This video was a real eye opener for me. The fact that the broken process caused employees to lose their jobs amazed me. How can a company hold an employee accountable for a broken system process especially when their voices are not heard. Great information!
Having a method to achieving the objective stands out to me. A step by step process instead of trial and error promotes success and would provide a clear path to achieve the goal. Having inconsistent results and no training creates a disconnect and disengagement.
It's a great visual experiment! Employees are so numbed to the process, that they're not able see outside the box and managers are so disconnected from the process that they cannot see inside the box.
This explains why looking further into work process is so important. The work procedures, materials and equipment used, are often, the reason for the failures. But in management the metric (measurements) of the workers lead to the consequences of rewards or punishment. My lesson learned is to look at the the whole system and not just one department.
I think this is eye opening in regards to challenging upper management regarding ineffective procedures and not just having a mentality to just do what I'm told to do.
This puts the analysis of a process in perspective. As was said "if you don't like the outcome, change the system". So often do companies blame the resource or the equipment rather than the process.
I was impressed that so many different lessons could be learned from a rather straight forward experiment. I think the overriding lesson I took away was to focus on the process and not the people.
This video answered some of the questions that came up for me in video #1. The is indeed no control of the product as it comes into the testing arena. I was glad that this video touched on the effect of human factor associated with the job. Human factors are a very important part of keeping production moving. An employee without any idea of what the ultimate goal is will fail.
This practical example is a great way of demonstrating how workers can be limited unless management helps identify and improve on its processes based on real data.
Fix a system that works against the worker, designed to fail regardless of effort... I love that! This video was easier to understand and more enlightening the video 1 of 3
This experiment is wonderfully simple yet has so many teaching points. I can imagine this is complicated to put into practice, even though the tenants are clear.
The video was clear on what the production target requirements are, more importantly is finding out the "why" the defects happened. It could have a number of variations, which most often times does not point to the actual person doing the work, but, to create a system that all workers could follow in order to attain the target and the quality results. In order to increase the production, after a good system to eliminate decencies and meet the quality standard, there needs to be continuous improve on the process.
This video stresses the importance of arbitrary management metrics and the importance of managing the system instead of each department or employee. No matter what the employee changes, the system is still broken. Great way to illustrate that.
Great video that shows that a bad system will always out weigh great workers. I have also seen in my work where some bad processes and management not doing anything to fix the process have forced people to create work arounds.
This should be an eye-opening video for managers. They should view the company as a whole and recognize bad processes, instead of focusing on practices that are harmful to the teams.
Great example of on what to do when goals are not being met. The first question should be how can we change/improve the process to meet the required goal before blaming employees for their work. It creates unnecessary conflicts, and demotivates workers.
Francisco! I feel as though in short the concept of humility and awareness of value in every aspect of environment (in this case for example a country- what benefits it that grows the country where the bar leads to in a perfect world 9.99% everyone sustains living above poverty line, providing for self and family, relaxation with extremely minimum critical issues, education for the children is above standard with the sense of human community as a being as one)- converted to suppliers, resources, personnel etc. The Workplace conscious as the Human community. Profit- Continuity in growth - Spread wealth, People, Planet! Thank you Sir!
"Management practices that are ineffective and harmful... managing by numbers, when you don't understand what these numbers mean." --- Excellent lessons learned through this experiment. Looks like a fun way to learn as well, and so valuable in todays work environment.
This helped me understand that other aspects of the operation may be influencing the results and causing undesirable effects beyond employees. It is easy to blame a person instead of looking at every aspect that plays a role in producing the results that we want/need.
That was helpful in regards to reviewing and picking apart a system instead of targeting employees for their performance. Low performers should be addressed, but start with the system first to ensure it isn't the system that is limiting their production.
It's easier for leadership to set targets and then expect their team members to achieve that target then to go through the process of improving the system. I love the principles that this teaches.
What you describe - leaders setting targets and expect results - is not really leadership, but just a "laisser-faire" or "hands-off" style. The good manager sees problem-solving in the gemba as an integral part of the job.
The overview of the lessons learned from the experiment was very helpful, particularly for someone who is very new to learning about effective management practices.
Another great example video outlining how organizations need to recognize their business as an entire "system" and that by having a departmental one-siloed approach, can cause damage. In addition, if targets are to be set, they need to be SMART and yes stretch, but goals that are attainable as sometime employees may not be able to impact results given company constraints.
The video is really helpful. Many meaningful lessons were derived from this experiment and explained in detail, which should help the viewers in the future practice. Basically, the management should not over-react to the negative information/data too quickly and make wrong decisions without doing some thorough analysis to identify the root causes and design new solutions.
I really enjoyed the activity along with this video explaining the production system. It made it so clear that we need to work on eliminating defects instead of recording them. It also reinforced the fact that process plays important role in quality and its not always the person making mistakes.
You left me with a very important question. What are the red beads in my company? Just last week, someone was warning me about the trap of working to track items instead of getting to the root cause and improving the process. Sometimes it seems when there is one red light after another, the immediate need is to track all the red lights. But really, the goal is to figure out why there are not more green lights and implement the improvements needed to bring those moments of flowing productivity to fruition.
A few things stood out to me from the video- how employees tried harder to succeed, even breaking the rules; rather than focusing more on how to get rid of the red beads. How getting rid of your low performers did not change the outcome of the data from your top performers. And your statement of "all variations come from the process, not workers"
This video highlights a number of important concepts that managers must always remember when evaluating performance. Managers should use a control chart to understand whether or not a certain result requires action. Understanding natural variation will save time and build trust with employees. Managers should also first think about the system/process involved before looking to the individual operator.
Reiterating my comments from the first video on the Red Bead Simulation the goal and focus has to be on the system and not the employee. I love Dr Demming's quote "a bad system beats a good employee every time". A sad situation when caring, dedicated employees cannot envision and realize the outcome of their hard work because the process they are working with does not allow for the outcomes they desire and are trying so hard to achieve.
Rick, watch the third video and you'll discover that the process is actually in control! The problem is that the supervisor in the simulation is trying to get from a process what it can't give, because it's been designed to be ineffective. The real solution would have been to stop red beads from coming in the first place; that is, it would have been the responsibility of procurement or inspection, but they were nowhere to be found in this simulation. We have to have a holistic, end-to-end view of the problem to be able to solve it.
"A bad system would beat a good person every time". So true here. The only way the person could overcome the system is to be able to have some authority to provide input and make change, support from management, etc. from the company to make improvements. What I found most interesting about this video is the summary of factors (materials, equipment, procedures, environment, etc.) that impact systems. A confluence of things need to operate correctly within a system to get max productivity/output.
The factors listed map to the categories of causes listed by Ishikawa in the fishbone diagram! That is, a systemic change is needed: the whole system must be improved to produce the results desired. This is achieved through projects of improvement, prioritized and launched to target the various factors.
Nicely outlined about the importance of the management process and looking at the system of production. It emphasizes again the importance of working to have a great functioning system. These employees had no power and demoralized workers will not serve a system well.
visualizing the SIPOC, the process and the upstream (suppliers) was the crucial item that impacted the downstream (customers). I am glad that we first learned the full-process and saw the results visually. The final question is what are the red beads in your company? Sometimes too many to count. Great exercise.
A Green Belt student commented that: run charts and actually control charts are needed to understand numbers, and that this video show that results variation was from the process and not the workers. I especially liked that she referenced the fishbone diagram for improving operations thus: process improvements are needed for improved production and they can be carried out along six dimensions (procedures, environment, equipment, materials, measurements, environment).
This is a great connection to the 3 nevers. By having the supplier pass on defects we can see how that affects the system further down the line. And in this case, the system didn't even think about diminishing the number of passed defects, they were only focused on the performance of the workers. This might make sense at a glance because the workers are the ones giving you the immediate output, but they were set up for failure to begin with. So the output of the workers should be an indication to the management of a bad process and bad management, and not an indication that they were given a bad team that needs to be fixed or adjusted.
This experiment is so interesting because it was created so many years ago and management in companies still have not embraced the learnings of this experiment. Companies try to do the right things to improve profitability and improve employee morale. However, management still needs to work on system improvements instead of blaming the workers for poor performance or customer satisfaction.
This was really just a great discussion and dissection of the experiment. The lessons were very practical. As the components of the system of production were listed, a Fishbone diagram instantly came to mind. Overall, great video!
Nicole, a Green Belt student in a previous class commented that run charts and actually control charts are needed to understand numbers, and that this video show that results variation was from the process and not the workers. I especially liked that she referenced the fishbone diagram for improving operations thus: process improvements are needed for improved production and they can be carried out along six dimensions (procedures, environment, equipment, materials, measurements, environment).
Lots of lessons learned. In summary, flawed systems and bad management decisions have an impact on performance of the team and the company. All to often, individual contributors (especially at the lower levels of the food chain) comply with rigid processes and do not know how to effectively work with management to change those processes.
In my experience, "A bad system beats a good person everytime" and a target given without a proven method to achieve it are the two root causes of why people create there own work arounds, and people begin to get an individual focus by only looking out for themselves. Then these two issues are like taking step back before you're able to explore a process for improvement.
Overall, this is just a fantastic visualization on how there can be an obvious issue with the process and not with the employees. The employees will keep trying regardless of how often they fail which also shows how much people want to succeed.
Hillary, good point on "how much people want to succeed" and this will be easier if we try as a team, with management integrated in the effort, not just the employees alone. Francisco
Really liked a real life example based on the experiment in the previous video with the data plugged into the control charts we are currently learning about. I think this helps you better understand these charts with real experiment examples.
Well put, Linda. Deming used to say that a poor process will overpower the best person ... Also, do you see the connection between this and the CEO comment that "the process is disrespecting the employees" in the 116 Innovators video?
Ervin - This video does clearly show the managerial error of blaming system performance issues on individual employees. The idea of having a negotiation before hand to potentially reduce the amount of red beads sent is also a good proactive step.
I particularly liked the fact that it stressed that ranking personnel (Reviews, Stretch Goals, ...) did not serve any purpose. Corporate America is obsessed with doing this. It would be nice to break it of the habit, even if only one company at a time.
As a manager it is important to review employees objectively and subjectively to determine areas of improvement/strengths. A manager can better determine if the employee is in a role in the System that supports their strengths.
The consequences of mgmt decisions that don't have a foundation in sound analysis (like DMAIC and its tools) have a very strong impact on the employees affected, the manager, and the company. It's worth the effort to really understand a process before spending energy on motivation/rewards/punishment and before deciding on promotions and terminations.
I find lesson No 7 most compelling. That is, that system-wide action is needed for effective and sustainable improvement. Piece-meal reactionary response can only last for so long, before the issue resurfaces elsewhere within the system.
STEPHEN FALETI you're correct! In this case system- wide means the purchasing department too so they buy better product, or at least the incoming quality team so that they presort the beads. However, the willing workers were not allowed to do this.
After watching the second video, the experiment makes more sense to me. Poor processes where workers have no control and are still penalized for "poor" performance is demoralizing. Workers need to be in-powered to help enhance processes .
it would be good for a company to have regular (e.g. yearly) refresh on this. Even though managers have been trained once on these concepts, they can be "forgotten" when edicts come from the executives above.
Saw this a lot at another company I worked at where the process in place was no help to meeting the unreachable goals they had set for employees. It incentivized bad behavior like skipping in process checks to speed up production to try and meet goals. Management overlooked it.
Lots of important management lessions. Critical is to think systemic versus individual processes to achieve the change required. Something I believe difficult in real world unless culture changes.
Many times we have idealistic views on what the outcome of a process should be. The video demonstrates the need to design processes that support successful worker outcomes. The large density of red beads is similar to a process with faulty inputs and or process steps.
Very helpful video. The experiment is very insightful and worth some of my old employers to watch. I didn't know how to explain at the time of it, but i can think about times when I didn't know how to explain properly that its not me but the system the company has created that was flawed. If I knew how to explain that how I can now I'm sure i would of ended up with a promotion lol.
When training new leaders, i love to express to keep asking yourself "why" behind a miss and when you reach the employee, keep asking why. was there a training miss? was there a process path miss, how was the environment, etc.
This is a very good video illustrating how the common method of managing people, process, and results, can be flawed. The use of metrics as described in the video is common place. I know of firms that eliminate the bottom 10 to 20% of their staff yearly but don't improve. So this experiment and associating the "system" and performance of the company down to the individual should be the norm vs. focusing only on the individual which tends to be the case. That doesn't mean excuse bad behavior but it does mean enhance collaboration to understand if the system failed vs. the employee and change accordingly.
That's right! we are not absolving the employees from the need to do their best, but we recognize that the system of production is stronger than one particular person. This can be better understood when you consider that the system of production is really a system of causes, interrelated and random that continually interact with one another, and are accountable for most of the variability of process results and the location of the process average. One person is but one cause.
This video was a great reminder that sometimes when performance metrics are unrealistic, even high performing employees will never succeed in the sense. Victims of a broken system that they have no input in.
I believe that customer expectation is high than what we can do based on controlled variables. There are not special practice that every associate could do better. Important to consider procedures, materials, equipment, measurements, consequences, and environment. However if system cannot be better, there is not positive effects by measuring associate performance. Naturally associate were thinking about do differently in order to have lower red bend quantity but the system does not allow to do it better.
If workers do not have clear goals and objectives in essence management has set their team up to fail. When their team fails the company fails because they will have dissatisfied customers. The data shows the system caused the failure and corrective measures should be put in place for performance to improve.
Like the realization that ranking personnel and use of threats doesn't serve any purpose. Management often has the misconception that it helps the process when it doesn't in actuality. Also like the lesson about system wide action instead of looking at different silos within the organization
In addition to finding the red beads, good analysis also needs to ask why the paddle and why the 44 degree angle? Deeply entrenched procedures and methods are very difficult to change; one will need a lot of proof to achieve buy-in. Also, this is an interesting example of a process that is "in control" but "not capable."
The 44-degree angle is, of course, a ludicrous directive! And a great distraction: recently I conducted the experiment with a bunch of executives who are very familiar with all kinds of technologies; so one of them offered to use an app to ensure we were tilting the paddle 44 degrees ... of course it made no difference!
Lesson 6 stated the means to achieve a target must be provided. Given the randomness of the exercise how would this lesson be achieved. What means could a manager provide that would yield better results, i.e. more draws with less red beads with each draw.
This reminds me of a former manager. He would continually yell at the team for not improving the numbers or doing as well as another DC, but he had no idea what the numbers meant or where they were coming from. It just caused an endless loop of guys looking for excuses because they needed to say something to justify what they're jobs.
One of the first things we must to do start improving results is to stop chasing what cannot be explained (random variation) and start fixing the real signals that something is off (special variation). This way we will also stop wasting effort and willingness to try one more time.
this is a study in management. many mangers just look at the results of "too many red beads" then they threaten or encourage their employees based on the results. However this is a totally random process there is no mechanism in place to prevent red beads. Therefore the client is unhappy because they are getting low quality products, the manager is unhappy because they are not meeting their goals, and the employees are unhappy because they are being reprimanded by the manager and given retraining on how to scoop the beads, when it is not the employee's fault it is the process.
I like in this video how we start out with a through explanation on control limits and variation. This builds well off of Demings video. In this like Demings video the system and not the employee is the problem, management implements the system and thus is responsible not the worker and with this you can prove it.
Focus on improving all aspects of system so we improve and employees can meet goals-leadership is responsible for making this happen-individuals can not make sustainable changes on their own-
Karla, a Green Belt commented that: run charts and actually control charts are needed to understand numbers, and that this video show that results variation was from the process and not the workers. She connected this with the fishbone diagram for improving operations thus: process improvements are needed for improved production and they can be carried out along six dimensions (procedures, environment, equipment, materials, measurements, environment).
Creating a control chart will identify low and high out of standards. The range is the target which ensures the process target is achieved. If you don't like the results, improve the system.
Interesting since that every large corporation I have worked for manages in this exact manner and one has to wonder how that method even came to be. The takeaways from this video emphasize that analyzing the system of production (procedures, materials, equipment, metrics, consequences, and environment) is a more effective way to solve a problem or improve a process.
This is right Kristin; without improving the #system of #production, results won't change. This is what the six sigma equation y=f(x) means. Then #Ishikawa comes along and helps us see widely at the entire system, free from the myopia of only looking for a culprit.
Realistic knowledge of your internal processes (work being completed), environment, expected outcomes, and the processes control limits are essential to creating effective processes and effective management. Demoralizing your workers will not make you successful or improve a broken process.
I see this style of management that focuses just on the employee and their metrics rather than the system as a whole. A lot of times goals are established ( based on financial gains) with out in put from thee employee which may not be obtainable and further frustrates the employee.
Setting up operational goals based only on financial goals almost always ignores whether the operations are predictable or not. It is like trying to invent goals and expect that they can be met over a period of time, regardless of whether the current process is stable. The best thing to do is to set the goal to bring every process to its full potential first. This is a theory that financial managers should learn.
This video/Lessons highlights the importance of using Control Charts. More importantly, it explains how production system put in place by management is crucial to the success of an employee and hence some management practices can be harmful to employees.
Kevin Ho: I think many companies think improving quality is training employees better or hiring more 'qualified' people. But the idea of companies and this simulation as a "system" says you have to improve the system or process, not the actual individuals or people.
It is frustrating for workers to be in a system that generates failure. Unfortunately it is more common in organization than it should be. Once management is open to improvement, then production and morale improves!
It was true that most workers will probably focus on their own. What could they do differently. Also, I was actually about to comment in the initial video clip that participants probably had no idea why they were fired. :-)
