Mirza Yawar Baig – Confusion about kindness
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My brothers
and sisters, friends,
the Romans countrymen.
We were having this discussion this morning.
My
long suffering friend and
trusted right hand,
my mother and
myself,
about the importance of qualities.
And,
as he knows and I
as I am quite
unashamedly
happy to admit,
I believe that quality
is
a competitive advantage,
and quality can be achieved only
by having a totally
non compromising
attitude
about the lack of it.
The moment you compromise
on lack of quality,
and usually it is done in the name
of so called kindness,
the whole house of cards
collapses.
I have a quote. I say metrics
convert intentions
into goals,
desires
into results.
Metrics,
which is measurement,
convert
intentions
into goals
desires into results.
So I thought let me talk to you
about this whole issue of
this confusion really about kindness.
Obviously,
I my in my defense, I must put
a disclaimer to say that I have nothing
against kindness. I think kindness is
one of
the values that seems to be disappearing from
this from our society
at great cost to us. So kindness is
extremely important.
The important thing is to understand what is
kindness.
Now what is kindness?
Is it accepting substandard
work
or is it insisting that only the best
quality is acceptable?
What is kindness?
There's often a lot of confusion about this.
People think
that they are being kind
when they say nothing to their group members
or their family or friends who routinely
over promise and under deliver.
I want to distinguish here between
inability
and unwillingness.
Inability,
not capable,
and unwillingness,
or don't care.
If someone is learning English, for example, I
wouldn't discard
something he had written because it had spelling
or grammatical
errors.
But if the same work
comes from someone who knows English well,
then that indicates
an attitude of carelessness
and inattention
to quality which is a reflection
not of their language ability
but of a much more dangerous malaise
of an attitude
of lack of attention to retail
and a lack of concern
for quality.
When I see this,
I know I'm looking at a person
without self respect.
Because in my book,
my work is by signature.
So if I'm not concerned about putting out
sloppy work, then it means I'm not concerned
about my own image.
It's not about projecting an image, but about
becoming
complacent
and comfortable
with poor quality. Such a person, in my
opinion, is not someone
who I would want on my team
what no matter what their qualifications are.
And so usually, if I'm hiring
and I find
a CV or a covering letter, which is
full of mistakes,
grammatical mistakes, and spelling mistakes, I usually don't
take it further.
I very respectfully
place that into my waste bin.
In my book called Hiring Winners, which is
on Amazon, by all means, please read it.
I have argued and shown
that technical competence can be hired or trained,
but attitude
must be selected and hired.
Technical competence can be hired for trained, but
attitude
must be selected and hired.
It's almost impossible
to change the attitude of people
once they are hired.
I say almost impossible
because it is possible
in exceptional cases,
with exceptional leaders
and in exceptional circumstances.
It's not something that I would recommend to
anyone
and it's not something that I
have seen happen that many times in my
life.
Much simpler and easier to hire people with
the right attitude
and train them in the skills that you
want. Just to give you an idea why
I call this dangerous,
let me share some statistical
data with you.
According to a 2006
study looking at the frequency
of surgical errors in the United States,
each year
there could be as many as 2,700
mistakes
where a surgery is performed on the wrong
body part or the wrong
patient. That's about 7 per day.
In the text that will come with this,
art with the with the article and text
will come with this,
video. I've given the link
of the,
of this of the study. Please read it.
To understand this properly, imagine having your good
kidney or your good eye removed.
Both have happened.
The federal aviation
administration lists
pilot error
as the leading cause of plane accidents.
But pilot error
is almost always part of a chain of
events
that starts with something like an ice topped
wing, a piece of equipment that fails and
wasn't reported,
or a close encounter
on a runway.
Again, there is a link,
in the article. Please read it.
These details are only to give you an
idea of the seriousness of being careless.
It can
and does result in loss of life and
limb.
I'm sure that the more we dig, the
more we find incidents where significant loss could
have been avoided,
if only someone had checked.
That is where
this is related to spelling and grammar.
They are indicators of attitude. Someone will send
out a letter full of spelling and grammatical
mistakes, and today it is so easy to
check that. You have programs to check that.
You have it as you type, the computer
does the job for you.
Somebody doesn't even bother with that,
then it's more than likely a person. That's
the kind of person who will not do
an instruments check if they were flying a
plane or read the patient's data sheet or
count the number of sponges
they took out of the incision
in a in a surgical procedure.
I, for 1,
wouldn't want to be on that plane
or that operating
table.
This attitude of carelessness is not restricted to
English writers or or pilots or surgeons. We
have careless teachers
who ruin children's enthusiasm to study. We have
careless parents who bring up little animals
instead of responsible human beings. We have careless
scholars who leave the remnants of their mistakes
to confront people
long after they are dead and gone.
And that is where the issue of demanding
quality comes in.
Sloppiness
is not a sign of passion
but the lack of it.
By and large, we seem to have quality
problems in 3rd world countries because we accept
poor quality.
People can do better, but they need to
be convinced
that it is worth their while to do
so. We must demand quality without apology
and without confusing it for a lack of
kindness. In my opinion, the willingness to take
tough calls
is the key to quality. Ask yourself, is
it kindness to allow cancer to develop because
you don't want to hurt the patient by
cutting him or is it kindness to be
concerned enough about the life of the patient
to cut out the cancer, which is which
is more kind? That is what you are
doing when you allow sloppiness
in the name of being kind.
You cut out cancer
because you know that it will kill you
though it is your own cell.
That's precisely why your internal defense mechanism
cannot deal with it, and you have to
lose external intervention.
That is why
Jack Welch of GE
used to say that the ultimate test of
the leader is if he had edge, which
he defined as the ability
to take tough decisions.
Among the 4 e's of GE, and those
are my GE friends who work for GE
or what consultants with GE. I've been,
consulting with GE from,
1994.
We we know this 4 e's very well.
Energy, energize, edge, and execute.
Welch would say that a person may have
3 of the 4, but if he did
not have edge, then he would fail even
though he had the others.
There's an excellent article. I've given you the
link for that as well. Now quality is
all about being tough
for the right reasons. Firstly, with oneself
and then with one's team.
Without that edge,
there can never be any quality. Of this,
I'm absolutely
convinced, and I hope I can convince you.
Michael Harry of Motorola was the man who
conceptualized
6 sigma quality.
And it's it's famous statement. He said, if
you want to see what somebody values, see
what they measure.
He said if you want to see what
somebody values, see what they measure. And that's
the reason why we say time is money,
but we have we don't really mean that
because we measure money.
And so when we lose it, even if
it's a small amount,
it pricks in the heart of the mind.
But time, we just waste it.
On an average, a person today
spends
6 hours a day
on the screen of their phone in social
media. 6 hours a day. That's almost 1
third of your life.
If time was money, believe me, we would
not do that. And that's because we don't
measure time. Although money is replaceable,
and time is irreplaceable.
Still, this is how we treat it. So
to go back to Michael Harry of Motorola,
he's the man who conceptualized
6 sigma quality.
This quality standard, which is based on the
principle that one can only measure mistakes.
You can't see how efficient someone is except
to count the number of mistakes they make.
The fewer the mistakes,
the better the product or service. So let's
say someone has a service delivery of 99%
correct.
Now that is perfectly acceptable
and we may say to ourselves that, you
know, we must be compassionate and not give
that person a hard time because they made
that one mistake in 100 until, of course,
you translate that into 6 Sigma terms. How
many per million?
1%
is 10,000
mistakes
per million.
10,000
per million. 6 sigma
is 3.4
mistakes
per million.
99% correct
is 10,000 mistakes per million.
6 sigma quality
is 3.4
mistakes per million. Let me ask you, how
would you like to fly in a plane
at 39,000
feet
where the engines were manufactured by a company
operating at 99%
efficiency?
Or where the pilot is operating at 99%
efficiency,
or we operated for heart surgery by a
surgeon who is 99 percent particular
about hygiene.
Do I need to give you more examples?
This is where the importance of measurement, the
importance of metrics comes in. It is only
when you have metrics to define what is
meant by acceptable quality in your context
can you be sure that everyone understands
the standard
can be measured and will know clearly if
he or she
met the standard
or didn't.
What you don't measure, you don't know. What
you don't know,
you can't control
and what you cannot control you cannot
guarantee.
Let me repeat that
What you don't measure,
you don't know. What you don't know, you
cannot control. And what you cannot control, you
cannot guarantee.
Subjective assessments
cannot substitute
for metrics.
So do take the time and trouble to
measure the quality of whatever it is that
you are doing in life.
This is what, incidentally, Toyota did with the
development of their luxury car. When I was
in business school, this is one of the
case studies that we
that we did there. Toyota went to the
owners
of Rolls Royce, Mercedes, and BMW,
and other luxury cars like this, and ask
them questions
about what they felt
felt, not thought, what they felt when they
used their cars. They asked, for
example, the,
the owner of Rolls Royce, what he or
she feels when they get into the car
and shut the door, and it shuts with
a very
satisfying
pump,
not a teeny clang
like the door of a small cheap car.
They asked them what they felt when they
sank
into the luxury of rear leather seats, which
hug them and give them back support.
They asked the owners of BMW
what they felt when they were behind the
wheel on an open stretch of road, and
they floored the accelerator.
Those of you who have who have driven
BMWs and I have driven BMWs will know
what I mean. The cat, the car acts
like a leopard
gathering itself to pounce, and then, choom, it
goes. You can feel it in your belly
before it leaps forward, and the thrust drives
you back in your seat. Toyota engineers
took these highly touchy feely answers
and converted them into engineering
drawings,
the most specific of data. The result was
the successful
and fastest selling luxury car on the market,
the Lexus.
This is the magic of numbers,
the power of metrics that
They convert
wishes
into reality,
vision
into action,
effort
into results.
Quality is serious.
Lack of quality
is deadly.
Lack of quality happens simply because we permit
it, because we allow it. It happens because
we don't insist on quality. It happens because
we accept poor quality most in the day,
most often in the name of being kind
and compassionate.
We are very foggy in our heads about
this. I suggest
get rid of this fault. Not reality, of
course, that there's nothing more unkind
and unjust
than accepting
poor quality.
It fools the provider into believing that his
or her product or service is good enough.
It takes away their incentive to improve and
makes them vulnerable
to collapse. This is not kindness, but a
lack of understanding
of the whole issue of quality which has
very long term and very destructive effects. This
also has a huge negative impact
on those team members, on those people in
your organization
who are quality conscious.
You you take away
their incentive
of being quality conscious by accepting poor quality
from their colleagues. This is injustice to them,
and it is injustice and suicide to yourself.
Unfortunately, our society
is full of examples of people who don't
keep their word, who do not deliver on
promises, who do not work to high standards,
and give ridiculous
excuses
when challenged. People who confuse effort with result,
while it is only results
that count.
Let me tell you 2,
stories
before I,
end this,
this chat of mine. The first story goes
that Motorola,
and this story I heard in Motorola in
Chicago.
Motorola ordered a part of their,
they had a they had a Japanese ancillary,
which used to make their pagers,
for them. So they ordered,
a part
for their pages
from their Japanese ancillary
and impressed upon them that they were a
6 sigma company and would not accept anything
but the 6 sigma standard
of 3.4
mistakes per 1,000,000.
When the consignment was delivered, to Motorola's surprise,
they found 2 packages, a big one and
a small one. When they opened the big
box, they saw that it had the entire,
consignment,
of 1,000,000
parts that they had ordered. The small bar
the small box had 4 parts in it.
When they asked their Japanese partner, they were
told, we didn't understand
what you wanted,
why you wanted us to give you defective
parts
because you said you wanted 3.4
mistakes per million.
We didn't understand why we should give you
defective parts. But since you asked for them,
we gave you 4 defective parts. Otherwise, we
don't manufacture
anything with defects.
So the Japanese company was, you know, steps
ahead of that. The second story is about
Tata Motors, and this was told to me
by their general manager
in
the Tata Motors factory
in India.
He said that they had been plagued, they
were plagued with rework.
The cost of
and and of course, obviously cost of escalations
and so on. And so they hired a
a
consultant,
a Japanese consultant from Toyota to help them
to solve their quality problem. He said the
man entered the factory, walked straight to the
end of the manufacturing line, and there he
saw there was a huge area
marked rework.
He said to them, remove the sign,
eliminate this work area. That is all that
you need to do to fix your problem.
The man said you were shocked, he said
what have you been
just just remove all this? What will happen
to the 2 things which have to be
reworked? He said there will be no nothing
to rework. If you have no rework area,
you would have no rework. People will do
the right thing the first time.
Well, the Tata executives,
were not convinced, and they reduced the size
of the area, but were too frightened to
remove the rework area entirely.
The results were predictable.
My question to you is, if you had
a choice, which car would you buy? A
Toyota
or a Tata?
I rest my case. Thank you very much
for listening. I hope
you like this idea
of insisting on quality,
especially
when you want to be kind, especially for
those people who you love and you value.
Thank you very