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Feb 19

It’s the Details, Stupid

I was visiting my mother who was in the hospital recently. While hospitals exist to heal, I know they can be very dangerous places. An incident during this stay did not ease my fears. And it didn’t even involve my mother.

I had stepped outside of her room and was standing in the hallway passing time. There happened to be a bulletin board in the hallway—it is hard to believe that in this day of email, texting and tweeting, bulletin boards are still used as a means of communicating, but they are.

There was a very nice looking poster on this bulletin board that caught my attention. It was a call for nominations for employees and doctors who reflect the highest ideals of the institution. The award was named after the founder of the institution. Done well, these kinds of recognition can remind employees of the ideals on which the organization was founded, but done poorly they can be a disaster.

I read the traits of the people that they were looking to recognize. Then, as I continued to read, I was struck by a frightening reminder about quality and safety in hospitals. No, the poster wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t even what it said—it was the date on the poster. This was a poster for the 2009 award! The deadline for submission of nominations was February 2010, two years earlier.

Now that may not seem so frightening to you, but to me it raises the question, “If their management and operating systems are so bad that they can’t keep a posters on a bulletin board up to date, how timely are they performing clinical procedures, and how accurately are they administering meds?”

I am not sure who said it first, but the adage that came to my mind was, “The cleanliness of the dropdown trays on an airplane tells you a lot about how well they do engine maintenance.” Or, perhaps another way of saying it is, “It is the details, stupid.”

Great execution and great quality do not come by accident in organizations. Now I know some of us are obsessive compulsive and detailed oriented. But that is not what quality that produces great hospitals and great airlines is about. It is about an intentional design of quality into every single aspect of how the organization functions. It is about an attitude and culture that is focused on meeting customer needs and continual improvement in meeting those needs. But it is about a lot more than attitude. It is about measurement and feedback and systems that enable improvement every single day.

The details really are not the point. The drop down trays are not the point. The bulletin board is not the point. They are simply indicators of how well we are doing on the real point!

Posted by philgibbs

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User Comments

Mike Costa - 2012-02-22 13:47:29

Very nice observation. I have seen the same many times. It aslo made me wonder if anyone was worth recognizing during the past two years.

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Feb 5

Landing Versus Nesting

One thing that we can be sure of in the virtual world of work is that “place” is still important. Few of us are very good at being totally virtual.

Toward the end of last year Josh Bowling and I attended a conference on mobile work in San Francisco. It was held at a conference center on the campus of the University of California San Francisco. And it was a great conference extolling the virtues of technologies that allow us to be mobile and work virtually.

As I was exploring the conference center, I came upon a visual image that challenged my mobile paradigm. The conference center was in a building next to an academic building with what I assume were professors’ offices. The offices had large windows and the lights were on. I was able to see clearly and what I saw were not offices, but nests. Yes, NESTS! You have seen them–papers stacked everywhere. Hardly room to walk or find a place to sit. It may remind you of your professor’s office, or perhaps your own office. The NEST is certainly not limited to the academic world.

I am not an anthropologist, but it made me wonder how ingrained in our genes and psyche is the need to NEST. Is it just a workplace thing? Do we build NESTS at home and at work? Do the forms that the NESTS take give us insights into who the person is?

But the real question that stared me in the face was how do we NEST in a paperless, mobile, virtual world? Will this need derail the building momentum toward what seems like a much more appealing way of working.

As someone having a lot riding on developing world-class places for mobile workers to LAND, but not NEST, you can imagine this was a disconcerting moment. So what are the implications of the seemingly pervasive need to NEST—although some people obviously have more serious cases than others—for the mobile workforce?

Having caught my breath, I would argue as I stated in the opening that “place” is still important in a virtual world. Being totally virtual just doesn’t work. Think about it. Most people who work virtually celebrate the fact that they can go around and meet in their clients’ or other people’s offices. But if everyone is virtual, then there are NO offices to meet in—gotcha!

Physical place is still important. It may be a coffee shop or a place specifically designed for mobile workers like E|SPACES. But how do you satisfy the need to NEST in a place that is designed for LANDING? Perhaps it is a design that creates defined spaces and a cozy, safe feeling even in an open environment. Perhaps when a person finds exactly the right environment, they build today’s NEST on their desktops and displays. And an advantage is they can take their NEST with them to the next PLACE they LAND.

Maybe those professor’s offices were not as chaotic as they appeared. OK, I confess. Sometimes I too work in environments like those and I sort of know where things are. Maybe it is not the chaos, or the NEST, but the familiarity. If that is the case, I can create familiarity with apps, icons and electronic folders just as I can with stacks of books, binders and papers. Come to think of it, my files in the Cloud are in about as much disorder as my paper files. The difference is that the search functions allow me to find what I need much faster.

So what are your thoughts? How can we satisfy this need to NEST in today’s mobile, virtual world of work?