Five “Why?” Not Five “Who?”

Start pointing fingers and engagement is over.

I recently spoke to an executive from a Canadian manufacturing company that supplies Toyota and has several years of experience implementing the Toyota Production System (TPS). He said his biggest disappointment was that their corporate culture still doesn’t support surfacing problems. People are afraid they will be blamed, so they hide problems.

This seems to be a generic problem across manufacturing and service. When I interviewed Fujio Cho, the first head of human resources for Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant, who is Japanese, he said that what most startled him when he first came to the United States was that Americans didn’t like to say they had a problem. The very word “problem” suggested blame. Cho said his biggest problem was getting Americans to pull the andon chord. I asked what he did and he said he had to go to the shop floor every day (as president) and encourage them to please pull the chord even if it stopped the line. Eventually the employees felt comfortable about pulling it.

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Comments

Blame your inspectors, perhaps...

As far as people hiding from blame goes, I have seen various degrees of this at different companies. One thing I have noticed is that the attitude of the frontline quality inspectors makes a big difference. Quality, unfortunately, can attract a lot of small-minded twits who think that their job is to catch people out. When such people are the inspectors, problems start getting buried.
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When I was an inspector, I was very careful to maintain a friendly, team-oriented approach. I wasn't there to catch people, I was there to check work-- like an proofreader reviewing somebody else's writing. The production people were doing skilled work I wasn't capable of doing, so I was always respectful whenever an error turned up. People figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't there to burn them, and they opened up as a result. I've had people point out to me work they knew they had done wrong-- stuff I easily could have missed-- because they knew they could trust me and because they wanted help in getting things right. This is by far the better way to conduct inspections.
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It really is true that most people really do want to do a good job. Quality inspectors who assume an adversarial posture make it hard for this to happen. Inspectors who put the team first, and see themselves as a small part of that team, promote the kind of open atmosphere you describe in your article. If an organization has a lot of problems getting hidden, one good place to start looking for remedies is the attitudes of the inspectors. Inspectors who are out to get people are a detriment to the company.

Getting past the "Fear Factor"

It is engrained from our childhood in America that we must be the best. When we do not perform up to the expectations of others and especially ourselves, it is difficult to step out and move past the fear factor. In the workplace today, employees are faced with loss of employment due to economic conditions. "If I make too many mistakes, I can be replaced." In the heatlhcare industry, we are particularly concerned as highly educated professionals do not want to be chastized by their peers, let alone by their employer.
To change a culture of an organization takes many years. Edward Deming's point about driving out organizational fear should be on the top of all CEOs' priority lists for the quality and safety of all. Good article and look to see you expand on the topic.
Christina Bowles RN EdD CPHQ CTC
Ball Memorial Hospital ~ A Clarian Health Partner
2401 W University Ave; Muncie, IN 47303