Not everyting is in the manual, Norm

The big boss from Germany was in town to kick the tires and spread the corporate gospel.  I had recently been bumped up to production manager at our little pharmaceutical plant in the Midwest and I busied myself with paperwork while he was talking to the plant manager.

We had been meeting our production targets and the quality was good, so I had hope that this was just a routine visit.  Eventually the grey eminence of Dr. Blickensdorf heaved-to outside my door.  He was not happy.

I dutifully got up and shook his hand like I was strangling a snake – which is what you do if you want any credibility with a German.  Then we sat down and discussed how the plant was running; no surprises there.  The reports were broadcast daily.  I waited while he circled the point.  Finally, he muttered, “Norm, we were disappointed that the Phase II Expansion Project did not get approved by Kommission S.”

“Yeah,”  I said.  “I don’t understand it.  We met all the financial standards.  The forms were all there.  Marketing was bought in.  Environment…Safety…  It was all there.”

This had been my first time shepherding a capital project through all the steps to get it passed by the big corporate capital project appraisal committee, Kommission S.  I had done several smaller projects that had only required approval in our local region; never one that was big enough to go all the way to our corporate HQ in Germany.  Every division within the company had a seat on Kommission S and competition for capital was stiff.

“What happened when you took our representative to Kommission S out to dinner before the meeting?”

“Dinn…What?  Is that in the manual?”  I reached for the giant binder that was still sitting on the edge of my desk.

“Ach.  Not everyting is in the manual, Norm.”

After Dr. Blickensdorf left I pondered the binder, wondering how thick it would be if every detail for capital applications were included.  I had to admit that it would be unlikely that anyone could lift it.  (Digitization had just appeared on the horizon) 

Then my gaze drifted over to the procedures we had written for our technicians, the product of many hours of debate as to how much detail to include.  It seemed that, left to their own devices, our SOPs were crawling off under a rock and multiply into pages of drivel. 

This had happened with the best of intentions.  Over the years, back to the Pleistocene, whenever someone made an error, we had revised the SOPs in response.  We were always faced with a choice:

• Add length or
• Take a chance that someone would forget a critical detail. 

We needed a THIRD WAY.

It dawned on me that we could never include everyting.  No matter how much detail we crammed into the procedure, in the end, we would still have to rely on the training and habits of the hands-on workers.

The meaning for us was that, more important than filling our SOPs with minutiae, we match the skills of our technicians with the level of detail in our SOPs.  We found that rather than always adding another step to the SOP, we could approach from a different direction.  We enabled our employees to embed good quality habits into their everyday work.  The process allowed them to do this on their own with minimal assistance from management.

We created a strong quality culture by empowering the workers to develop quality habits within their everyday jobs.

Oh, Dr. Blickensdorf didn’t fire me.

How about you?  Do you have a similar story?  What has worked best for you?  Comment below.