The Greater IBM Connection - on the blog side

A story about Enterprise 2.0 and eating cake

Once upon a time in the powerful yet often misunderstood world called the Enterprise, people went to work in offices in small teams. They personalized their cubicle walls with colorful family photos and postcards of upcoming events. They would celebrate birthdays together by singing around a delicious home baked cake while catching up on project gossip. Occasionally jokes or stories about clients were shared (or vented) across the partition. Generally speaking, it was a happy little world where people worked hard in comfort of social surrounds.

 

Suddenly the world changed. It got flatter. Teams were structured out of skilled individuals working in different countries and different timezones. Baby Boomers started to retire or semi-retire. More staff worked part time and remotely, either at home or on client site. Desktops were replaced with laptops. Landlines were replaced with mobiles. Even training was done online instead of in a classroom. The birthday cake ritual was no more and we ate our own cake instead.

Individuals became more disconnected from their colleagues. Deadlines became more immediate. Panic set in as skilled workers were more difficult to find or retain. Knowledge became trapped and lost, only leaving behind a trail of email crumbs to collect. The world of the Enterprise was functioning, but not necessarily effective.

Meanwhile, in another dimension not too far way, the curious beast called the World Wide Web sprouted wings. It heard of the plight of the cake ritual and became a thing called "Web 2.0" so that people could sing, share stories and most importantly, eat cake together again. It evolved in the form of blogs, wikis, social networking sites, shared bookmarking and a most unusual, beguiling creature called Twitter. Virtual Worlds (like Secondlife) became a place where remote teams could get to know one another, navigating a colorful, visual terrain to overcome obstacles and create a sense of team once again.

Despite the new challenges of working from different locations, timezones or reduced working hours, the world of the Enterprise once again became an engaging place to work. It was easier to share knowledge, photos, videos, events, stories, information and have conversations with subject matter experts all around the world, even having groundbreaking conversations with people outside of the Enterprise using these new dynamic tools. In fact, the new way of working was producing more ways to innovate and collaborate within the Enterprise than ever before. Now that's some kind of cake. The panic to find skilled knowledge workers was over and the people shouted "hurrah".

Except for those still working in the old Enterprise in little cubicles at their desktops, who didn't understand what the fuss was all about and why the world needed to change at all.

Jasmin Tragas is a Managing Consultant working in the area of Knowledge, Collaboration and Learning Services, HCM, Australia. She has been with IBM since 2000, works part time and is the mother of three young children.

Of Fishbones and other hard-to-swallow ideas

Observations by Larry Phipps, a Greater IBMer

I was thinking of fishbones this morning. And that made all sorts of initials and mystic expressions run amok in the crowded halls of my memory. TQM. QCs. COQ. QFD. ZBB. BPRE. ISO9000. And I don’t dare leave off Six Sigma. I think my head hurts. I know that ache was there back in the 70s, when Six Sigma was young and meetings were getting old.

What triggered this excess of initialitis? As I flipped through the Saturday Wall Street Journal (8 March 2008), I came across a familiar name. It was an obituary for 103-year-old Joseph M. Juran, who along with D. E. Deming was credited with helping recreate the industrial economy in post-WWII Japan.

The quality equation
In the process, Japan went from being known for cheap knock-off products to a country that arguably set new standards for manufacturing, fabrication excellence – and profits. The US noticed and listened to what Deming and Juran preached.

The promise: Reduce waste, lower production failures, increase productivity, and boost profits? That’s enough to get any CEO’s attention. And it did.

By the time quality management processes landed on my desk, sometime in the 70s, quality management processes – including the approaches evangelized by Juran and Deming and their initiates – weren’t considered a theory. Those processes of Total Quality Management (the aforementioned “TQM”) were already getting results on production lines. They worked.

Making the leap from production lines, where repeatable processes were accepted, desired and achievable, to the halls of a marketing organization that thrived on new ideas and experimental approaches? Well, that wasn’t one of those “self evident” truths.

Now what?
We didn’t have a clue (well, probably some folks did, but not all of us). But we had lots of meetings. And lots of training. And lots of charts (remember the 5 whys that were part of the “fishbone” cause-effect Ishikawa diagrams you had to fill out for just about everything?)

Ah. Those were the days. It’s called “learning what works and what breaks, then don’t break it again” as one of my early-career managers once said.

But we did eventually learn to adopt continuous improvement processes that (despite our instincts) did seem to improve processes and keep costs in check. And Big Blue has gone on to refine the Six Sigma concept in ways that have benefited clients all over the globe. Looking back, I realize what a tremendous contribution Mr. Juran and his fellow believers made.

But I for one wasn’t so sure the first time I saw that darned fishbone!

Footnote
I pretty much remembered the acronyms but not the order they came into play and not all of what they stood for, so for anyone else who’s left those details behind, I made a Google run that yielded:

·        TQM = Total Quality Management

·        COQ = Cost of Quality

·        QFD = Quality Function Deployment (otherwise known as “listen to the customer”)

·        QC = Quality Circles

·        ZBB = Zero-Based Budget

·        BPRE = Business Process Re-Engineering

·        ISO9000 = International Organization for Standardization quality measurements

So, those were some of the memories stirred by the notice that Mr. Juran was no longer with us. He accomplished much in laying the foundation for what he predicted would be a Century of Quality. He is survived by a legacy of achievement and, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “Sadie, who married him 81 years ago.”

Here’s to you, Mr. Juran.

Discovering Meaning in YOUR WORK?

There is something special about discovering that your life’s work matters --- you love what you do --- there is real meaning in it. I had one of these moments this week. It arrived like a gift after weeks of long days and overload. I admit IBM trained me well for this kind of reality many years ago. As I recall, the learning came from a continuous practice of the “learn while doing” approach to “leaping over tall buildings” to reach some new level of service – performance – contribution – excellence. Although it was never talked about much, I’ve not met an IBMer that doesn’t instantly relate and know the exhilaration of having all the hard work pay off --- all the pieces falling perfectly into place --- that moment when the meaning of it all takes on a new significance.

Are you having flashbacks about your own experiences?

So how can we discover deeper MEANING in what we do every day?
Many years ago, one profound influence on my life that began to help me answer this question came from reading, Man’s Search for Meaning by the famed psychiatrist, philosopher, and holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl. Later in a management development class at IBM, Dr. Frankl’s messages were again highlighted by futurist Joel Barker’s recount in his now classic film, Power of Vision. I can still repeat the closing statement: “There is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future, because that’s what gives meaning to life [and our work]."

Perhaps, this question today, at this time of transition and turbulence in business and society, needs to be re-examined more than ever before. Dr. Alex Pattakos, a student of Viktor Frankl and author of Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl’s Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work, asks new questions for a new time: "Why do some people seem to have an easier time dealing with complex and challenging situations than others? Why do some people seem more capable of dealing with change than others?" Dr. Pattakos offers seven core principles. Below I’ve listed them and provided a brief summary, paraphrased from his book, highlighting what they have come to mean to me:

1. Exercise the freedom to choose your attitude.
Choose your attitude; it’s a freedom we all have.
2. Realize your will to meaning.
Commit to meaningful goals that you can actualize and fulfill.
3. Detect the meaning of life's moments.
Look for the meaning at any given moment.
4. Don't work against yourself.
Avoid becoming so obsessed with outcome; it can work against you.
5. Look at yourself from distance.
Keep a sense of humor as you look back at yourself and your actions.
6. Shift your focus of attention.
Learn to focus your attention away from a problem; see beyond it.
7. Extend beyond yourself.
Look at the bigger picture; the higher purpose of what you are doing.

Does MEANING have a connection to the Greater IBM Community?
As we come together at the Greater IBM Connection, transcending time, distance, and differences across the world, we have the opportunity to find a new level of meaning in this global community we are creating. It is hard not to envision the far-reaching possibilities that social media offer to us, as others, like Andy Piper, have written about on this blog. Imagine the power of all the unique ways we discover meaning in our work and our lives coming together. Imagine what we can do together. Imagine what we can learn from one another. Nice! So I ask you:

Whether you are a current or former IBMer...

What meaning have you discovered in your "work" however you define it?

What qualities in your life's "work" mean the most?

I look foward to hearing your perspective and striking up a conversation!

Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Contributing Author
Greater IBM Connection
Founder, President & CEO
Global Dialogue Center and
Leadership Solutions Companies
www.globaldialoguecenter.com
IBMer 1970 - 1991 L.A.; Anchorage; Seattle; San Francisco