set the expectation that our objective was to Wow! our customer, empowering the team to establish its own detailed goals to this end. We had monthly team meetings of not just business staff, but everyone associated with the product – engineering, quality, procurement, production operators, administrative assistants – everyone came to understand how their contribution was impacting the product, the business, and customer satisfaction.

One day our toughest customer was coming to visit. After some discussions in the conference room, they were to tour the production line. At most plants, such tours are carefully curated by engineering staff, answering questions and carefully steering the visitors away from the (…ahem…) less polished areas. When our meetings were concluded and the production line tour was to begin, we handed the customer team off to our lead production operator and told them we’d meet up for coffee when they were finished.

They were shocked; after all, this was unprecedented. Later, they told us it was the most impressive line tour they had ever been on. They were amazed that nothing was off-limits, and especially impressed that the production operators truly understood how their actions impacted on the quality of the product, and how that would affect the end consumer. The amount of customer trust and confidence built on that visit was immeasurable. “Wow!” indeed.

CÆDENCE has the know-how and drive to help you Wow! your customers. https://www.linkedin.com/company/caedenceconsulting/

If you’d prefer to figure it out from scratch on your own, we highly recommend the classic:

The Pursuit of Wow! Every Person's Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times by Tom Peters, 1994.

Sitting Ducks (in a customer’s boardroom)

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 18:47:09 GMT

Sitting Ducks (in a customer’s boardroom)

We had poor quality performance with a major customer. We were faced with several failed units from the most important product line at the customer. Instead of holding a conference call to review the quality issue and our actions, the customer management invited us to visit them in person. Our preparation was limited, as we expected to have a brief conversation to share planned recovery actions. We ended up in an intimidating, massive board room with the largest table you can imagine. Two of us sat there at one end of the table with about 18 customer executives around the table asking for pin-pointed updates.

When we were unable to provide on-th e-spot answers, they literally locked us into an office to make the phone calls necessary to get the required information. Behind that locked door, we hurriedly called our colleagues in production and engineering to get answers to their questions. Once we had some information, the customer let us out to review it. We were able to better communicate our plans and get out of there alive!

The key in an urgent situation is to prepare thoroughly, anticipate the customer’s needs and concerns (both real and perceived), collect all of the needed information beforehand, and be ready to share a well-thought-out plan with people who might be quite emotional. You can learn the customer communication skills to calm a customer, show you are in control, and turn around problems toward a successful recovery. Don’t become a sitting duck!

Want to restore or maintain customer confidence even in the most challenging situations? CAEDENCE’s novel, realistic role-play based workshop “Keys to Effective Customer Influencing” (including companion book) is one of our most-requested offerings because it is so memorable and effective. Here’s what one engineering director had to say, "CAEDENCE Consulting brings a new perspective to training, leveraging years of experience into a relevant exercise combining technical and soft skills into a comprehensive package for a cross-functional engineering team. The impact is clear: my team is already much more effectively managing customers in a variety of challenging situations.“

How to Undermine Your Credibility – A Brief Case Study

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 21:54:43 GMT

How to Undermine Your Credibility – A Brief Case Study

During a recession there were several major layoffs and management would hold mandatory quarterly meetings with the employees to review the company’s situation. Every quarter a “V”-shaped revenue vs. time graph was shown, with the bottom tantalizingly just one quarter in the future – the message was that the company was on the verge of turning around. But after a year and a half of showing the “V” graph, it was obvious that they had no idea when things might actually pick up.

During this time period an employee engagement survey (of the typical, generic type) was circulated; participation was not optional. When the survey results were revealed, I had to laugh - Result number one was, (and I wish I was kidding) “We have the best management team!” Rarely have I witnessed a more glaring example of a management team so tone-deaf and out of touch with their own situation and the needs of their employees.

Respect your employees. They’re adults. They understand that occasional downturns are normal in business. Pitching a sugar-coated fantasy undermines your credibility as a leader. Believing your own hype undermines the team’s respect for you.

Remember, it is not necessary for your team to like every decision you make, but it is essential for them to understand why you’re making it. If they have the facts, they are in a position to think “That’s a tough decision, what would I do if I were in charge?” While they might not come up with the same answer, they will be able to see how you came to the conclusion you did. This strengthens credibility and respect.

Did you hear about the other ‘D’ in “DEI”?

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 18:34:09 GMT

Did you hear about the other ‘D’ in “DEI”?

When you hear the word “diversity”, it may conjure up a company-wide initiative relating to demographic diversity of race, gender and ethnicity. In fact, diversity is defined in one way as: the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc. Efforts around diversity have been growing for years and are helping to shape our current businesses and society for the better.

Let’s review another type of diversity - experiential diversity – where the range of skills and talents of team members are leveraged to improve team and business performance. Imagine a team where everyone thinks the same way because they have similar experiences, skills, and talents. Would they be able to anticipate the needs of a wide range of customers? Would they be able to overcome obstacles creatively? Or would the team members be hampered by having the same assumption set?

Consider a simple example: you need to remodel your kitchen. Would you prefer to have three carpenters do the job, or have one carpenter, an electrician, and a plumber updating your kitchen together? I guess it depends on how good the carpenters are at electrical work and plumbing! But you get the point: each individual brings a unique set of skills, perspectives, history, and experiences - diversity! Businesses need to leverage this diversity to accelerate progress and achieve results.

Now imagine a team of people from diverse educational backgrounds, diverse methods of thought, and diverse skills gained from previous experiences. Some of the team members might be good at organization, others at individual technical work, and still others at leadership. Combining the experiential diversity of team members to optimize the team’s performance requires an awareness of each person’s skills, background, likes and dislikes, strengths, and previous project experiences. In other words, it is not always obvious how to organize your team for success. Don’t assume that people’s current assignments are optimal.

Scan your current team, what experiential diversity do you see? Did you ever take note of it before? Do you know the skills, strengths, and likes/dislikes of your team members? Are you assigning projects based on their skills and where they could make the biggest impact? Or are you assigning projects to whoever’s available (even if their skills do not align well with the project needs)? Have you talked to each team member to assess their desired focus areas? Hiring the best employees into your team is critical, but if you do not recognize and utilize their experiential diversity, you may be sacrificing business results. Always work to leverage and support diversity, whether demographic diversity or experiential diversity. The outcomes will be incredible.

For more guidance on setting up your team for success, reach out to CAEDENCE. Our team development program, emerging leaders coaching, and “hands-on” work with client teams are all options to help accelerate your results.

In Praise of the “Stretch” Goal

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 14:46:22 GMT

In Praise of the “Stretch” Goal

Return in a week with 20 ideas to solve the problem - twenty! I panicked – Was he crazy? I’d never come up with more than 3 ideas to attack any previous problem; where would I get 20?

Establishing “stretch” goals is one component of setting high overall expectations. Such goals have to be balanced just on the verge of achievability, and there must be a culture of trust in place – there must not be negative consequences for failing to reach a stretch goal.

As a rookie design engineer, at least once per week I would be in my manager’s office discussing the details of my assignments. This one particularly thorny design problem had me vexed. After a bit of informal discussion and brainstorming, my manager asked me to return in a week with 20 ideas to solve the problem - twenty! I panicked – I’d never come up with more than 3 ideas to attack any previous problem; where would I get 20?

A week later, I was back in the office with 12 ideas to discuss. I never quite reached the requested 20, but the ambitious goal drove me to generate at least 9 more ideas than I would have otherwise conceived. When my manager asked for 20, I attempted it, trusting that coming up a bit short would not be cause for chastisement. That said, had my manager asked for 1000 ideas, I would probably have ignored the comment as hyperbole and returned with my usual 2 or 3.

Most people love a challenge. However, they won’t take up the challenge if they think they’ll be punished for failing. Further, they will quickly shut down if the challenge seems too overwhelming. Setting effective stretch goals for your team requires that they (a) agree the goal is difficult but might be achievable, and (b) understand that falling short will not incur any negative repercussions. Work with your team to establish such goals – their buy-in is key.

How can I achieve big results? Paint Your Picasso (Yearly)

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 19:36:49 GMT

Paint Your Picasso (Yearly)

I was always surprised to see how many people weren’t aware of their own major accomplishments and more so that they weren’t even thinking in such big terms. Years would go by where people were not creating significant change in the company.

Artists have special skills. They are able to produce magnificent works: paintings, musical scores, songs, plays, movies, building designs - all taking months or possibly years to create. Artists have the ability to dedicate a significant amount of time, energy, and focus to an activity to produce a spectacular outcome that we all marvel at year after year and throughout history. WHY can’t we replicate that in business? We can!

Every January, during goal setting and prioritization reviews, I would tell my team - prepare to “Paint your Picasso”. This was a way of stating that each employee should set some significant goals for the year, and work with passion and focus to complete them. Do you think that Picasso spent most of his time collecting paints, cleaning the floor, or fixing broken easels? Of course, he spent some time on these preparatory things, but his laser focus was on creating treasured masterpieces.

We often get lost in the “trivial many”: projects, issues, and business activities that have little impact. Think more broadly about your goals - find the one or two per year that will create a step change in business performance. You have the ability and time to make more impactful achievements in your job and career – it starts by deliberately choosing where to focus your energy. Start by setting yearly goals including at least one major item, create a clear plan - a path to complete it - and you will hit that one big home run every year.

At the end of the year, I would repeat my theme and ask: “Did you paint a Picasso this year?”. This would help the team reflect, to see if they completed their major accomplishment (and why or why not, so they could better stay on track the next year). If you look back and can think of a major accomplishment, you have truly painted your yearly Picasso. Are you ‘painting your Picasso’ every year?

Let CAEDENCE develop your team’s proficiency in policy deployment, prioritization, and time management. Our interactive workshop will re-set expectations about how to distinguish between the “trivial many” and the “Picasso”, and provide the tools and know-how to keep on track.

Employee Recognition Series, Part 1: What NOT to do!

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 03:51:25 GMT

Employee Recognition Series, Part 1: What NOT to do!

My group was “at the tail end of the whip” – the project team would determine the direction (in closed meetings) and define specific tests which my group would have to carry out. We were left entirely out of the loop on the rationale and planning for such tests, constantly receiving last-minute demands for test set-ups with no context and no idea how (or even if) the results would help advance the project toward its goals.

One time I was informed by the project leader that a particular test I had set up and monitored weeks prior had yielded critically important data. He wanted to recognize my effort and inquired about my preferences (i.e., gift certificate, desktop accessories, etc.). I thanked him for the “attaboy” and told him that what I really wanted was to occasionally be invited to the project team meetings (to understand how my team’s work was contributing, and to get a bit more notice when important tests were coming up).

A few weeks later I received a small digital clock emblazoned with the company logo and “Great Job Award”. I was never invited to a single project meeting. Even though it stopped working long ago, that clock still sits on my desk nearly 30 years later as a reminder of how NOT to recognize and reward employees.

All I wanted was to be in the loop so that I could contribute more effectively to the project goals. Instead of providing timely and appropriate recognition (which would have cost nothing and would only have improved my ability to deliver results) the recognition was late and irrelevant, utterly undermining its purpose.

This post is the first in a series focused on rewards and recognition - keep an eye out for future posts full of tips on how to do recognition right.

Want some advice on your employee recognition program? E-mail us anytime at info@CaedenceConsulting.com.

Getting the most out of your performance review – Writing Your Self-Assessment - Tip #1

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:02:50 GMT

Getting the most out of your performance review – Writing Your Self-Assessment - Tip #1

Like them or not, annual performance reviews are a staple of many company cultures. Often the employee is required to prepare a self-assessment. “I always try to do high quality work” is a common self-assessment response – but it’s worthless! (The problem is that anyone can make that claim. You need to differentiate yourself!) Instead, open with an action word and quantify the impact you had; writing a self- assessment is akin to writing a resume – similar advice applies.

For example, “Simplified the process for analyzing failed assemblies resulting in 32% faster throughput and 20% improvement in the accuracy of the analysis findings.” To get the most out of your annual self-assessment, be specific and memorable. Provide evidence of your achievements so that you stand out. Give your manager something tangible to work with when they’re advocating on your behalf.

Personally, I’m a fan of the annual review. All year we’re buried in issues; it can be hard to see the effect our efforts are having. Taking some time to reflect on the year’s accomplishments puts everything in perspective; we can see that all those daily steps and frustrations have added up to result in a real impact. Reflection also helps us recognize those areas where things fell short, which can be useful in identifying project goals and skills to work on in the coming months.

The key take-away here: Specific, noteworthy examples of accomplishments not only make us feel good, but they maximize our chances of a good review from management, and hopefully a nice raise as well.

Stay tuned for more annual performance review tips.

Surprise – Your Customer Just Fired You!

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 22:59:26 GMT

Surprise – Your Customer Just Fired You!

Our New Product Development team was following what seemed like the best-practice formula for success. They held several weekly engineer-to-engineer meetings and monthly management meetings with the customer, and regular internal management reviews to monitor progress. It was quite a shock when the customer fired us shortly before the product was supposed to launch - after 2 years of development effort and investment!

The product was custom and complex. Numerous engineering changes were made over the first 12-months to improve the design and better align with evolving customer needs. All changes were discussed frequently with the customer engineers, including ballpark estimates of the cost impacts of those changes. The customer engineers advised us to wait until all the changes were settled before issuing an updated quotation. Following that advice was a huge mistake!

Nearly 24 months after project kick-off, and innumerable requirement changes and optimizations later, the specification and design were frozen. It was time to quote the updated product (at its corresponding new, higher price, resulting from all the additional features the customer’s engineers had asked for along the way) formally to the customer’s Purchasing Management. Customer Purchasing Management felt blindsided by the new price and immediately canceled the project! We had assumed all along that our engineering counterparts were communicating within their own organization. They were not.

Analysis after the fact showed that despite direct contact with customer engineers and mid-level management, engagement with the right top-level contact people (the ones who make the budget/spending decisions) had not happened. The pricing surprise resulted in a loss of confidence in our team by the customer’s senior management team. There’s no such thing as “The Customer”. Each customer is made up of a variety of constituencies, each with their own motivations, goals, and metrics. It is your responsibility to keep all the relevant players in the loop.

Several lessons can be drawn from this expensive, unpleasant experience:

1. Make your own efforts to over-communicate to customers at all levels.

2. Do not assume the customer communicates internally across departments or between levels.

3. Set up a regular, formal way to quote the impact of any engineering changes to the customer.

4. Ask for written confirmation of product and process changes.

5. Maintain a change log document jointly used by both parties.

Share this with every early-career engineer you know!

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 15:51:56 GMT

Share this with every early-career engineer you know!

A very smart and eager young engineer I was mentoring asked me to review a drawing. He had specified extremely tight tolerances across the board. With a short conversation, I completely re-shaped his understanding of the role of the design engineer, as follows:

Me: “Why are these tolerances so tight?” / A: “I want the best part we can get.”

Me: “But what tolerances are necessary for the part to perform its function without issues?” / A: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Can any suppliers achieve the tolerances you have specified?” / A: “I haven’t checked.”

Then I explained that the goal in designing any component was to make it perform flawlessly at the best cost and with the surest supply. Overly tight specifications would make it harder to find suppliers who could make the part and would drive up costs. After that interaction, his entire approach changed. He was diligent with tolerance stack studies and simulations to determine the loosest tolerances that would still get the job done. As they say, “Anybody can make it work, it takes an engineer to make it work on a budget.”

CӔDENCE has specific workshops aimed at achieving engineering excellence such as Engineering Drawing Best Practices, Design for Assembly, Customer and Supplier Specification Gap Analyses, New Product Development, and Career Management Skills. Let us accelerate your team’s performance.

Quality is a company’s top priority. WRONG!

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 15:42:51 GMT

Quality is a company’s top priority. WRONG!

You probably thought that your company’s mission statement highlighting ‘exceeding customer expectations’ and ‘striving for world-class quality’ was defining the company’s actual priorities. Wrong!

Quality performance has historically been a major differentiator in a company’s performance (sales, customer satisfaction) and for many decades took a great deal of attention from top management to achieve it. As quality levels have improved over time in many industries, strong quality performance is no longer a customer delighter but now only “table stakes” for a company to maintain their market position. Quality performance becomes visible only when you fail. For this reason, companies have fallen into a trap – the have put their quality system on ‘cruise control’. This puts them at high risk.

When you look “behind the curtain”, the reality is often quite different than the company priority statements. Start digging deeper. Take a close look at monthly management review agendas. Is quality the first topic you find? Likely not. Look at the Key Process Indicators (KPIs) and other high-level company metrics. Do you see more than token quality measures, or even any quality measures at all? Often not!

If you do see quality performance represented loudly and clearly: high in management agendas and prominently among KPI’s, congratulations - you work for a quality-focused company. If you don’t, a higher priority is front and center of the attention of top leadership. Financial performance, shareholder value, and/or top-line growth are the priorities of most companies. (Of course, those are the outcomes that keep a company alive, so this should come as no surprise.) That said, a company without the dedication and a robust system to achieve world class quality can also easily fail!

High quality is a prerequisite for businesses these days. For long-term success, it is imperative to set up a system that pushes quality performance to ever-higher levels. However, this does not mean quality is a higher (or even equal) priority compared to financial results - don’t let them tell you it is. Quality performance is quite often a secondary (or lower) priority that most top leadership “want handled” by a different group. Don’t think that top leadership speaking about quality and setting quality initiatives by a defined group pushes it to top priority for the company. It doesn’t. It may be just a side initiative to handle the mess called “quality”.

Spotting the difference between putting quality on cruise control vs. seeing it as a real priority is easy. Your company is REALLY prioritizing quality performance when you see all of these indicators:

1) The top-level company priorities and measures include quality performance

2) A clear quality improvement plan is visible to all employees

3) Management is proactively monitoring quality performance with KPIs

4) Management is swiftly addressing quality excursions (internal and external)

5) Resources are added in areas that address quality, not only financial gain

6) Problems are not only fixed but the deficient systems behind them are corrected

7) Performance in quality is visible to the entire company

If you don’t see nearly all of these things, your company is at risk. A competitor who is truly quality focused will come along and “eat your lunch”. There are ways to combat this reality. CӔDENCE can help you achieve world-class quality, set up a thriving quality system, and push through the typical corporate roadblocks to success. In a future post, we will explore how a top-notch company approaches strategic quality improvement.

Water Your Garden - What are 4 Tips to Develop Your Team?

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 14:58:16 GMT

Water Your Garden - 4 Tips to Develop Your Team

Early in my career, I was lucky enough to work for a terrific manager. His actions demonstrated that my opinions mattered. Not only would he listen, but when we disagreed, if I was right he’d change his mind. He was generous with his time, flexible, and focused on results (not hours).

If I needed to take care of the occasional personal issue during normal work time, it was never a problem – he trusted that I would deliver on my commitments (and that inspired me to rise to each occasion to demonstrate that his trust was not misplaced).

Some managers get so involved in their own projects and initiatives that they ignore their team. Managing people is analogous to taking care of a garden – you need to spend time watering the plants to help them grow. If you ignore them, they will wilt. Don’t let your team wilt (become disengaged, progress too slowly). Don’t be the kind of manager who is too busy to spend time with their people. A combination of flexibility, attention, and setting high expectations forms the foundation for success.

In summary, to help develop your team, follow these tips:

Be open to your team’s feedback and ideas
Allow flexibility, don’t count hours but results
Stay engaged with the team members and nurture their personal development
Set high expectations, and encourage team members to flourish!

Recruiting Outside the Box

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 12:47:10 GMT

Recruiting Outside the Box

I was preparing to attend a career fair to recruit engineers and put together a kit of hardware to show off our company’s products. This idea was met with some resistance by those who insisted that the appearance of our booth’s branding would be compromised by the presence of these parts on the table. However, I wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and went ahead and displayed the products at the fair. After a very successful day of recruiting (where an unprecedentedly high number of students stopped by to excitedly pick up the components and engage us with questions about what they did and how they worked), my colleagues were forced to admit that having the products on the table was actually a great idea. Word spread quickly; the company has displayed products at career fairs at every technical recruiting event since that day over 20 years ago.

Having attended career fairs as an engineering student, I knew that it wasn’t the branding that attracted the talent, but the personal engagement. I also knew that engineers and technicians love looking at and touching hardware. This deep insight into our target audience made the notion of showing off components obvious to me, although to my non-technical colleagues it was an unorthodox, outside-the-box idea.

The most effective way to convince someone of the value of a new idea is to demonstrate it. I was confident the benefits of my idea would be significant. I also realized that any risk to the company of having some clutter on the table at one event was negligible, and any risk to my own career was similarly miniscule (after all, they were extremely unlikely to fire me just for displaying some company products).

If your out-of-the box idea is encountering resistance, try to find a low-risk way to demonstrate it to the nay-sayers. People are skeptical and they don’t like change, but they will get on board if something is working.

Did you know CAEDENCE can help you deploy unique and effective recruiting best practices for your own organization? Contact us at info@CaedenceConsulting.com.

Trick of the Trade

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 13:11:00 GMT

Trick of the Trade

We often need to know when a colleague or supplier will deliver a component, test result, or needed bit of information, but colleagues and suppliers are often reticent to offer concrete promise dates (for a variety of reasons). When someone will not or cannot offer an estimated delivery time, try this trick: “Can I have it after lunch today?” (The usual response is “No, that’s nowhere near enough time!”) “Okay, could I have it by this date next year?” (The usual response is “Of course, that’s plenty of time.”) You have now established that they do have some idea of how long the task will take, and it’s just a matter of tightening those boundaries.

Continue by asking, “So, between this afternoon and next year, what’s your best guess?” This usually results in a reasonable but somewhat optimistic estimation (depending on the individual and on the local culture). Next ask “If everything went perfectly, no competing priorities, no mistakes, and no snags of any kind, when could it be finished?”, the response is the best-case timing. Then ask, “What if everything went wrong, needed resources weren’t available when expected, problems popped up, other projects got hot and took priority?” This reveals the worst-case timing. Now you are in a position to agree on a realistic timing window and assess the risk of the task being completed late (and take any needed actions to help move things along).

What to do When the Right Person is in the Wrong Job?

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 19:51:07 GMT

When the Right Person is in the Wrong Job

There was talk among my fellow managers of disciplinary action or even laying off the struggling Project Manager (PM). His projects were not progressing fast enough and his communication to upper management was lacking confidence. Having worked with him before and seen his solid engineering and core business skills first hand, this was really surprising. In my opinion, he showed potential but this current role wasn’t allowing him to shine.

With an opening in my team, I reached out to his manager and asked if I could transition him to an Application Engineering role on my team. The manager said it’d be worth a try. The PM was happy to be thrown a lifeline from the troubled role. I set him out with clear objectives and let him take the lead on several new assignments where he began to make great progress. His confidence grew and in just two years he was promoted to Engineering Manager. Over time he took on increasingly significant leadership roles and today leads his own department.

Just because someone is not thriving in a particular role does not mean they can’t contribute to your organization in important ways. Sometimes a bright, capable, energetic person simply isn’t a good fit for a particular position. Help them find the win-win role where their strengths will allow them to excel. In this way, you will change someone’s life by setting them on a path for success.

Developing Your Team IS Developing Your Career

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:11:59 GMT

Developing Your Team IS Developing Your Career

A manager’s job is to facilitate their team’s success. This is a critical point to internalize - as a manager, you are measured on the performance of your team, not your direct individual contributions. This can be tough to accept for people who advanced to management roles by virtue of their performance as individual contributors. Remember, it only benefits you to develop your team members to their full potential.

To succeed at talent development, you must genuinely want to help people improve, and engender an environment of trust. Only then will people be receptive to your advice because they’ll believe that you have their best interests in mind (because you really do). The fact is, without this sincere foundational mindset, no advice will make someone a successful manager. You can’t fake it; don’t bother trying - people will see through the facade. If you are going in to an interaction expecting some sort of favor in return for your help, or holding back because you’re afraid your employee might develop into a rival then you’re done before you’ve even started. Your team members are not your rivals; developing them to handle some of the things you do means you won’t have to do those things anymore – it frees you up to get involved in bigger, better, exciting, new things.

Years ago, I began formally mentoring a colleague shortly after he was promoted to his first formal team management role. We hit it off, and for more than a decade I served as his advisor, sounding board, and confidante. He rapidly rose through the ranks (constantly developing and strengthening team members and colleagues along the way) and today is in a top executive role. While I’d like to take all the credit, the fact is he’s a very talented and driven person. Importantly he absolutely exudes sincerity. People trust his advice because they can tell that he doesn’t have a hidden agenda.

Strengthening your team by strengthening the players will ultimately result in more opportunities for everyone (including you). There is no point in pettiness or holding back your best guidance. It’s not a zero-sum game; there’ll be enough success to go around. Throughout my own career I’ve worked to help others succeed without expectation of any form of compensation from them, and I’ve had absolutely no fear that they might turn into rivals adversely affecting my own career aspirations. Both of these attitudes came across when working with direct reports and colleagues. They could sense that I was a true ally, genuinely acting in their best interest (and were therefore receptive to my advice). Knowing that making the team stronger created maximum value, I had confidence that there would be plenty of opportunities for me, and it proved true, there were.

What Gets Measured, Gets Done

Mon, 16 May 2022 16:46:02 GMT

What Gets Measured, Gets Done
or “Did you figure out yet how to motivate a team?”

After inheriting responsibility for a rather decrepit lab, I set to work trying to rally the technician team to make improvements. Walking through the lab area one day, I discovered an unrestrained compressed gas cylinder (if you’re not familiar, these things can launch like torpedoes if they fall over and the neck breaks). Passionately explaining to the team that they could lose limbs (or worse) should an incident occur, we got the cylinder secured properly. About a week later, I found another cylinder unsecured in a nearby part of the lab – somehow risk to their life and limb was not sufficiently motivating for the team to stay on top of this safety concern. In the end, I found a way to get people to consistently secure the cylinders - the solution was to implement formal lab audits with numerical scoring, and to broadly email the audit results to the technicians and their managers – a mechanism to measure performance and report it out to all the stakeholders. The team members were mortified to have low audit scores published next to their names (and visible to their managers). The adherence to safety protocols and overall state of the lab improved dramatically. To this day, it’s surprising to me that simple numbers on an email did so much more to drive action from the team than the tangible risk of dying, but the approach works, so I have used metrics as a means to successfully influence behaviors many times since then. The old adage is true – “What gets measured, gets done.”

"The Nudge" (or "Unlocking Potential")

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 19:53:13 GMT

"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.

Chaos Theory (or Transition to Management)

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 03:44:56 GMT

Chaos Theory (or Transition to Management)

A couple of months after first being promoted to a manager position, during a weekly one-on-one meeting, my supervisor asked me for a detail of a project one of my team members was working on. I did not know the information and admitted that I was struggling to keep up with all the ins-and-outs of all my direct reports’ projects. I said I felt like I was failing in this new assignment. Chuckling, he reassured me that I was doing fine and offered up some advice. Advice that, frankly, seemed stupid to me in the moment, but which, soon after, I realized was true and quite helpful, “You have to get comfortable feeling a little bit out of control.” As an individual contributor I had had a strong, direct influence on the outcomes of my projects, and, indeed, the success of those projects is what opened the door to the management role. As a manager, I had to learn to let go of that control and trust my team members to handle the details. Further, it’s not possible for one person to stay current on every detail of every project, that’s why we work in organizations. Most importantly, higher level managers don’t expect you to know every detail of others’ projects off the top of your head, only the critical items to help direct the needed outcomes of the business. If you’re asked for detail that you don’t know on the spot, just be sure to follow up and report back so you don’t leave your management wondering.

Do you want to become a CEO?

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:42:32 GMT

Do you want to become a CEO?

I’ve had the honor of formally and informally mentoring dozens of highly talented people over the years. When the topic of career development comes up, one piece of tried-and-true advice always seems to resonate: “You have to define what ‘success’ means to you.” Many early-career individuals assume that their goal is to “climb the corporate ladder”, to move up through the organizational hierarchy in hopes of one day becoming CEO. Analogous to the odds of becoming a professional athlete, the fact is, very few people will ever become a CEO (and fewer still are cut out for success in that role). You’ll want to compose a clear picture of the role you do aspire to, and map the steps you can take to get there.

Take some time for introspection: What aspects of work make you happy? How many hours per week do you want to spend working? How much of your week do you want to spend with friends and family? What are your inherent strengths and weaknesses? How much money do you really need to live the lifestyle you want to live? Write down your answers to those questions. With that honest self-assessment, customize your career goals. Then determine what skills you must develop to move into the role you desire, talk to people who are already in your desired job, and work with your current management to get assignments that will help you build and demonstrate the necessary skills.

Achieving career growth often happens in different ways than just straight up the ladder. Regardless of your specific goal, it can be a good idea to make occasional “lateral” moves or take on special projects to broaden your experience and round out your skill set. Along the way, re-visit your self-assessment from time to time (annually works for most people). As you are exposed to new experiences, you might decide your original preferences don’t apply anymore. There is no rule against changing your career plan as you go.

Company Culture - Does it really matter?

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 21:29:08 GMT

Company Culture - Does it really matter?

Early in my career, I assumed that one company was pretty much like the next in terms of work environment and culture. I could not have been more wrong. In my first job, practically every assignment was, “Here’s how we did it last time, go do it exactly the same way”; there was a detailed manual of every required calculation, and in the end other people decided whether or not to go forward with my work – it was drudgery. I changed companies and my first project was to resolve a specific performance issue of a new product in development. After only a few weeks, my boss’ boss said, “You’re in charge of resolving this issue, what do you think we should do?” It struck me that it was the first time after nearly 4 years in industry that anyone had ever asked me that! I knew then that all company cultures are not created equal. The autonomy and responsibility offered by the second company made work a joy – my ideas mattered, and I could directly impact the outcome of my projects.

The influence of company culture on day-to-day-life and to engagement and job satisfaction cannot be overestimated. When considering a role, be sure to ask about what it’s like to work there, how decisions are made, how responsibilities are divided, etc. Ask more than one person the same questions – their answers may differ. If you can, get a tour or grab a coffee with a prospective peer to get insights outside the more formal interviews.

The "Toy" Story

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 20:17:11 GMT

The "Toy" Story

We were in trouble! Several years ago, I was developing a complex, innovative new product with a cross-functional team of 15 people (with zero new product launch experience among them). Our customer was demanding additional product improvements be implemented prior to launch. The team was cracking under the stress. There was infighting and chaos, exacerbated by product and process deficiencies. The different functional groups were blaming each other for the problems. A seasoned Project Manager was assigned, and, as if by magic, everything changed.

At her very first team meeting, she placed a small toy car in front of each person, saying nothing. After about 5 minutes (which seemed like an eternity), she asked “What do you all have in front of you?”. Everyone said, “a car” or “a toy”. She said, “Right! It’s a toy. From now on you are all going to remember one thing – T. O. Y.: Team, Others, Yourself. When you prioritize actions, you will set Team first, followed by Others, and then Yourself. You are no longer going to worry about your individual metrics; this is a team and we will fight through this difficult launch together. You are going to behave with ‘TOY’ in mind in all of your actions and talk from here on out.”

Immediately, the team started to gel. We made tremendous progress with the product development and launched on schedule. Individual concerns dropped by the wayside as the team fought hard to be successful. The small action of placing a TOY in front of us made such a huge impact! That simple gesture dramatically re-set everyone’s thinking. It was suddenly so obvious that if the team failed in its mission, it would not reflect well on anyone – the team’s internal finger-pointing was profoundly counterproductive. The presence of a physical toy on each colleague’s desk was a constant reminder to keep egos in check and work the issues. Twenty-five years later, I still have the toy. What symbolic action could you take with your team to drive team unity and accelerate progress?

First Things First

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 20:41:37 GMT

First Things First

Early in my career, I reported to a newly-promoted manager. We would meet weekly to go over all the things he wanted me to accomplish. I would write everything down and leave the meeting with a list that covered the front and back of a sheet of paper, perhaps 50 items. One day, frustrated that I could never complete all the tasks on the list, I asked him to help me assign the appropriate percentage of my time I should spend on each project. He said "This is pretty important, spend 20% on this, 30% on this, 5% on this, this one is not critical, so 1% on this, etc...". I left the office with about 275%. Hmm, I thought, that really backfired.

The following week I tried a different tactic. Writing out the list as usual, I then spun the paper around, slid it across the table, and said, "There are 50 things on this list. You cross out 47 of them, and I will hit a home run on each of the other 3." From that moment on we maintained a clear understanding of what was "must do" [had to be 'A+' and on time], and what was "nice to do" [‘C+’ work will suffice and no one would be too upset if it’s late]. The impact on my productivity of knowing (and agreeing upon) what was really important and focusing attention and effort on those few things, without getting distracted by less valuable tasks was profound. I have used that lesson in prioritization throughout my own career and whenever I mentor others.

ARE YOU A LEADER?

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 00:22:49 GMT

ARE YOU A LEADER? Acquiring and fine-tuning leadership skills will enhance your career trajectory, whether you manage people or not. Check out the new blog from CÆDENCE Consulting. We’re sharing real-life stories highlighting advice, strategies, tactics, and tips for new and aspiring leaders. Facilitating your success is our only job.

Welcome! If you’re ready to take your career to the “next level”, you’ve come to the right place. Leaders are people applying leadership skills and behaviors to get results (regardless of their job role or title). Leaders inspire, leaders empower, leaders influence, leaders make good stuff happen! In this blog, we’ll be sharing stories to highlight the approaches, strategies, tactics, and tips learned over our decades of experience managing people, projects, and businesses. Our goal for each brief post is to provide an engaging story highlighting a practical nugget of wisdom that you can apply immediately to enhance your performance and your team’s results. We want you to become the kind of leader people want to work with and for, who people will go the extra mile for, and who’s teams consistently deliver beyond expectations. Our mission is to facilitate your success.

In some posts we will be referring to leaders in the formal sense (e.g., those people with the title of “manager” or “director”), but most of the time we’ll be talking about leaders in the more general sense (those applying leadership skills and behaviors to get results, regardless of their title). Even if the story in a particular week’s post revolves around a particular job title, the lesson learned will be applicable to leadership generally.

Throughout our posts, we’ll do our best to be consistent in the use of the following terminology:

Leader: Anyone applying leadership skills and behaviors to get results, regardless of their formal title or role. Leaders may be managers, project managers, directors, or individual contributors. Leaders may or may not have others directly or indirectly reporting to them.

Manager: Someone formally recognized as being in charge of a team who is responsible for developing the talent on the team and evaluating performance of team members. Managers typically have 4-18 direct reports.

Project Manager (PM): Someone formally recognized as being in charge of one or more projects who is responsible for project execution and achieving project deliverables. PM’s generally do not have any direct reports.

Director: Someone formally recognized as a department head, responsible for the overall functioning of one or more disciplines or services within an organization. Directors may have up to 100 people reporting to them indirectly, typically through a staff of 3-10 direct reporting managers.

The CÆDENCE Consulting Blog

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 17:21:58 GMT

Welcome to the CÆDENCE Consulting Blog!

Watch this space! CÆDENCE Consulting is about to kick-off its informative blog, offering real-life stories full of advice, strategies, tactics, and tips for new and aspiring leaders.