Working with a manufacturing company on developing a Quality Improvement Culture within their organization. Not liking the term’ culture,’ – we agreed to call what they see as the culture’ Current Behaviors.’

When someone calls something ‘part of our culture’ it is no longer open for discussion, even when the majority of people hate the behavior and know that this culture is broken.

When we try to examine the culture it’s quickly called undiscussable and people who are behaving in way that are hurting the company or team do not need to be held responsible for their behavior. – Mike Cardus

As we moved from culture to Current Behaviors, we focused on differentiating quality assurance from quality improvement. This proved to be relatively straightforward. We concentrated on the boundaries, pulling ourselves back to observed behaviors within the work teams and customers.

Using the following framing questions to guide our discussions and planning proved useful:

Current Behaviors within the organization

1. What are we choosing to keep, maintain, and enhance?
2. What are we choosing to alter?
3. What are we choosing to let go of?
4. If these are deliberate decisions made by the team, then there is an opportunity to make purposeful adjustments and frame them in the context of “What are we striving for?”

“Create an Environment that allows the team members to thrive and develop through coaching and continuous development in everything we do.” – The Lean Thinker

 Processes and work – Quality Improvement

1. What kind/type of business do you want more of?
2. What is currently attracting that business?
3. What is currently repelling that business?
4. How did you make the attractors work?
5. How did you make the repellents work?
6. What kind/type of business do you not want more of?
7. What is currently attracting that business?
8. What is currently repelling that business?
9. How did you make the attractors work?
10. How did you make the repellents work?

Understanding that we cannot borrow best practices from someone else, we need to define Quality Improvement Current Behaviors within the current organization’s capacity, resources, attractors, repellents, and skills. Working, as a team, through the questions and responses, we arrived at a shared vision and co-constructed plan.