Perpetual Innovation

Category: leadership

  • Quality, excellence and (Perpetual) Innovation

    Quality Improvement programs like TQM are a key part of building a sustainable competitive advantage for companies. Every couple years there is an improvement or a new flavor of TQM, like six sigma and lean six sigma.

    Talking about quality… The Baldrige Program is a rather cool program for improving the process of quality in an organization… Brought to you from the US Department of Commerce through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

    Download the 2017-2018 Baldrige Excellence Builder.

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    There’s a discussion at NIST about why you would use the Baldrige Program vs other Total Quality Management (TQM) programs. Generally, they suggest using Baldrige for the over planning and processes, but use lean for the the continuous improvement.

    There’s an interesting article about TQM programs and implementation of them by Fleming-Farrell, Hall and Blando (2014). It summarizes two TQM-type studies, one focuses on the top of the organization, the other on the six-sigma practitioner. From the top view, there seems to be no correlation between the number TQM-type programs and the performance of them; so going to the next flavor of TQM does not necessarily do much, it is the care and feeding that goes into your quality program that makes the difference.

    Oh, and there is almost no relationship between the participation in six sigma and compensation. Black belts get a little more pay, but generally there is no pay increase for working harder and longer at quality improvement. Of course the skill and skill set might prompt a six sigma practitioner, after training and experience, to jump ship and take a big raise elsewhere.
    Maybe awards and recognition might help?

    Glad you asked, there is also the Baldrige Award.
    Or, in Florida, the Florida Sterling Award. 

    Top-down vs Bottom-up Planning. The issue that is often observed about the world of TQM is that it is generally a bottom-up planning tool. Great for managing the factory and incremental improvements. But disruptive innovation and strategic planning, not so useful. Hall and Hinkelman (2013, 2017) approach top-down planning with their Perpetual Innovation(tm) series of books. But they integrate bottom-up planning into the process as well. It really makes no difference where the great ideas come from, provided the organization is in a position to recognize ’em and take advantage of them. Even the best laid plans (of mice and men) must be well executed. Baldrige seems like a perfect way of managing with clear alignment through the organization either in stable state, or transitioning through incremental change.

    Want to go to the theater and watch videos? Check them out here: Youtub Videos (popcorn not provided).

    References

    Hall, E. B. & Hinkelman, R. M. (2013). Perpetual Innovation™: A guide to strategic planning, patent commercialization and enduring competitive advantage, Version 2.0. Morrisville, NC: LuLu Press. ISBN: 978-1-304-11687-1  Retrieved from: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/SBPlan

    Hall, E. B. & Hinkelman, R. M. (2017). Perpetual Innovation™: Patent primer 3.1e: Patents, the great equalizer of our time! An overview of intellectual property with patenting cost estimates for inventors and entrepreneurs.  [Amazon Kindle eBook].  ASIN: B01MS53JC5 Retrieved from: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MS53JC5   
    Fleming-Farrell, L., Hall, E., & Blando, J. (2014, Spring).  Implementation of new TQM programs, communications, and adapting to change. In C. A. Lentz (Ed.), The refractive thinker: Vol. 8: Effective business practices for motivation and communication (pp. 159-181). Las Vegas, NV: The Refractive Thinker© Press.

  • PTO 101 worst management Practices. Workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds – The Washington Post

    Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds – The Washington Post:

    The USPTO wins, hands down. They have implemented 101 of the all time worst management practices, all at one time.

    It may be worthy of a method patent application since no one has ever considered implementing all know mis-management practices at once in one organization.

    In reading the Washington Post article by Lisa Rein, you move from groan and wonderment, to GROAN and bewilderment, to actual PAIN and anger.

    All processes are broken as designed. It is reasonably hard to manage with a Union. There is no good rationale for unionization within government, really. Combine that with a cozy relationship where there is no accountability and no direct responsibility.

    To accommodate the new technology and new ways possible of working (telework, computer record searches, cloud computing, etc.) they regressed to pre-computer processes, measures and methods.

    People who work at home, don’t have to log in to work. People who come to work have to time-clock in, but never clock out. People who don’t work much during the week, log in huge amounts of overtime and receive big bonuses.

    When you read a report like this, you assume that you are likely reading the worst of the worst. This seems to be so prevasive, however, that it is embedded in the culture and the protocols, i.e., standard operating procedure (SOP, or in this case SOL). It appears that this is only a sample, so the problem is likely approximately a multiple of the problem. That is, the report is not a measure of the problem, but can be used to generate a huge estimate of how BIG the problem really is.

    WHATTTT!

    This is painful to read at so many levels. This is a case study of government failure, management structure decay, and leadership incompetence. It is all the best of bad leadership practices integrated into one office.

    We at SBP love innovation and want to see the USPTO do the best job possible for the world of innovation. We at SBP love telework, and believe telecommuting is one of the easiest, fastest, and bestest ways to start improving our carbon footprint (while savings massive amounts of time and money doing so).

    The only bright spot in the whole report is that poor performers are monitored (read managed) and consequently only 4% of the identifiable problems of fraud come from the poor performers. Good news, poor performers don’t do a very good job, but they also don’t do a spectacular job of cheating taxpayer, either.

    Managers are obviously a huge part of the problem in so many ways and at so many levels. This whole environment is not salvageable; congress needs to kill off everything USPTO related, and rebuild the organization with proper structure and incentives.

    Oh this is ugly…
    Painfully, UGLY!

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