Finding Your Passion In A Changing Environment

My workplace is going through changes, lots of them. That is seen as both a good thing and a bad thing. What is interesting is that recently management called out for each of us to find our passion. What if our passion was our old job? I don’t blame my company for changing, they are trying to improve and update the company. Always a good idea – I guess. I believe in the value of putting people in a position that they are working on what feeds their passion. The test is simple, if you lose track of time doing it, it is probably a passion.

The problem I am facing is the passion I had was for the old way of doing things. Turns out it is hard to find a new passion when your old one is going away. New opportunities are around every corner and you just need to be open to it. I will find my passion, I just have to keep searching. Management might be the answer, I have always enjoyed leading groups of people. My latest resume on Monster is for a manager position. Getting things done through others is a challenge. I like the mentoring aspect the most about managing. I guess time will tell.

Needing to find a new passion is something that we all go through in life, probably several time. How we go about this is up to us individually. I guess it is all about finding happiness, in your work if at all possible. If it’s not possible, then it is time to move on and find happiness elsewhere.

The Price of Innovation

Innovation might just be the most over-used word in the business world today. Everywhere you look, every company’s main concern is about innovating. I get that competition are is getting tough and you can’t win today with your same old product. Or can you? Where is all this supposed innovation getting us? Like most things, when everyone gets on the bandwagon, a vast majority of the innovation belongs back on the drawing board.

The Forgotten Quality

What about quality? Remember that, that buzz word of tester-year. I remember when companies actually cared about the quality of the product they produced. If your company has enough resources for only one activity, working on innovation or improving quality, which would you choose? I know the politically correct answer is ‘both’! I hate those answers. I guess it comes down to what people are looking for. What will keep your customers with you? New products or better quality?

The Price of Innovation

What does it cost to chase this dream of innovation? The payoff is great new products that will drive customers to the company. The cost might be even greater. Ignoring product quality problems, hoping to just get by until the new fantastic products amaze everyone. We are in such a hurry, I wonder if we spend enough time on the innovative ideas to make them high-quality products. All the while, the products that are keeping the doors open and that allow others to spend time on innovation are just slogging along. It’s a gradual decay that seems to be accepted – we all say that this product can’t be our answer in the future. Of course, we said the same thing a couple of years ago and here we are. I wonder if with the neglect, we are not fulfilling our own prophecies.

How To Survive?

I think that in the world where communication is basically instantaneous, delivering higher quality products and only a few true innovative items will win the market. Trying to do twenty things seems over-reaching. I like three. Pick the three best bets you can come up with and develop the daylights out of them. For the rest of your resources, make the best product you can possible make. Make sure every nook and cranny works as expected. Make sure your customers are deliriously happy about it. Look at your customer service organization and work very hard at putting them out of business. Can’t be done totally, but those are all ‘cost’ dollars. Create a workplace where talented people work their asses off on products they love. Challenge them, inspire them, make the workplace a place where time flies by. That is how you survive. One last thing, it matters just as much How you do things as What you do. Build a workplace you would be proud for your children to work at. At least that is my two cents!

How to Focus on Quality

I find it kinda funny that quality is an occasional subject at companies, rather than a ‘start every day/meeting with quality’ atmosphere. I have been in companies where quality is not really even mentioned and been at a company that jumped head-first into the quality world. It’s very interesting to watch people react to the idea implementing quality tools/procedures.

The Cynic
These are the people who view the whole quality process as just more ‘work’ that they are going to along with the rest of their responsibilities. The Cynic will generally be negative towards the process and will look to subvert the process to meet there own needs. They learn just enough to try to work the system to get what they wanted to accomplish all along. Sad, but I saw it first hand. As a manager, you have to keep these people honest and not let them corrupt the quality system.

The Believer
To these people, the quality system represents logic and ‘rightness’ that was missing in their work-world before. To be honest, it’s not only a quality process that can give these people the ‘truth’ they are looking for – any top-down process that sorted the chaos of the everyday into something that makes more sense. A quality process can clear the cobwebs, make things make sense. Everyone sees the everyday workings that are simply not working but it seems things never change. The is the fundamental key to the quality process – everything changes and keeps changing. Some people fear change, but the Believers embrace the changes in the hopes that things will get better.

The Flavor of the Day Crowd
These are the people who view the quality process as just another process that management is forcing everyone to take. They embrace it because that is what you do with the new process. But they essentially believe that this too will be replaced by another system/process in the future. Because of this, they do what they can but don’t emotionally invest in the quality process. Some of these people can be shown the true value of the system, they can become Believers. I also think many of these people are afraid to ‘fall in love with the system’ because it will be gone in a year or so.

The Rest
This group represents everyone else. If the value of the quality process is shown to them, they will embrace it. If the system is simply dumped on them, then they will go through the steps but never proactively participate in the system.

How To Implement a Quality System
Of course this could be a HUGE discussion but I am just going to highlight a few important pieces of the puzzle. The first true key to a successful quality process is that the process must be supported top-down. If upper management doesn’t support it, how are the troops going to feel the process is going to stay around. You have to have the top dog tell everyone that this is both important and here to stay!

The second key, is that the goal of implementing the quality process is to provide a better ‘quality’ product to the customers. It’s not. I can see why you might say that, but that will lead to bad decisions and placing the emphasis on the wrong areas. The goal should be simply for every single person to produce quality work in everything they do. It’s not just what goes out the door, it’s what is done every single step along the way. Every support person, everyone who works directly and indirectly with the product. If everyone focusses on quality, the end results will be more satisfied customers. Plain and simple.

The last key I want to go over is processes. I work in the tech industry and all I keep hearing how all the gurus are saying to forget processes and embrace culture. They are in love with innovation and discovery. I get it. Got to create new things. I just wish people would realize anytime a company has more than one person do the same job function, a process should be established to make sure the same job is being done. Processes are not the death of artiest, just the keeper of standards – and that is a good thing. A quality process is all about looking at the processes that you do the most and improving them. Simple. Why would anyone be against that.