Saturday, September 27, 2014


Do Awards and Certifications Justify The Cost And Effort to Obtain and Retain?

      Industries have awards that many organizations seek to obtain.  The awards range from the Malcom Baldridge National Quality Award and the Deming Prize, to smaller regional and industry specific awards.  Certifications include the range of those from ISO to industry specific such as the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) for information technology related organizations.

      I have been involved with some of these awards and certifications in the past.  If you have, you know the criticisms/concerns put forth.  They are intended to judge the organization’s everyday activities.  Proper procedures and processes are to be documented and followed.  Appropriate evidence to show adherence is required.  But is this how firms perform their duties every day?  My experience has been somewhat but not as consistent as they should.

      When it is time to enter for an award or certification/recertification, it’s a mad scramble.  Project or product evidence’ must be gathered.  In the case of a manufactured product, ‘extra special care’ is taken to make sure the product is top quality.  If it is a service, the deck is frequently stacked toward a positive spin.

      And then there are the costs.  In addition to those noted above, there are the costs to the certifying organizations which can be substantial.  Many organizations call in expert consultants to help them prepare.  The costs can add up to very big bucks quickly.

      When it’s done and the award or certification is issued, does the organization gain additional customers or revenue from the award or certification?  My experience has been very little if any.  The flip side though is some contracts specify some type of certification is necessary so this becomes a necessary expense.  So if you want to, by all means go for the award or certification but don’t expect it to be financially rewarding.

Sunday, September 14, 2014


Continuous Improvement: Do We In The Profession Need To Take Our Own Medicine?

      In the last few PIPs, I went over a number of tools and techniques in the quality improvement profession.  They are cross training, best practices, benchmarking & kaizen events.  Each, if properly applied in the right circumstances, is powerful.  My concern is those four and a number of others are losing their effectiveness in the complex organizations we work in today.  Have our organizations developed a resistance and like some animal and vegetable pests, become ‘immune’ to the power and effectiveness of our tools and techniques?

       Which begs a question which I have been wrestling with since I started the series which is do we focus to improve our profession with the intense focus we work to improve our professions and industries?  I remember reading a baseball pitcher late in his career saying “I throw the baseball just as hard as I always did but it doesn’t go as fast.”  Are we in this profession experiencing the same effect with our tools and techniques?

      My view is that we have improve our profession but nowhere near as quickly as we need to.  Our past efforts have greatly improved organizations of all sizes and types.  But most if not all of the low to middle hanging fruit has been picked.  To paraphrase a prominent management author, as powerful as our tools and techniques are those that ‘got us here are not going to get us there’.  We need to continually improve our profession’s performance.

      So what should we do?  We need to keep our eyes out for tools and techniques in other industries and professions which we can ‘adapt and adopt.’  Ask some of your neighbors and members of other business and civic organizations what are some tools and techniques they use.  We also need to remember to not take the ‘vaccination theory’ approach to whatever education, training or certification have.  All our knowledge will need to be ‘continually improved’ with booster shots, ‘now and forever.’