Archive → December, 2010
Productivity – The Next Level is about People
Most everyone expects a continuous stream of tool upgrades in order to produce ongoing productivity improvements for new products. A question I need to ask is why isn’t there that same expectation on advancing the techniques utilized for new product project delivery? Productivity essentially equates to tools in the minds of most, as if there are no other efficiency knobs to tweak. Quite to the contrary, I visualize multiple underutilized productivity knobs.
Some Examples of Under Utilized Productivity Improvements
- Modernizing project management
- Leadership development
- Requirements strategies to reduce rework
- Organizational development – Is the classic matrix approach really working?
- Lean approaches & continuous improvement
- Reuse promotion
- …
The tools and tool flows are definitely not the only productivity solution. I theorize a reason for this technical productivity focus is that the non-tool solutions are people related, and the engineering world just does not do well with such emotional creatures. The communication, conflict resolution and consensus reaching abilities are out of the comfort zone of many. Are we at the point in engineering where we no longer have people, only tools and machines?
Another observation that substantiates people avoidance is significant use of management and conference rooms to fix operational problems that the team is dealing with; I call these conference room solutions. This high level approach to New Product Execution (NPE) issues is similar to diagnosing a circuit problem with purely circumstantial information, an approach most would see fault with. Circuit solutions typically involve ever deepening analysis until the root cause is identified and a solution is “verified”. Why would that not be the case for operational issues also? The circuit solution is technical while the operational issue must be solved through people interaction, an area where engineering skills are not highly honed.
When was the last time you read an article in a semiconductor trade publication where the topic was related to managing people and/or projects? It’s a subject that has limited demand; it’s just not sexy enough. We are engineers and our people management skills leave a lot to be desired. It’s time to pull our heads out of the sand and face this reality.
NPE is unsatisfactory for most organizations today and has been that way for quite some time. Maybe it is time to better address the people component of project delivery. Get away from the monitors, PowerPoint and conference rooms. Talk to the people, better develop people skills and look at better mechanisms for managing people and projects. If we expect to really make a difference in execution it’s time for change, and that change must involve better managing the people component of new products; we must get personal!