Business Management Tips from an Improvement Ninja

By Paul Naysmith

A collection of works by Quality Punk and Improvement Ninja Paul Naysmith to follow his first book "Business Management Tips from a Quality Punk". A series of humorous tales in Quality Business Management, with a few hints and tips to make the journey at work a little more easier and filled with fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312443259

Book preview

Business Management Tips from an Improvement Ninja

Business Management Tips from an Improvement Ninja

First Edition

Copyright © 2014 Paul Naysmith

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-44054-8

This work is licensed under the Creative Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/25/

or send a letter to:

Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA

http://www.lulu.com

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my ever patient, selfless and beautiful wife, Susan.

It is dedicated to my family in Scotland and wherever they are scattered somewhere in this space ship called Earth.

It is dedicated to all the true Quality Professionals that I have had the pleasure of meeting or connecting with. 

Preface

Little did I release what would result after publishing my first book Business Management Tips from a Quality Punk and the effect it would have since September 2013.

I have been fortunate that people from all parts of the world having read it would reach out to me and make a connection.  It certainly is humbling to consider that my petty and ill informed writing on the subject of Quality management can stimulate someone to the point of putting their words into an email or a message through social networking websites.

In addition and during this same period, I was also recognized by the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) and was awarded with their highest accolade becoming the youngest Fellow in their membership at the Institute.

Similar to my previous, this book is my collection of written work published in a variety of different magazines around the world, mainly from the wonderful Quality Digest magazine however with the addition of other works that are printed for the first time. 

I do not view this book as a how-to guide on quality, nor a text book on the topic, however a collection of my views and at times silly observations in the world of Quality Management. It may not flow or have a connecting story line from section to section, however I do hope that it will be easy to pick up to read or you find some of my hints and tips on business or management improvement in here.

I do like to call myself a Quality Punk and an Improvement Ninja.  I’ve never like the job titles that my employers have presented to me, and as I have a choice when it comes to describing myself when I write, I prefer these terms.  I do so purely for a reaction.  I find it stimulates the thought processes in individuals when I introduce myself as a Quality Punk or as an Improvement Ninja.  It allows me to start a conversation on quality, and importantly make a connection through a little humor. 

I very much enjoy making large scale improvements in the real world through stealth and intelligence.  I believe that this is the same approach that Ninjas would have in making a successful attack. Perhaps you too at the end of this book will have the Ninja like skills to make break through improvements in your business.

Paul Naysmith

Lafayette, Louisiana, USA.   August 2014

List of Abbreviations

3DThree Dimensional

ASAPAs Soon As Possible

ATMAutomatic Teller Machine

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BoKBody of Knowledge

CEOChief Executive Officer

CFCchlorofluorocarbon

CQIChartered Quality Institute

CQPChartered Quality Professional

CVCurriculum Vitae

DNADeoxyribo Nucleic Acid

FCQIFellow of the Chartered Quality Institute

GDPGross Domestic Product

ITInformation Technology

NASANorth American Space Administration

PDCAPlan Do Check Act

PINPersonal Identification Number

PRPublic Relations

QMSQuality Management System

UKUnited Kingdom

USAUnited States of America

VFXVisual Effects

Who Is the Customer of Your Document?

A quality manual serves no purpose if no one reads it

A recent call with an old colleague from Europe got me wondering about a question that few are conscious of: Who is the customer of your quality document? Oh boy, did we have an interesting discussion about quality systems.

My friend was developing and reinvigorating his employer’s quality system, and working with someone who clearly didn’t fully understand quality. Actually, I should qualify that last statement: This person isn’t someone who is unfamiliar with our discipline; he’s a consultant with a global background in implementing quality systems. However, during the course of our discussion, it started to dawn on both my friend and me that the consultant simply couldn’t see what was important: the customer.

So there I was, 5,000 miles from him in a little pop-up window in the corner of my iPad, attempting to help him out. He told me he’s frustrated with the sharply dressed consultant, an apparent expert in quality. My friend’s pixilated brow furrowed as he explained that the consultant was speaking before a room full of senior executives, letting his mouth dig a big hole for himself, and making a mockery of quality professionals around the world.

I wanted to help, I really did, said my friend, but his mouth continued to run away from him, and it’s only getting worse. All this drama for something as simple as defining the purpose of a quality management system (QMS) manual. Apparently it’s a real monster, a weighty 100 pages in girth, written in very difficult-to-interpret language, and created by this quality consultant.

The irony didn’t escape me that I was acting as a consultant to my friend, attempting to provide a listening ear and perhaps some advice about how to deal with another consultant.

Before attending the meeting with executives to listen to the overpaid know-it-all, my friend was asked to review the quality manual. He did; it took him two days to digest, and he still didn’t understand it. How could this be? If my friend, a contemporary in quality and a skillful veteran of reading countless quality documents, found it difficult to get through, how on this green earth could he expect anyone else in his business to understand it, let alone have faith in it?

I have a simplistic—well, sometimes too simplistic—view of business. Yes, I know companies are complex and have huge interdependencies, but why do we have to make things more difficult than they need to be? In my experience, if something like a documented procedure is too challenging, it results in a very predictable and typical outcome: Everyone ignores it and does their own thing. In business and particularly with quality issues, achieving simplicity adds more value