Thursday, June 22, 2006

Mark Cuban--Quality Guru?

Mark Cuban, in case you've been living in a cave, is the controversial owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He's been in the news lately for a couple of reasons. For one, his team made it to the finals of the NBA playoffs. For another, he just received a big fine for comments he made on his blog, BlogMaverick.

Cuban's one of those guys who you either seem to love or hate. For our purposes today, I'll assume you belong to the former group, but it really doesn't matter. His comments today in a post called "I know you are, but what am I..." are worth considering, even if you can't stand him.

In commenting on the fact that he's been called a variety of names recently, he says:

"To me, the proof is always in the details. No matter what business Im in, most people work in headlines mode. They think that if they say or write something that makes a good headline , then there must be substance to their point. That’s not the way business works. Which is why most people never get further than the middle.

Substance comes from detail. Luck comes from detail. Winning comes from being willing to do the work on the details. Learning comes from investing in details."

He goes on,

"No one does the work. They do “their jobs”. Nothing more. Which is why , despite all “he is the best, he is the worst” commentary from people, none of it matters in the least bit.

The easiest thing in the world for anyone to do is Tivo a game and then break it down. What any of the 13 participants on the court did and how they did it is pretty easy to document for 99.9 pct of the time on the clock. The other .01 can be grey. It doesnt really matter. Aggregate data from a lot of games over a lot of seasons, and all of the sudden you have a database with value.

Once you have information, then you can add brainpower and try to do things better.

Once you have information, then you can start to define excellence and strive for it, measuring your progress along the way."

Isn't that what continuous improvement is all about? First decide where you are. That's the Organizational Profile part of the Baldrige Application. Then study the data, decide what an excellent organization looks like and then go for it. Sounds a lot like PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act).

Personally, I couldn't care less about the NBA. I like college hoops, but the pros leave me cold. But, I admire Cuban for his willingness to take a chance, and to call a spade a spade. His business philosophy has certainly made him successful and I wouldn't be surprised to see the Mavericks back again next year, winning the whole thing.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Starting In Earnest

As promised, I received my Missouri Quality Award examiner packet yesterday afternoon via FedEx. As I mentioned earlier, confidentiality forbids me from saying anything about the applicant to anyone. It really ticks my wife off. But, there are sound reasons for keeping applicants' information confidential unless the applicant chooses to divulge it themselves. Of course, if they win the award, they're obligated to share their stories. But for now, loose lips sink ships.



I will say that my applicant is in an entirely new industry for me. That's part of the beauty of the system. They get reviewed by examiners who have no preconceived notions. It makes the award system very fair. It also gives me an opportunity to learn about business through an entirely new lens. It's definitely a win-win.



Once each examiner has reviewed and scored the application, the next step is for all the examiners to come to a consensus. When we're done with the individual review, we send our score books to the award headquarters. Then each examiner for the applicant will receive copies of the other examiners' score books. We'll each take one of the process categories along with the corresponding results categories and combine all the comments. In most cases, there will be a lot of duplication, which will be eliminated.



At the end of July, the team will get together to discuss our work and come up with a consensus score book. If the applicant doesn't go on to a site visit, this is the feedback that they will receive. If they do get a site visit, the consensus score book is the document that will be used to prepare the site visit team.



Our consensus meeting will be here in St. Louis, which is good news. The one day consensus meeting is intense and can get very long. Last time, mine was in Jefferson City. Adding drive time to the meeting time made for a very long day.



Tonight I'll begin the first read-through of the application. The goal of this first pass is to get a feel for the applicant's business and to look for Key Business Factors. Once that's done, then I'll begin to really dig in. They estimate it takes about 40 hours to examine an application. Last time that was about right. We'll see how it goes this year.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The Missouri Quality Award

Over the next 30 days or so, I will be working on the first stage of the Missouri Quality Award. Confidentiality prevents me from writing anything about the applicant, or their application. But, I thought it might be interesting to write about the process itself. Even though the mission of this blog is to talk about using the Baldrige criteria for improvement, and not for winning an award, I think it's important that you understand how the criteria work. Understanding the process may give you a better idea of how the criteria might apply to your business.

On May 24 and 25, examiners in the St. Louis area got together for two days of training. The process was repeated in central Missouri and in Kansas City and is similar to the training given to Baldrige examiners and probably to examiners for most other state awards as well. Training consisted of reviewing a "case study", or a fictional application from a fictional company.

Over two days we review techniques for comment writing, individual scoring, consensus comments and scoring, and site visits. Perhaps a timeline will give you some idea of how it all works.

Applications were due at the Excellence in Missouri Foundation by the end of last week. The award office has been working feverishly for the last two days (Monday and Tuesday) to get the applications ready to send to the examiners. Examiners are matched to applicants base on several factors including award experience, industry background, and lack of conflict of interest. The aplications will be sent FedEx to the examiners to day, to arrive tomorrow. We have until July 3 to complete our first stage work.

The output from each examiner in the first stage is a completed score book. The score book includes comments on the applicant's answers for each of the award's criteria. Comments are made on strengths and opportunities for improvement. Opportunities for improvement are not weaknesses, they are exactly what the name says. What can this applicant do to move up to the next level?

Finally, each examiner will score the applicant on each item. Applications are then returned to the award office in preparation for stage 2, concensus review. Stay tuned.

Update: 6/8/06 The link above to the Baldrige case study is a link to last year's. You can download the 2006 case study here.