Driver

I may have a different take on leadership than other people.

I like ISO 9000's definition (as explained in the 8 QMS), which in my words would be:
1. to put forward a widely acceptable purpose (vision),
2. to establish specific goals (towards the vision), and
3. to foster an environment where people feel safe (i.e. they are expected to a) tell things as they see them and b) make mistakes, fix them and learn in the process).

I can do that from the back seat.
... driving the car is for the driver, not for the leader.

Action

I know a company where the CEO and the COO decided to stop acting on QA reports. I guess it seemed easier for them to sign-off waivers than to fix problems.

Quality went down and customer satisfaction went down with it.
At a certain point they decided they did not want to pay for reports that required them to act and fired the QA department.
Quality, they quoted, is everybody's job.

Quality went further down and customer satisfaction followed suit.

The last time I heard about them, the CEO and COO had been let go after a takeover and the company was hiring auditors.

Fungus

Learning

I focus more on learning than on teaching.

I believe it is my responsibility to learn.

The organizations I work for may help me:
a) by telling me what I need to learn to be more valuable.
b) by creating an environment that makes learning easier for me.
c) by allowing access to organizational knowledge (people and documents).

But at the end of the day, like I said ...
It is my responsibility to learn.

Fungus

360°

Mine is a sad experience ... I have never seen a 360° evaluation process that works as advertised.

To be more precise: I have never seen a 360° evaluation process that can be clearly tied to a lasting improvement in customer satisfaction.

The Emperor, they say, has new clothes.

Fungus

Feedback

If I could, I would stop performance reviews ...
To be more precise, I would stop their use to negotiate salary and bonuses.

Performance reviews are a source of fear, and contribute to skewed measures.

Would you dare to openly confess your errors under threat of stick and carrot.

Let me be very clear:
I fully support respectful non-manipulative feedback.
I am against manipulation.


Fungus

Tears

To me, emotions are like little personal compasses that help us drive our lives by pointing at right and wrong.
If it feels right, then it is right, If it feels wrong, then it is wrong.

Reading and using those little compasses is much harder than using the North/South magnetic needle kind, because they are subjective and easily manipulated. You may recall that after a few conversations with the Emperor, Darth Vader's emotions moved him the wrong way.

Emotions are felt as physical sensations: your bowels ache, you lose your breath, your heart runs wild, and your throat goes dry. I will not bore you with the details, mainly because I don't understand them, but tears are one of the ways your conscience tells you things about you. You know ... things.

I could tell you about my tears, when they come, and what they mean, but I guess that is a little too personal to be shared and understood.

Fungus

Defects

Preventing, finding and fixing defects is necessary to deliver a (reasonably) defect free product. There is an optimum cost (when cost of quality is at its minimum) for (reasonably) defect free products and services, and it depends on the right combination of prevention, detection and correction.
Reasonable for the specific customer needs, that is.

Customers accept these premises on any engineering project except for systems and software ... I guess we are not good at explaining why it is good to test, why it is in the best interest of our customer to test, why validation is necessary even if we have verification in place.

Finding and fixing defects at a cost that is smaller than preventing them is good business, adds value and must be done.

Using our customers resources to find and fix defects that could have been prevented (at a reasonable cost) is wrong, does not add value and must be eliminated.

Fungus