Re: Accountability

[MartinS999@aol.com]

>From Martin Stankard, martins999@aol.com
Consultant and Trainer

The post raises the question of how to ensure workplace accountability. 

 A recipient of the MassExcellence Award (State level Baldrige Award) used a 
very simple approach that I think is a nice illustration of accountability in 
line with Deming's philosophy.  

The firm is Pioneering Services, a mutual fund back office. The work was 
complex legal transactions often involving large sums of money with costly 
consequences for error.  The approach before improvement was to dedicate the 
most senior and capable employees as inspectors of the work of all other 
employees.   

The approach which the managers and supervisors moved to went something like 
this:
1. They set up skill training to ensure that everyone knew the right way to 
work.
2. They designated peer reviews to certify each employee knew his or her job.
3. They began measuring and displaying quality of the whole department's 
output using statistical sampling methods.
4. They gave each individual worker two output baskets. One of them was for 
work comleted that the employee felt was in conformance with the department's 
quality process. This work would only be inspected if it fell into the 
statistical sample (which was a tiny percentage of workflow.)  The second 
output basket was a basket which would receive 100% inspection.  
5. All new workers were required to use the inspection basket for all output 
until they were certified.  All certified workers were empowered to determine 
which of their work was to be inspected with the exception that certain 
extremely high dollar tranaactions were to be put into the inspection basket 
automatically.

As I recall the presentation at the MassExcellence winner's conference, most 
inspection work stopped. The inspectors were able to spend their time doing 
productive work. Overall levels of quality measured at the departmental level 
rose steadily for several years to previously unheard of high levels. The 
firm doubled productivity over the result period they presented for the 
MassExcellence award.

I hope that you will find some ideas that you can adapt to your own workplace 
in this example.

Martin Stankard, martins999@aol.com
Productivity Development Group, Inc. 
Business Excellence and Process Improvement
Training and Consulting
P O Box 488
Westford, MA 01886
Voice (978) 692-1818
Fax (978) 692-5080
Please visit out web site at http://www.martinstankard.com
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