Standards and Best Practices

Earlier posts discuss the Management Review (MR), a key element of the ISO 9001 Quality Assurance Standard; this post turns attention to the subject of standards in general. There are two primary motivations to seek certification for compliance with well-known standards such as ISO 9001. First, certification signals to potential customers that your company has convinced an auditor that you meet the standard; indeed, some government agencies and prime contractors may use compliance with standards as filters when awarding contracts, or at least may look favorably on compliance. Second, many elements of the standards represent “best practices” and adoption of these practices raises the probability of improved customer satisfaction, employee morale, and business conditions at your company. These two motivations are not mutually exclusive; they are not even independent. However, over time, they may become decoupled because, following initial certification, you may be tempted to do only the minimum required to renew certification. Moreover, because it is unlikely that all elements of any standard will be equally applicable to your company – elements which do not apply at all are generally identified in advance – it is also unlikely that you will give them all equal attention. The problem is that, unless you retain focus on the most relevant elements, doing the minimum needed for recertification may divert your attention from the pursuit of best practices.

In previous posts, consistent with the theme of this blog, I have made clear that the MR is an ISO 9001 gem; I am convinced that this is true for most companies. Depending on the nature of your company, there will be other elements within that standard of benefit to your company. In any event, whether you are pursuing certification or the efficient use of best practices, you will want to invest carefully. Since these practices are only effective when they receive regular attention, and since the investment of overhead resources can only be justified if it is cost-effective, one enabler is automation. For those pursuing certification, there is software on the market for that purpose. I would suggest that any company considering purchase of such software consider these factors: suitability; cost; ease of use; flexibility; security; and long-term support. Invariably, software developed for general use requires adaptation for specific users and uses.

More interesting for this blog is the case of companies pursuing selected best practices rather than certification; this viewpoint becomes more dramatic as the scope is expanded such that elements from more than one standard are adopted and elements not mentioned in any widely published standard (possibly unique to the company) are added. While those who write the standards may be “experts” across a broad range of practices, they do not know your company as well as you do. Even though certification may not be your goal, automation is no less important to the use and continual improvement of best practices. That said, “less may be more” with respect to software support. A couple of general questions come to mind with regard to this classic “make-or-buy” decision: Should you buy a commercial support package or build your own? Is it possible to tailor an off-the-shelf product to the organization, functions, and budget of your company? Or, would you be better off building your own support system, one that you own and control, and one which closely reflects the characteristics of your company (note: internal development, while it may offer advantages, may not be cheaper)? I will have more to say on these points in future posts.

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things...

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

- Peter Drucker

A Closer Look at MR Preparation

The first phase of a Management Review (MR) is the preparation phase. Here, I discuss that phase for either a first-time or follow-on MR. In either case, the participation of a Facilitator – an outside consultant or an internal staffer – is assumed. As you read this, you might be thinking, “why the low-level detail? This is not that hard.” The reason is that when using overhead money, most companies need to get the plan right the first time.

A kickoff meeting

Once a CEO has decided to hold an MR, he will want to launch the preparation phase with a kickoff meeting. During this meeting, he will invite his Facilitator and key staffers (COO, BDM, CFO, etc.) to establish a schedule, an agenda, a venue, and a budget for the three phases. The schedule must begin at the end, the date when the Review (the “real” meeting) will be held, and then work backwards. Ideally, this date is convenient for all concerned and has some greater significance (e.g., the start of a new fiscal year or a major new contract). Enough time must be allocated – generally, 3-5 weeks – to make all preparations.

The initial agenda will reflect the scope of the meeting. It will normally include briefs by the CEO, the Facilitator, and project/program managers. In addition, it may include staffer briefs and guest speakers. The venue should be convenient, available, well equipped, and large enough to accommodate all invited personnel. It should allow for food and beverages to be delivered and served. The budget, as defined in this meeting, will constrain the scope of the meeting and the resources to be allocated for the three phases.

Venue choice and reservation

It is recommended that the venue be reserved as soon as the decision to hold the MR has been made. Normally, this will allow the announcement (below) to be made just once.

Announcements

A small but critical next step will be an announcement from the CEO, including schedule and agenda, to all actors that an MR will be held. The announcement will make clear to all actors that the MR is a mandatory company event. To enable the Facilitator (and the MR) to be successful, the CEO must make clear that the Facilitator is his agent, acting on his behalf.

Template preparations

The Facilitator will draft templates for all briefers; the CEO will review the drafts. In general, the CEO may add a slide or two to the templates; however, the Facilitator is likely to suggest that all templates motivated by ISO 9001 be retained.

Briefing preparations and review

The Facilitator will distribute the approved templates and then work with each briefer to assure that 1) he understands each slide template, 2) generates a slide, according to the template, that provides the information requested, and 3) submits his final slide pack in time for final review and assembly. Every effort should be made to make all briefing materials accessible to the CEO prior to completion of his brief; he may wish to include information from the other briefers. The Facilitator’s brief should be part of the package which the CEO reviews.

Management Reviews for Start-Ups

In principle, start-ups are not inherently different from companies which have been around for a while. In practice, there is at least one important difference: many Start-Up leaders, while they may be inspired, creative entrepreneurs, are not normally experienced managers. It is easy to dismiss this as an irrelevant detail, especially when the new business is basking in the glow of early success; the thought process tends to be that “I have always been my own person and I will figure this management stuff out as we go,” presumably from one triumph to the next. This thinking generally betrays a lack of experience and understanding of how companies change over their lifetimes – these lifetimes can turn out to be quite short without some measure of management skill.

One approach to acquiring that skill is through training. However, when a company is already up and running and the CEO and his staff are already in place, the time and inclination to invest in management training are likely to be in very short supply. Another approach is through staff meetings. Unfortunately, a lack of management training in general is often accompanied by the lack of a very-undervalued particular skill, the ability to schedule, organize, and conduct successful meetings. Because of their emphasis on inclusion and face-to-face interactive communications, their strong business orientation as reflected by the Strength-Weakness-Opportunity-Threat (SWOT) analyses and their history with respect to quality assurance, MRs can be a low-risk, low-cost, high-benefit step toward closing the management gap.

A Facilitator may be helpful in setting up and conducting an MR. It bears repeating that the Facilitator effectively knows what he doesn’t know; he does not know the answers but he knows the questions and the way to ask them. By asking the right questions, the Facilitator can guide the CEO and his team through this learning experience. In the process, the CEO is likely to discover that there were things about his company that he didn’t know.

It is highly likely that critical information on which future company success depends will come from within the company. In that sense, this makes the Facilitator a special kind of consultant. He will not pretend to be an expert in the given field or to know anything, at least during a first MR, about the company. This lack of knowledge explains why a Facilitator can make an MR successful. He lays out the questions, using briefing templates, which might not occur to company experts precisely because they believe that they already have the answers. In the worst case, the MR will confirm what the CEO already knew; however, it is highly unlikely that he will learn nothing new.

Management Review Actors

A Management Review (MR) is a team task. All participants must understand their roles and responsibilities.

CEO: As indicated in prior posts, the MR is the Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO’s) meeting. He sets the goals and objectives and the scope and content of the meeting. The CEO designs his brief to 1) tell company staff and technical leaders how much he appreciates their hard work, 2) make clear, using graphs and charts, how their efforts have driven company growth, 3) offer his view of the challenges the company faces, 4) present his view of the future, and 5) suggest new initiatives.

If this is his meeting, why should the CEO be limited to just a single brief?  It is his meeting, but he is here to learn. During the preparation phase, he makes clear what he needs to hear from the other briefers. His brief may even reflect information he has seen in a preview of other briefs.

Facilitator: The Facilitator acts as the CEO’s agent and MR advisor. He coordinates the MR phases. During the preparation phase, he comes to agreement with the CEO on all briefing formats; the starting point for the formats is the ISO 9001 requirements. Once those formats are established, the Facilitator works with all MR actors to assure that their briefings deliver on the promise he has made to the CEO; this activity is critical to MR success.

The Facilitator also prepares and delivers a brief. Subject to CEO concurrence, the Facilitator may discuss the following in his briefing: ISO 9001 in general and MR goals and philosophy in particular; generic business development principles as supported by the MR; and customer satisfaction, employee morale, and continual improvement. The Facilitator will harmonize these and any other topics with the CEO and COO briefs.

COO: The Chief Operations Officer (COO) is responsible for day-to-day company operations. For example, he may represent the indirect (overhead) part of the company. In his brief, the COO might introduce the indirect staff, explain how they support the company, and help PMs understand how they can help the support staff meet internal obligations (e.g., payroll) and contractual obligations (e.g., status reporting). He may discuss company training policies and opportunities, human resources, and other topics by agreement with the CEO.

BDM: The Business Development Manager (BDM) addresses customer relations and proposals. It is important that the MR yield useful information for the BDM such as SWOTs and technical areas addressed by each program/project. The BDM also presents, to the extent possible, the calendar of Requests for Information (RFIs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs). And, depending on sensitivities, he may discuss teaming by agreement with the CEO.

PMs: Each Project/Program Manager (PM) represents a business area. The format and content of his brief will be guided by three factors: 1) company needs; 2) a business focus; and 3) ISO 9001 requirements (which are time-tested and may later enable certification). These briefs, the heart of the MR, convey the status, challenges, and opportunities that “on-the-ground” project teams see daily. They will take most of the MR briefing time. It is critical to MR success that they be business briefs; while a technical overview will be part of each brief to put the project in context, the MR is a business review rather than a forum for addressing technical problems. That said, technical strengths and weaknesses should be noted and business opportunities and threats arising from changes to technology should be raised.