Inherent Simplicity

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.  —- Ode On A Grecian Urn by John Keats

I have finished reading the book “The Choice” within 10 days, another perspective of TOC.  In this book, a term – Inherent Simplicity is introduced.  Reality though initially looks complicated is simple after thinking clearly.  But the problem is the choice by human – whether they keep on claiming it is sophisticated or counter-claim it as simple.  Of course, truth is beauty.  The ugly comes from our choice.

When the truth and the difficulty is floating to the surface, we need to recognize it before we start to tackle it.  Collaboration is imperative.  Paradoxically, blaming others usually take effect first.  Maybe it is hard to convince a power-having guy to understand that if the relationships are not harmonious, it is hard to get good collaboration and the chances of bringing an important opportunity to fruition will be severely reduced.  Also, “If we allow ourselves to reach the stage where we blame the other party, our emotions will start to blind us.  What is then the chance that we’ll devote the time and concentration needed to seriously look for the change that will foster harmony?  Nil.” (P.76, The Choice)

When WWL used to blame, I intended to alert him; however, when I was also one of the blamed, I had better remain silent and did some he wanted and did something I thought necessary.  The truth is I gave up alerting him as I believed he would not listen to me.  It is most simplified principles to know but seldom is people aware of it.  I hope I do.

An extract from “The Choice”

Below is an extract from “The Choice” (p.31) written by Eli:

“As a psychologist, I am well aware that people suffering from chronic problems (problems that they already gave up on the possibility of eliminating) develop protective mechanisms.  They simply repress these problems.

I’m also aware that people who use those protective mechanisms tend to lower their expectations about life.  Simply, since they hide the real problems from themselves, their energy is channeled to deal with the much less important things in their life.  So, in spite of their efforts, their reality doesn’t improve by much; no wonder that after a while they lower their expectations.

It’s interesting to me to see that the same thing happens not just with an individual but also with a group, in this case a company.  The managers do try to improve their company, but instead of applying all their considerable resources and brainpower to reduce the shortages and the surpluses, most improvement initiatives are channeled to what they allow themselves to see; they are aimed at cost reductions.”

What a great revelation of life!

I come to realize that FN is suffering from the above syndrome.  He must be the first one aware of the difficulty of turning around the campus while he did not know how to resolve it by himself.  Although he tried to hire more talents, his over-awareness of threat restricted recruiting of right candidates.  As a result, the hired were also innocent of the big problem but were diverting their effort to minor issues – more cost saving actions – freeze of headcount, doing less-risky project (but failed to create the model factory) and avoid any drastic capex, fast localization without resources support & etc; which in turn deepen the original big problem.  AKF, as pointed out KK, just pretended he was busy in thousands of projects & meetings without doing anything critical in the “model” factory.  WWL did the same thing – pushy, blaming the failure of mission impossible assigned to staff, focusing on ppt presentation and story-telling, let alone R who only focus on politics and its status quo.

Even the C-team is just tackling the “allocation” issue but not the over-capacity & excessive campuses issue because it is easier to fabricate the story, instead of dealing with the real problem.  It is a good realization of the above psychological syndrome.

A heuristic conversation ……

I have never seen such a smart recruiting agent like PH.  Though it is only a conversation of <1 hour, I got something important of leadership from him.  The following is part of our conversation (I am DL and I make some correction of words being used during the course of conversation):

PH:  What makes a good manager?
DL:   Empathy.

PH:  How do you deal with difficult person?
DL:  Before any action, the obligation of a manager is to understand who he is talking to.  Why is the subordinate difficult?  Is there anything happen in the past made him/her difficult?  By knowing it, we need to be empathetical towards him and then create the resonance with him.  Sort out the situational factors first before find out the solution.  All employees being able to survive for long time must have some edges.  We should use their strength but not the weakness.  I will put any issue with skill set to the last moment.  We can do something re-matching.

PH:  What makes an excellent manager?
DL:  The capability of dealing with loneliness.  An excellent manager should have something new while he will be struggling in his mind while nobody may understand the novelty.  As a result, he is alone.

…………………………….
PH:  I am not interviewing you.  I am helping you to perform well in interview.
……………………………

PH, many thanks to you.  Even I may not win the interview, I already get something valuable from you.  I never thought of the relationship of empathy & loneliness until we met.

Actually, I miss one point for excellent manager – he must possess the empathy so as to deal with loneliness.  A leader must, at least, have followers in order to qualify as a leader.  Without the sense of empathy, I don’t see any possibility of teamwork.  Sadly, it is commonly found that an organization has many lonely managers without empathy with their people.

Elementary and basics which really matter

In “Burnt Norton,” T.S. Eliot reminds us that:

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”

Life is twists and turns.  When one happens to go back to the starting point of its career, it is at the break of life twists.  It can be viewed as step down or step back; or it is destined. Whatever it is, it is a matter of fact.  From another point of view, it is lucky that there is a chance to be down or back or a chance to re-exploit the long-existing edge of an individual.

When looking back to the first few months of joining, I felt lucky that I have sophisticated knowledge of some basic skills. I lamented that my survival was based on some skills I accumulated 10 years ago – something fundamental.  I deployed my work and got some compromise from my co-workers.  Of course, it also led to some tease and disdain of just using some basic skill for doing the daily job.

Paradoxically, when the twists and turns start to take place, the basic skill set bring me another field of development – more training and more consulting opportunities, after 2 failure of attempts to 2 previous workplace.  I will get more time to consolidate so much things I learn in the recent years into something solid and applicable, which may in turn rescue me in any future career crisis.

During the re-exploitation process, I got more insight of the real world – necessary but not sufficient.  It is a choice of approach – sophisticated or simple; People is tools or assets which purely depends on what way the managers view it.

Sophisticated but simple?!

I start to read the 5th book of Theory of Constraints – The Choice.  I would like to do some copy & paste as follows:

“There is nothing wrong with people’s brainpower; there is something very wrong with people’s perception of reality.  The biggest obstacle is that people grasp reality as complex when actually it is surprisingly simple.”

“I was astonished to see that the attitude of most people is that the more sophisticated something is, the more respectable it is.  This ridiculous fascination with sophistication also causes people to altogether avoid using their brainpower.  You see, since complicated solutions never work, people tell themselves that they don’t know enough, that a lot of detailed knowledge is needed before one can even attempt to understand an environment.”

“The admiration of sophistication is totally wrong.  They key for thinking like a true scientist is the acceptance that any real life situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is actually, once understood, embarrassingly simple.  Moreover, if the situation is based on human interactions, you probably already have enough knowledge to begin with”

When an organization is sick, although there is a lot of diagnostics initially, the problem areas are simple.  Management direction is lacking and HR is not doing the right thing.  Many people are eager to deal with it but always complain there is no support – not sufficient empowerment, not sufficient HR support (tight control on headcount).  Is it very simple?  Yes.  Is it difficult to deal with?  No.  What is the difficulty?  The face of the management & HR.  What is the solution for an organization being run 20 years with no system?  Easy – more time to invest, more support & training on the people with injection of new people of different level, more respect.  Sophisticated initially but simple solution after all.

Journal of internal control seminar on Sep 2010

Today, I finish the 6th run of the internal control with Hon Wan in Hong Kong Productivity Council since 2006.  The focus has been moved from policy & procedure in 2006 to people & people care management.  We talk more about the human capital nurturing while any tangibles are only tools, organization culture and new mission of HR (construction of Ethical System in an organization, a little bit naive!).  There is only 12 enrollment.  Initially, I am upset with the limited enrollment.  However, I have to be professional and would like to treat it as another chance of practicing our advocates.  I am sure that I am diligent to the attendants. (write me some feedback if you happen to be the attendants.  I do need your commentary for persisting on this course).  I have brought something special to the ordinary minds while other internal control courses could not realize.  Hope you agree with me.

However, the limited enrollment is reality which I and Honwan need to deal with it.  Continue the future re-run?  Revise the course and give it a new name?  It seems that the latter is better.  I feel frustrated with the initial choice as the course has consumed much of my effort and I do have some emotional investment on it.  Discarding it, to certain extent, is a denial of my effort and myself.  Hold on!  What happen to myself?  Why do I have such thought?  I should understand that any knowledge or thinking must have its expiry date, no exception.  Who could judge the expiry date of the knowledge?  Customers.  Who should keep up with the market?  Suppliers (I am service suppliers).  Simple answer and no argument necessarily.

Frankly, am I really teaching internal control?  Probably yes.  But which part of internal control?  People and human nature.  What is my advocate?  People is the only asset in an organization while any kind of tangibles are just tools.  We talk about psychology which focus on mindset of individual.  We talk about sociology which focus on the interaction of people within organization.  These 2 focus is to drive the change of people towards organization goals, something like nurturing human capital.  Then why don’t we develop a product about Human Capital?  Great!  We can talk about the following:

1. Problems with people in organization
2. Problems due to people in organization
3. Human nature
4. Social Network & its usage
5. Trust & reciprocity
6. Theory of Constraint on collaboration from the people perspective
7. The way to trigger collaboration
8. Psychology – personality psychology, humanistic psychology, criminal psychology, psychoanalysis and social psychology
9. Sociology – power & interaction, socialization, sedimentation, acculturation, mindset mining
10. Exploration on Cultural study which I learn from anthropology
11. etc

Is the content rich?  Is there anything to add?  Is there anything we can improve to the bottom line of an organization?  I do need any kind of comment.  Please help.

Necessary but not sufficient!

I have finished the 4th book of Theory of Constraints last week – Necessary but not sufficient.  However, I did not write the blog entry for it until this week.  I need to digest it and link it to my working experience for concluding some idea so as to sediment to my mindset.  Now I got it when I am determined to make some move with bread-and-butter!

What is necessary but not sufficient?  In Eli’s book, he used the ERP system as the necessary condition for operation efficiency and effectiveness but not sufficient to accomplish this end.  Without the change of the existing rule of practice, any introduction of infrastructure would not negatively hit the bottom line.  ERP system can help reduce the lead time of decision making; however, if the target inventory week is not reduced (the existing rule of practice), there is no positive change of bottom line while only more harmful of effect due to more operating expenses.

If a company with an intention to drive some changes only allocate resources to have more senior executive, without proper resources for driving changes in the operational level, can we expect any change resulted from the whole business operation?  Probably not!  Even there is a mighty ERP system, if the company has been run in the traditional way for >20 years, only the directors cannot run the system.  What can drive the people to change?  Coercion? Motivation and resources support in operation level?  The latter of course.  Simple principles but not so many people accept and act on it.  If so unlucky that we we are in such situation as the led, what could we do?  Stay calm & follow or leave?  Your choice.  But the painstaking is we got blamed because necessary condition is expensively provided while sufficient conditions is politically ignored by somebody.  Life is twists and turns.  The lesson learnt is if we are in the position of authority exercising, yesterday bitter can help us act more empathetically and better solution can come out – think about more sufficient condition.

Something being done but not improved – Production Scheduling

I am an accountant, hope all readers still remember.  I have been working in factories for >15 years.  In a factory, 2 major issues are often puzzling the management – materials planning and production scheduling.  But are you aware that only improper planning of materials is complained.  Not much complain on production scheduling though there is a KPI on checking the down time.  It is not easy to blame people when you see that they are always working.  As an accountant, I never thought of challenging production.  I also take the view of ordinary people.  At most, I only provide assistance to my co-workers in production department on how to speed up the calculation of production schedule by making advanced use of Excel functions.

Not until the last training seminar of Excel in Aug am I aware that there is much room to improve in the techniques of production scheduling.  Besides, I got a call for hiring me as consultant for a factory on production scheduling which I did not reply yet owing to tight schedule recently.  Remember the vigorous reaction on the subject of production scheduling during the training seminar and urge from the training agent triggers me to exploit this subject.

Yes!  Some scenarios come to my mind suddenly:

1. I had worked in a number of factories.  Usually, the production schedule are done by somebody with low level computer skill production clerical staff.  No ERP, No computer program.  The IT never dare to touch it!
2. Production down time is only resulted from materials shortage and there is stack of WIP in production line as well as finished goods not to ship yet in warehouse.  Sales Department complain delayed order fulfillment.
3. I have ever seen the production plans in many production floor and it is only a plain Excel file.  Calculation is done by estimation
4. Even my current company, there is no systematic production plan – only a rough schedule
5. I worked in some US MNC, I never heard they use the ERP for production scheduling.

There are some issues to be think about production scheduling:

1. There are a sequence of production process in different work center.  1-piece flow is only applicable in assembly.  If there is pre-processed components, there are >1 1-piece flow production line
2. Some work centers are in sequential order, one after one but with different takt time
3. The final assembly may needs 2 pre-assembled components and other materials for final stage assembly (FSA), i.e. the said 2 pre-assembled components must be ready at the same for the FSA.
4. The ideal case is the Customer Service can confidently confirm customers about the delivery date after checking existing production/capacity scheduling when receiving a new order.  Or she can spot out what orders are affected by this jump-the-line order so as to make the right decision.

It is a big project!  But it is feasible.  I have completed the first stage – Single Production Line Scheduling.  If you are interested, you can download it from My PPT Materials.

Be honest to our weakness, people are watching and acting

On and on, I am giving advise on certain operation aspect of my friends business.  In Guangdong province, there are many million factories owned by private individual.  CLN is one of them. He is a typical “little” wealthy entrepreneur, early forties, smart, creative, work hard, play hard, self-centered & complacent with some success associated with some failure.  The business is prosperous even after the financial tsunami.  However, when I walked around the facility and overview the business operation, there are much room for improvement.  This is excellent because there is much room for improvement in bottom line.

To my astonishment, the major asset of the company is not appropriate treated when I look into the detail of the company operation.  The asset is often criticized as “dead dog” according to him when we talked personally – not sufficient efficiency, effectiveness, initiative, let alone creativity.  He is generous, at least, he offers me a generous remuneration on the consultancy.  But he cannot refrain from complaining that the idea is good but it takes time and he doubt the practicability because he is worried about the people capability on implementation.

His finance manager complained that it is difficult to hire people.  I ask why.  He said the company is willing to pay but the pay date is very late.  I ask why.  He said CLN use this mechanism to keep the people.  Ala, CLN’s weakness in managing people (the major asset) is the major hurdle but he is not aware.  He even said that he paid over the market price and he is willing to pay more if the people can substantively present good performance.  There is a fundamental question – pay first and performance follows or performance first and pay follows?

CLN is also impatient about the speed of improvement and complains me that it is too slow.  I, reactively, complains him that the factory has been run by him for >10 years.  The problems he created has solid footing.  Is he aware?  And he continues doing something de-motivating the people!  Luckily, we are close friends and I have rich experience.  He yields to me.  Keep patient then.

One may not be aware of his weakness but the people do and they will make the appropriate reaction – low efficiency, low effectiveness, no initiative and no creativity.

Journal of Excel Seminar on Aug 2010

This time, the seminar of Excel was held in Shenzhen.  I got 26 enrolments.  This is the 4th run within 8 months.  Although there are many changes with ERP systems in the market, Excel is immortal.  Its usage is not just on reporting, but also on planning & modeling.  Of course, I cannot make every attendants happy.  But I am confident that more than 90% is okay with the sophisticated use of some Excel functions I taught during the seminar.  For instance, the function of min & max, many people knows its meaning and simple usage.  When I talked about its usage on calculation of production capacity planning, all the sleepy souls wake up.  Try to read the following example and see if you have the same feeling:

Assume the weekly capacity is 900 (which “capacity” is defined as the range name)

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K
1		Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 8	Week 9	Week 10
2	Demand	700	800	700	600	1,100	500	900	850	500	1,100
3	Production	700	800	700	800	900	500	900	850	700	900
4

The formula of K3:    =min(K2, capacity)

The formula of J3:     =min(sum($K2:J2)-sum($K3:K3),capacity)

Copy the cell of J3 to the range of I3 to B3, you will get the result shown of row 3

Questions start to flood in when people came to realize the applicable usage of “min”.  To my surprise, even the training agent suggests there should be a separate training seminar on production capacity planning; of course, more detail.  His reasoning is many SME factories have shrunk their capacity and not eager to increase the capacity with more investment.  They are more concerned with the utilization of existing capacity.  But are their current internal calculation okay (or even they do not have the detail calculation)?  Thanks to the attendants & the agent, a new course will be produced.  Actually, it is consistent to my conviction – back to basic, go to the shop floor, all the operation problems are in the shop floor; capacity planning, material planning & production line scheduling are source of all major issues in factories.

Actually, I did the same work in the component factories and it is time to exploit and build the standard models.  Look forward to meeting my prospect users.

Remark: again, the attendants are also impressed with the usage of “indirect”!!