Structure – The key to almost everything

“Why is structure so important?”

In my attempt to try to find relationships and consistent concepts that apply across many areas of life and quality I found myself analyzing my fitness program that I am doing with some friends currently.

Approximately 6 weeks ago, three friends and I decided to go through a cycle of a very popular home exercise (DVD based) program by Tony Horton. After six weeks into the program all four of us are getting the results that we intended. I started to analyze the program, our motivations, etc… to determine why that was. As other quality professionals well know, developing and implementing a new quality initiative, quality process or even a quality system may not always take us where we planned. I started to analyze the approach of this particular exercise program to look for clues. Here is what I came up with:

1) Clear Goal – There is a defined goal and a measurement of success. In the case of the exercise program, my objective was to reduce my body fat percentage, waist circumference and lose a little bit of weight.
2) Starting measurement (base line) – We all took specific measures prior to starting so that we were able to determine if what we were doing was effective. This is equally applicable in quality and in business as it relates to improvement projects or initiatives.
3) A strong enough purpose or “why” – As a motivational speaker once said, with a strong enough “why” the how becomes easy. In this case my “why” was to improve my health, which is a very strong motivator for me personally. I want to live a very long time. As managers we have to determine the “why” for any initiative that we are looking to implement.
4) A clearly defined process – In the case of the exercise program every day in the 90 day program is clearly defined as to which body parts, how many repetitions, how many sets, which days you have a rest day, cardio, stretching, etc… As a matter of fact, there is even a daily eating guide.
5) Removal of the “hassles” or hurdles – Our group set a specific time every day that we met for our exercise session which took the guessing out of it, and allowed us to make a long term schedule that our sessions fit into. Because we were working out at a friend’s house, we did not have to worry about gym hours or crowds either.
6) Ongoing measurement of the process – We took weekly (and even more frequent) measurements of our measures on some weeks. This allowed us to take action if we needed to quickly. This also reinforces the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle as well.
7) Correction – If we were not getting the results that we planned and measured weekly, we modified our approach. This took the form of more cardio, cutting back on certain foods, or amounts of foods. This is also crucial in our jobs/ roles as quality professionals. This reinforces why measuring our projects, processes, etc… is so important.
8) Reinforce the program/ objective – This is very important in any initiative, not just exercise programs. We used social media messages, posts, etc… to continuously talk about what we were doing, share interesting information, video clips, etc… related to the goal and process. This can also be accomplished in our quality roles by spending time out in the work areas, talking to the employees as to how their jobs are going, results of customer feedback (good and bad), posting, scorecards, etc… That which gets talked about and measured gets done.
9) Make it a habit/ standardize it – This is challenging in exercise programs, health and in improvements in general. It is easy to back slide into what we were doing before. Regarding the fitness program, we already have our next 2 programs scheduled. You have to make health and quality a permanent process. In the manufacturing/ quality world this can take the form of audits (LPAs), internal audits, error-proofing, mistake-proofing, 5S, control plans, procedures, etc…

As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, there are many related areas in life and being a quality professional I am always looking to bridge the two. This area just reinforces this concept.

Here is to improvement.
Mark