June 12, 1992
Dear Everyone:
Remember Box Destruction?
You know, where you try to get
the Owners, “Tiddly” and “Winks” to all agreed that old boxes of
obsolete records can be destroyed to make room in the Records Centers
for new boxes of obsolete records.
Well, back when we were going through Continuous
Quality Improvement (CQI) training, I had proposed that we improve the
quality of our (my) work by turning the tedious business of counting
"destroyable" boxes over to some of the clerks working in the
“Livermore” Records Center. The
logic here is that it's cheaper to pay someone in a lower pay scale to
spend hours counting boxes that it is to pay someone who gets paid as
much as I do to do it. And,
frankly, you don't need an analyst to count boxes.
At the time, our manager, “Crow”, decided that this
wasn't even CQI project material. No
need to get approval from higher management, since it was our own little
thing, we would just go ahead and do it.
So, off I went to “Livermore” and trained “Abby”
and “Elaine” (as the “Abby’s” backup) on Destruction Tracking.
This took a couple of half-days.
Now, when I receive anything to
do with Destruction Tracking, I just stick it back in the envelope and
shoot it off to “Abby” in “Livermore”--my kind of processing and
certainly an improvement as
far as I'm concerned.
But, as long as we were at this "improvement"
stuff, we figured we might as well try to find some ways of making the
tracking go faster. This was the
original extent of our "mini-non-CQI-project".
We would use the ubiquitous
"9-Step Process" to try to improve Destruction Tracking.
We started one week ago, this last Tuesday.
The Non-Project Team consisted of
“Abby”, “Elaine” and myself. “Abby”
and “Elaine” promptly reached the consensus that myself would be the
Team Leader. I think this
happened while my back was turned.
Step 1: Identify
Output. (This is a hamburger,
this is a cheeseburger, this is a fishburger.)
We didn't go for the obvious
"Boxes are destroyed" Output Statement because, far too often, the boxes
aren't destroyed because there are lawsuits and the IRS is always
wanting to poke its nose into our boxes.
We settled, by consensus, on "Batches are returned quickly".
Step 2: Identify
Customer. (That's the guy with
the money.) This part seemed
fairly easy, too. The customer is
the one who benefits most from having boxes destroyed.
This would be the Records Centers
which are bulging at the seams right now.
The box owners are secondary customers.
If they get their boxes
destroyed, they don't have to pay storage costs on them anymore.
At this point, we were supposed to stop for a
"Guidance Review". This is where
some well-meaning outsiders look at what you've done so far and ask a
lot of questions and tried to convince you that you're hopelessly
off-track. We didn't have a
Guidance Review Team. But, we
figured, since we weren't officially a Project Team, we didn't have to
follow the official rules.
Nevertheless, we decided that it would be a good
idea to have at least one person check our work so far.
We picked “Murray”, who is the
supervisor of the “Livermore” Records Center, and who was conveniently
in “Livermore” that day.
But “Murray” was tied up in a meeting, so, rather
than stop and wait for him, we went merrily galloping off into Step 3:
Identify Customer Expectations.
(You want fries with that?)
We had a great time, brainstorming questions to ask
the various Records Centers, the Owners, “Tiddly” “Winks” and our own
management on just what they're looking to get out of Destruction
Reviews. Frankly, what most
people want is to get out of
doing Destruction Reviews.
In the case of the Owners, of which there are about
50,000 worldwide, we decided to try using a Survey to find out what they
want. Now, bear in mind that
everyone and his brother in Company has been going through the 9-Step
Process and just about all of them have been using Surveys.
In fact, people are pretty much
Surveyed-out. Now, when you see
another Survey in your In Box, the impulse is to transfer it directly to
the Recycle Box.
So we decided to try to do something to spark the
Survey up, make it more interesting. “Elaine”
and I both took the questions that the team had brain-stormed and
drafted possible Surveys. “Elaine”
used her husband's PC and Clip-Art library to insert graphics, much like
the ones I use in these letters (I especially liked the one showing
dynamite blowing up a storage box). I
took a different approach, using a few cartoons from a calendar I have
and poking fun at our own questions. Example:
Question: when was the last time you reviewed your
boxes for Destruction?
Answer: (circle one)
a. Within the last year.
b. Within the last five years.
c. Not since the last Ice Age.
Of course, when “Murray” got out of his meeting, we
had to stop and double back to Steps 1 & 2 and explained what we thought
we were doing. Then, when “Crow”
found out that we were thinking of sending out Surveys, he wanted me to
give him a "second Guidance Review meeting", reporting for the Team.
I brought in all the flip chart pages (you can't do
a CQI Project without flip charts anymore; they are practically
required), explained the reasoning behind our decisions and showed him
the two versions of the Survey. He
was "bowled over" (his words) that we had gotten this much done in only
one day.
I pointed out to him that we had gotten this much
done in only half a day.
The upshot is that I drafted an Official CQI
Project Charter, which “Crow” approved and which he is forwarding to
upper management. We are now,
officially, a CQI Project. Whereupon,
we promptly added another Team Member, “Nelly”, also of the “Livermore”
Records Center, and demanded that we be given a QI Coach to help us stay
on track.
Our next meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday.
If somebody doesn't stop us, we
just might get the whole thing completed before the end of the summer.
Watch for us on CNN.
Love, as always,
Pete
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