Bamboo Architecture

Check out this YouTube video of Columbian Architect Simon Velez.  Amazing work using bamboo as the construction material of choice.

The No Asshole Rule in One Company: A Simple Decision-Tree

Simply too good to pass up, here is a reblog from Bob Sutton's Work Matters site.   What I like about Bob's work is that it is common sense and no nonsense.  He tells it like it is and he is almost always right on.  

I recently posted an updated version  of People and Places that Use The No Asshole Rule.  In that spirit, a group of students in my class Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach did a little case study of how a local start-up (with about 150 people now) is sustaining a civilized workplace.  I liked this simple decision-tree as it captures much of the essence of how to enforce the rule -- assuming they actually use this rather than just talk about it!

Customer, Serve Yourself!

I recall many years ago when I was a new employee at a major financial institution and my boss and I were wrapping up an east coast trip.  More or less on the spur of the moment he decided to reroute our trip home through Chicago to check on a rumored real estate deal.  When we got there we learned much to our dismay that the deal was done.  A long term lease for the entire top floor of a new high rise in the loop area … to house a regional data center.  To say this is one of the more nonsensical decisions I’ve ever seen would be true, but it certainly isn’t the only one. 

As a result of this particular event a new corporate policy was implemented requiring that the Corporate Real Estate and Facilities group lead all real estate and development projects.  Shocking, I know.  Previously our group had been a service available to senior management in different regions.  Some used us, some did not.  After this incident choice was removed and the organization got serious about managing its real estate processes.

What is the point of this story?  It is this: Customers have a responsibility to make responsible decisions.  Consultants have a responsibility to assist them and hopefully, to help them avoid these kinds of egregious errors.  While both customer and consultant share responsibility I believe it is the customer who carries the larger burden.

Customers know more about themselves, their strengths and weaknesses than outsiders do.  Consultants can investigate, analyze and suggest cures; but it is the customer who makes the choices.  They decide which consultant to engage, how diligent to be in the process, how objective they will be, and how they will respond to advice and input.  Customers do a disservice to themselves when they shortchange any of these because they didn’t get the answer they expected or wanted, or don’t think the effort involved is worth it.  If the initiative is not worth your effort to do correctly then it certainly is not worth engaging consultants in the first place. 

Intelligent customers understand the environment they work in, what is needed, and what is not needed.  They make fact-based decisions and are candid with themselves first and foremost.  Intelligent customers buy smart, hire smart, design smart, and execute in smart fashion.  In other words, intelligent customers make better decisions and execute better because they know more, have well-honed protocols and standards, and require adherence.

While this story is about a real estate and development project it could just as well have been about deciding whether or not to build a new factory, launch a new product, or any other business decision.  Knowing your requirements, their drivers, what risks and mitigations are involved and a hundred other things are important.  As FM’s we are often in the customer seat as we acquire services to meet our organizational needs.  Are you a smart customer?  Do you know what the requirements really are?  Do you know where the levers are and under what circumstances they should be exercised?  Do you know what your internal customers are looking for, what their business plans are, what frustrates them about your operation?  Do you know the strategic direction and tactics of your enterprise and are your goals and processes aligned with them?

You are an FM.  You serve internal customers.  You are also a customer yourself and every service, product or project you acquire has a pass through effect to your internal customers.  Your smart customer behavior has a direct effect on the health of the enterprise. 

Serve yourself well so you can better serve others.  Be a smart customer.

Five Most In Demand Jobs in FM Today

Kudos to Ashley Halligan  for her article on the five jobs most in demand in today's FM world.  Reading the list one quickly understands that what has always been the heart of FM is still the heart of FM - making buildings work.  While there is much talk about FM's ascendance to the board room the heart of the profession remains with the details of operating and managing space.  Today that requires different skill sets than it once did, with an emphasis on technology and data.  Good stuff, Ashley.  Read it here.

Applying Lean Six Sigma to Facilities Management - Pt. 2

Two Disciplines with Common Goals Combine to Improve Operations and Profitability

This is the second and final installment on applying Lean Six Sigma in Facilities Management organizations.  Last week's post defined Lean and Six Sigma and discussed their histories.  This week we look at how the two disciplines can be integrated and how one FM organization used Lean Six Sigma to solve a long standing problem.

Combining Lean and Six Sigma

The advantage of combining Lean and Six Sigma is in simultaneously improving the speed of work (Lean) and the quality of work (Six Sigma).  This dual-purposed approach integrates initiatives to improve process efficiency and effectiveness as measured by quality, speed and cost.  Critically important is the vision and leadership of senior management.  Without visible commitment from the top Lean Six Sigma risks succumbing to the pressures that endanger all change management initiatives.  For the initiative to be successful the attention to it must be consistent and long lived.

While both Lean and Six Sigma take a customer first approach the perspectives are slightly different.  It is important that a combined program make customer driven requirements, specifications and expectations a pre-eminent part of enterprise culture.  This is not always easy to do and it should be expected that there will be challenges.  Old attitudes must be changed and operational protocols adjusted.  Services that once focused on cost reduction alone while maintaining an acceptable level of quality must now deliver customer driven results of higher quality with lower cost.  Functional or vertical boundaries must take on open characteristics so that cross-functional improvements can reach the breadth of the enterprise.  Attaining this will mean a fundamental analysis and streamlining of every process involved and a willingness to let the facts and data take you where they will without dilution by old issues of turf, inter-departmental competition and the like.

Goals of Lean Six Sigma

Because they are both quality initiatives the goals of Lean and Six Sigma also have much in common.  They strive to increase the importance of customers throughout the value chain by taking a customer focus on process improvement.  Further they strive to drive these changes throughout an enterprise both vertically and horizontally.  The result is that a successful Lean Six Sigma organization is attuned to and indeed driven by customer requirements, dictating a unified and synchronized provision of goods and services in a manner that reduces or eliminates the normal friction of business.

Eliminating waste, streamlining and synchronizing processes across organizational boundaries, and making objective decisions based on hard data are the hallmarks of successful initiatives.  While Kaizen seeks to make incremental changes that result in immediate improvement which often come from front line workers, Six Sigma looks to institutionalize and maximize gains.  Both seek to change corporate culture in fundamental ways.

Implementation Case Study

Shared services organizations are good candidates for Lean Six Sigma programs.  As service organizations they serve internal customers but never the less have great leverage on the corporate bottom line.  Facilities management is nearly always the second largest cost center on a balance sheet and IT is also a giant.  In many shared service organizations these two reside under the same leadership, presenting an opportunity to join forces to improve the quality, speed and cost of services to the larger organization.  Such was the case when the Facilities and IT groups of a mid-sized company teamed up to tackle a vexing problem.

For years the two groups had struggled with aligning data center operations.  One was responsible for providing and operating the physical infrastructure, the other for equipping and managing data center operations that served the global enterprise.  Frequently there were disconnects in project planning and communication.  The key individuals in the two groups, however, had good relationships and jointly recognized the opportunity to investigate and resolve this issue.  Working inside an organization with a strong commitment to Continuous Improvement and in which resources and tools were available gave these practitioners the tools and management commitment they needed to attack the problem.

Working as a joint team this group used a number of Lean and Six Sigma tools to identify, investigate, and analyze root causes.  Using an Ishikawa diagram (Fishbone) they brainstormed issues that contributed to the problem.  The X-Y Matrix tool then led them through a process of scoring and ranking the issues they identified, resulting in a short list of high value opportunities to affect change.  The Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) identified individual failure modes, thereby informing the redesign of the processes involved.

As is usually the case these investigation and analysis tools identified causes that team members were already aware of.  In these cases the issues were quantified and documented to make them visible, understandable, and actionable.  As is also usually the case, this disciplined process of objective investigation revealed causes they were casually aware of without recognizing their full importance, or had been completely blind to.  One such key realization was that annual budgeting cycles for the two groups were not synchronized, with the facilities group being well down the budgeting pathway before the IT group began developing its annual project plans.  The obvious result was that facility budget decisions were made before IT projects and their implications to data center infrastructure were known.  As a result projects were often debated and delayed, preventing IT from providing services internal customers were waiting for. 

While this example may seem obvious that is often the point in these exercises.  The obvious becomes the norm, gets locked in and becomes a part of corporate rubric where it is all but forgotten except in times of stress.  But when discovered these issues can be dealt with and turned from red to green on the process status dashboard.

Keys to Success

As I mentioned this organization enjoyed a long standing commitment to Continuous Improvement and is familiar with Lean Six Sigma principles and protocols.  Over time these have become an ingrained part of their culture.  The environment established by leadership, the continuation of the commitment and the tools provided are all there.  But this is not an organization that has a large quality department.  Rather, Continuous Improvement has been made a requirement of all - it is largely a home grown bootstrap type of initiative. 

That said, tools have been provided.  Key individuals with Six Sigma experience from previous jobs have taken leadership roles as a collateral duty, functioning as coaches and mentors.  All staff in the entire shared services organization down to the first line supervision level (and often beyond) receives training in CI, Lean and Six Sigma courses taught on site by co-workers.  There are no consultants in sight.  Finally, CI project teams and their projects are periodically recognized.

The advantage of adopting Lean Six Sigma in your organization is that it provides a structured set of methodologies and tools which allow you to identify and remove obstacles.  While it is a disciplined approach it is not complicated and need not require a unique set of resources.  Indeed, the best results come from within based on commitment and perseverance.