RE: Rule of Thumb?

[Hamilton John TSgt 17TRW/QI <John.Hamilton@goodfellow.af.mil>]

JDK wrote:  By what method does one tell the difference between professional
management judgment and management lack of understanding of variation?

In the military, we have our "knee jerk" reaction to just about every
situation.  Most of the policies we have are based on one time situations.
I have lots of examples but this one is more to the point.

There was a time when I was sitting in on a maintenance staff meeting where
the maintenance officer went crazy because the aircraft launch reliability
was well below the "command standard" (this is an arbitrary number created
by upper management, but that is another story).  The officer touted that
something must be done, right away, to get those numbers back up!  The data
was shown in a regular old trend chart.

When the meeting was over, I went back to the analysis section and sat down
with the Sergeant in charge.  We created a control chart with the data and
as it turns out, this was part of the normal variation in the process.  (But
you all knew that!)  I wanted to explain this to the maintenance officer and
make it as simple as possible. (So even a manager could understand it)  

What was revealing was that the "command standard" was the same as the
average.  By using bright primary colors, I was able to help the officer
understand that this was part of the normal cycle and that, based on my vast
experience, he would not meet the command standard 6 of the next 12 months.

I explained that we need to figure out why we didn't meet the standard and
fix the cause, not the symptom. Until we found root causes and eliminated
them the situation will remain the same, or more likely, get worse.  He now
had a glimmer of understanding, asked for a recommendation and created a
team to assess the reason for delays and improve aircraft launch
reliability.

I've always felt that was part of our job, to give the right information, in
a manner they can understand, to the people who make the decisions.  It's my
job to enable them to make informed decisions.  We can get real technical
with the charts and graphs ourselves, but if the people who are using the
information, don't understand it, it's useless.

 
TSgt John Hamilton Jr.
17 TRW/XP
Goodfellow AFB, TX
John.hamilton@goodfellow.af.mil <mailto:John.hamilton@goodfellow.af.mil>  
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