Ten Reasons to Join a Professional Organization

Definition from Wikipedia:

A professional association (also called a professional body, professional organization, or professional society) is a non-profit organization seeking to further a particular profession, the interests of individuals engaged in that profession, and the public interest.

Reasons to join one:

1. Meet great like-minded people!
2. Opportunity to showcase your experience through peer to peer discussions or public speaking.
3. Bullet item on your resume
4. See what opportunities and challenges are in the industry[ies]
5. Access to experts in the field – speakers, other members, sponsors
6. SWAG – discounts or free books, magazines, access to webinars, e-learning, certification exam vouchers
7. References other than your sister’s husband
8. Free or almost free training - most of the organizations have meetings focused on educational content
9. Meet your competition
10. Exclusive or early notification of job opportunities

As the President of a professional organization, fwPASS, I often hear about job opportunities directly from industry leaders and recruiters looking for their next technical Rock-star or leader. Note: this is not an invitation for head-hunters to spam me. They know that most of the people that regularly attend or participate in our meetings are passionate about their craft and are interested in staying at the front of the pack. In this economy, most organizations can afford to hold out for the best. Position yourself to be one of them!

Organizations that I am involved in or have had associations with:

• Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME)
• American Society for Quality (ASQ)
• Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE)
• Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS)
• INETA
• Association for Operations Management (APICS)
• Project Management Institute (PMI)
• American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

A more complete list of Professional Associations

Find a local chapter and get involved. If you don’t have any chapters in your area, there is a growing trend toward virtual chapters that utilize technologies like Microsoft Live Meeting and GoToMeeting.

Successfully Working in a Role Outside of your Expertise

In the current economic conditions (actually for the last couple of decades), organizations are trying to get more done with less resources. A common strategy is to assign additional responsibilities to their current workforce, often in a role that is unfamiliar to them. Some examples:

• Engineers acting as Project Managers
• Accountants with IT responsibilities
• Students on their first job
• [insert your occupation and extra roles here]

I once worked with a company with the mission statement of

What’s Required, What’s Expected, “And then some”

I think that is a practical sequential approach to developing an increasing understanding and proficiency in a new role. That approach has served me well in my transition through too many roles to list - while keeping stress at a manageable level. Most of the time you won’t be expected to be the Rockstar of the new role immediately, but you will likely be expected to show ongoing improvement on the road to mastery. You can effectively apply the following simple process to most objectives, roles, or projects*.

1. Gain some basic understanding of the subject matter or responsibilities through research, asking questions, observing others, benchmarking, or other methods.
2. Look for or create an opportunity you are comfortable with to incorporate some of what you learned into the daily work or activity.
3. Review what worked and didn’t and plan action steps to increase the understanding or improve on the process.
4. Wash, rinse, repeat indefinitely.

I liberally and deliberately used the word “some” in the steps above. You will maximize your learning and execution if you don’t bite off more than you can chew. Each application of a process-based approach to improvement will increase your effectiveness and confidence in making your next transition.

 

* Disclaimer: This approach may not be feasible for certain conditions where human safety could be at risk (directly or indirectly).

Information Transparency: is there a Wrong Time?

This is Part 1 of a multi-part series on transparency of information. There are probably two strong camps that would argue for or against it. I am squarely in the middle as I have found from experience there is both a right time and a wrong time for it. The first part explores the reasons why transparency can hinder productivity.

What might be some of the wrong times for transparency?

1. when first developing a process and working out the kinks
2. when the information is a poor measure of performance
3. when one doesn’t fully comprehend the implications of having the information freely available
4. when trying to “motivate” (i.e. bully) a team or person to do their job better by exposing information
5. when information can be misinterpreted

Depending on the process, you may be trying to discover which measures are good metrics to use to understand a cause and effect relationship. Many practitioners like myself will have seen occasions where the management and front-line employees alike have criticized the repeated changes in metrics as poor leadership – the “they don’t know what they are doing” syndrome. In reality, it is often best not to stick with metrics just because they were included in the original project plan or specification. If you take on an outcome based approach instead of a metric based approach, you will likely experience a more successful project or initiative overall.

Exposing information to the broadest audience too early can lead to the cancellation of a good project for political reasons or simply because the wrong data was used in the justification analysis.

Depending on the organizational culture early transparency of an evolving process can also cause a dramatic increase in resistance to change and project participation because of negative press. Or worse, if the management realizes the problem is worse than they expected, they may intervene in an unproductive way squashing a working PDCA process driven approach with a more command and control method.

Workarounds – Dreaded or Welcomed?

An associate was telling me about his friend being surprised when he referred to workarounds as waste. His friend had a positive perception of the term workaround. Why?

I can see why, for many, it could be considered positive. It is generally the last option before “impossible”, “failure”, or “no can do”. Anything better than failure is positive, at least in some light.

What image does workaround convey to me?

More than twenty four hours of consecutive problem solving under the intense pressure that tomorrow the customer will start charging $10,000/hour for downtime on their line because they are out of parts. The closer you get to the crisis the more likely you stray from looking for the solution to looking for a workaround. At 11:00am the next day that workaround looks pretty good – finally some sleep. But even with that comfort in hand you know it will be short-lived and others will have to deal with the extra effort it almost always requires to manage and operate a workaround.

Not all problems end in crisis as described above, but if you don’t think of them that way, it can limit your perception that things can be better. Workarounds are wasteful of time, money, and resources because they are either unreliable, inefficient, or unsafe. At best they should be considered temporary.

Below is the famous Rube Goldberg style Honda commercial. There’s got to be an easier way to close your trunk.

Even Subject Matter Experts don’t have all the Answers

Don’t underestimate the value of asking questions of the people that operate a process on a daily basis, even if you are a Subject Matter Expert (SME). Countless times I would go out to the factory floor and find technicians and operators violating fundamental rules while trying to keep a process running. The initial reaction is to immediately stop them. In reality, they are keeping the process running daily even while breaking widely understood industry standards and practices.

Before I set to tell them everything they are doing is wrong (I don’t really do that), I ask a lot of questions about the situation:

• what are they doing?
• why are they doing it?
• what symptoms exist at the time that “require” their action?
• are the symptoms always the same?
• how often does this happen?
• do they do the same thing every time to correct the situation?
• do the other technicians and other shifts do the same thing?
• are there other industry accepted alternatives?
• have they been made aware of alternatives and are they comfortable with them?
• does the “accepted” practice even work?
• what is the result when the “correct” process is used?

Most of the time they know what they are doing is wrong, at least on some level. Odds are they are doing it because it’s a recurring problem, and the practice keeps production going. It is all to easy for a SME or engineer to say a practice is unacceptable and walk away without working with the front line people to find an acceptable alternative that works both theoretically and under the less-than-ideal real world conditions they are working under.

Often the answers to the questions provide valuable information about the root cause of the problem they are trying to work around. See my related post about Questions Lead – Answers Follow for more information. Theory is great in the classroom, but in the real world there are many other factors that have to be considered to derive the true solution to a long standing problem. Questions are an often overlooked problem solving tool, especially when it must be administered by someone who is supposed to be “the expert”. Don’t let your expertise get in the way of your ability to effectively solve problems. With that different perspective and the help of the regular process “operators”, I have witnessed significant long-term improvements even in areas where I had no prior knowledge or expertise.

Business Improvement – Put on Your 3D Glasses

Many CIO’s from top performing organizations say their  ability to impact the success of the business hinged on their having personal experience in Operations in addition to their knowledge of Information Technology.

It is not enough to just have IT and Operations people on the team. They also need to be able to see and understand things from each other’s perspective in order to maximize each other’s strengths.

Make sure everyone has their business and technology glasses on to see the clearest path to improvement.

Project Failure - Just Set It and Forget It

Improvement projects are always at risk for project slip and subsequent failure. It is necessary to be tenacious about communication and countermeasures to prevent. One of the most dangerous times is after initial release of new tools, software, or processes. Communication and feedback are most critical here. It is often easier for people to slip back to the old way than pick up something new – even if you perceive the new way as being easier. Don’t just walk away, even if it looks like a slam dunk.

There are two ways that resistance to the new process show up:

1. Vocal communication
2. Silent death

In the case of vocal communication, make sure to pay close attention to the concerns being voiced. They may sound like complaints, but they are really the ticket to success. If you can address their legitimate concerns, people will hop on board and bring others with them.

If all things are quiet with a lack of feedback or communication, proactively look closely for the presence of warning signs. Hesitating to uncover silent concerns and put countermeasures in place quickly will drastically reduce the momentum needed to get the best result. That is how so many corporate initiatives become “just another corporate initiative”.