by Gene Kim
The deliveryman stands up and looks at me, smiling. “Yeah, I can see why. I’m really enjoying these doughnuts. I’ve never had anything like them before. I’ve probably eaten five since I’ve been here. Not great for the low-carb diet I’m on, though…”
Holding out his hand, he says, “I’m Erik.”
Holy crap.
I look down. In one hand I have a cup of coffee, and in the other hand I’m holding an overflowing plate.
“Oh, jeez,” I say hurriedly. I put everything on the table behind me, turning around again to shake his hand. “Good to meet you. I’m Bill—Bill Palmer.”
I look him over again. He has a mustache, is around six feet tall and a bit overweight, and has long graying hair that touches his shoulders. When standing, he looks even more like someone from a delivery company than a potential board member, let alone some “technology hotshot.”
Taking another look at him, I correct myself—I’m pretty sure a delivery person would have less-wrinkled clothes.
“No worries,” he says cheerily, grabbing another doughnut from the tray and gesturing toward the table. “Have a seat. I was hoping to talk with each of the it leaders while I was in town. Of course, I had to talk with Steve and—umm—what’s your cfo’s name? Darren? Dale? Whatever—they seemed like nice enough fellows. Maybe a little blind, but…”
He gestures dismissively. “I talked with your Development guy, too. Umm, Cary? Calvin? And, I’ll be talking with your Security guy next, Jimmy, and your Retailing person, Sylvia.”
I try to hide my pained expression as he’s managed to mangle everyone’s name.
“I see… And what have your impressions been so far?” I ask carefully.
He stops chewing and brushes some crumbs off his mustache, pausing to think. “It looks like you’re in a world of hurt. it Operations seems to have lodged itself in every major flow of work, including the top company project. It has all the executives hopping mad, and they’re turning the screws on your Development guy to do whatever it takes to get it into production.”
He looks me in the eye. “You’re having chronic it availability issues, causing company executives to be splashed on the front-page news. And now, Audit is hot on your tail, meaning more possible front-page news, and maybe even an adverse footnote on the quarterly financial statement. And anyone who knows anything about Phoenix knows that there’s a lot more bad news to come on that front…” Ha! Better clear your calendar for when that one lands…”
As he’s talking, I feel my face flush red, whether in anger or embarrassment I’m not sure.
“Things don’t look so good for you, pal,” he says. “At least not to a prospective board member, who’s supposed to oversee and assess your performance.”
I purse my lips, resisting the urge to say something that sounds defensive. I say neutrally, “Steve asked me to take this job three days ago. Even though I kept saying no, he eventually convinced me to accept the position. There’ve sure been a lot of surprises…”
He looks at me for a moment, and then guffaws. “Yeah, I’ll bet!” he says, disarmingly. “Ha-ha! Surprises. So, what’s your game plan for righting the ship?”
I look up for a moment, trying to figure out how to describe the few corrective actions I’ve put in place after this week. I reply, “Honestly, I’m still trying to get some situational awareness. Mostly, I’m being whiplashed from one emergency to another. I do know that we need more rigor and discipline in how we work. I’m trying to figure out what processes we rely on to get work done around here. Based on what I’ve seen, I know we need to improve them so we stop shooting ourselves in the foot.”
I think for a moment. “That’s just to get us out of firefighting mode. I’m still trying to figure out how to resource an audit remediation project that just fell out of the sky. Based on what I’ve seen, we’re seriously behind on our commitments. We’re obviously going to need more people or get a lot more efficient to get all our committed work done.”
Erik frowns. “‘Rigor and discipline,’ huh? I’m guessing you were a non-commissioned officer in the military. An e-6. No, you’re too young. An e-5, right?”
I blink in surprise. “That’s right. e-5, US Marine Corp. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” he says glibly. “For one thing, you sure don’t look like a chemical engineer or an auditor.”
“What?” I ask.
“You’re right that you can’t achieve the strategic until you’ve mastered the tactical,” he says, ignoring my question. “But what worked for you in the Marines will never work here, considering how they run this circus. Instead of one general in your chain of command, you’ve got ten generals calling the shots here, and all of them have a direct line to each and every private in your company.“
I say slowly, “Wait. You’re saying rigor and discipline don’t matter?”
“Of course they matter,” he says sternly. “But you have a much bigger problem, and it has nothing to do with your argle-bargle of ‘efficiencies’ and ‘process.’ Your problem right now is that you obviously don’t actually know what ‘work’ is.”
I stare at him.
Who is this buffoon? For a moment, I wonder whether I can assign Wes or Patty to deal with this guy, but Steve obviously wanted me to handle this personally.
“I know what work is,” I say slowly. “We do it every day. If we can’t keep the lights on and finish the work that the business requires, I’m out of a job.”
“What then, exactly, is your definition of ‘work?’” he asks, with a genuinely curious expression on his face.
“Well, I can tell you that Steve has stated over and over to me in no uncertain terms that we need to get Phoenix out the door. That qualifies as work in my mind.”
He looks up, appearing to have a conversation with himself. “Yes, that’s certainly one type of work. But you’re still missing the three other types of work that it Operations is responsible for. To me, that’s nowhere near the level of understanding of work you need in order to fix your problems around project deliverables, outages, and compliance.”
He stands up. “Grab your stuff. We’re going for a ride.”
Confused and annoyed, I look at my watch. It’s 4:17 p.m. I have too much to do to waste much more time with this guy.
Then he’s gone. I look out in the hallway, but he’s not there, either. I look at Stacy questioningly, and she points toward the elevators. I run to catch up with him.
He’s walked into an elevator that just opened. When he turns around, he holds the door open for me. “You probably don’t even see when work is committed to your organization. And if you can’t see it, you can’t manage it—let alone organize it, sequence it, and have any assurance that your resources can complete it.”
I frown, recalling my last meeting with Wes and Patty when they struggled to come up with the list of all our commitments to the organization. I say, “What is this? Some kind of intelligence test?”
“Yes, you could say that,” he replies. “But don’t worry. It’s not just you. Steve has to pass his intelligence test, too. And for that matter, Dick, as well.”
I follow him to his blue subcompact rental car and we drive five minutes to mrp-8, one of our manufacturing plants. It’s enormous, probably four times bigger than my building, but this one is in immaculate condition, with some obvious recent renovations and add-ons.
A security guard in her late fifties greets us, “Good afternoon, Dr. Reid. How nice to see you! How are you doing? It’s been a long time.”
Erik shakes her hand warmly, replying with a wink, “Great seeing you again, Dorothy. We’re just here to get a birds-eye view of the plant floor. Can we still get on the catwalk?”
She replies with a flirtatious smile, “It’s closed to most people, but for you, I think we can make an exception.”
I look at Erik suspiciously. He supposedly couldn’t get anyone’s name right, and yet he apparently remembers the name of some security guard fr
om years past. And no one ever mentioned anything about a Dr. Reid.
After climbing five flights of stairs, we’re standing on a catwalk that overlooks the entire plant floor, looking like it goes on for at least two city blocks in every direction.
“Look down there,” he says. “You can see loading docks on each side of the building. Raw materials are brought in on this side, and the finished goods leave out the other. Orders come off that printer down there. If you stand here long enough, you can actually see all the wip, that’s ‘work in process’ or ‘inventory’ for plant newbies, make its way toward the other side of the plant floor, where it’s shipped to customers as finished goods.”
“For decades at this plant,” he continues, “there were piles of inventory everywhere. In many places, it was piled as high as you could stack them using those big forklifts over there. On some days, you couldn’t even see the other side of the building. In hindsight, we now know that wip is one of the root causes for chronic due-date problems, quality issues, and expediters having to rejuggle priorities every day. It’s amazing that this business didn’t go under as a result.”
He gestures broadly with both arms outstretched, “In the 1980s, this plant was the beneficiary of three incredible scientifically-grounded management movements. You’ve probably heard of them: the Theory of Constraints, Lean production or the Toyota Production System, and Total Quality Management. Although each movement started in different places, they all agree on one thing: wip is the silent killer. Therefore, one of the most critical mechanisms in the management of any plant is job and materials release. Without it, you can’t control wip.”
He points at a desk near the loading docks closest to us. “See that desk over there?”
I nod but also look pointedly at my watch: 4:45 p.m.
Oblivious to my impatience, he says, “Let me tell you a story. Decades ago, there used to be a guy named Mark. He was the supervisor for that first work center, right down there by that desk. Those racks hold the folders for incoming jobs. Isn’t it amazing that those folders look exactly like they did back then?
“At any rate,” he continues, “one day I see Mark picking up a folder to start some job. I ask him, ‘On what basis did you choose that job, versus any of the others?’
“And you know what he tells me? He says, ‘It’s a job that requires this work center first. And we’re open.’”
He shakes his head incredulously. “I could hardly believe it. I tell him, ‘Your station is just the first of twenty operations. You don’t factor the availability of any of the other nineteen stations in your decision?’ And he replies, ‘Well, no. This is the way I’ve done it for twenty years.’”
He laughs. “I suppose to him, it sounds like a reasonable way to pick which job to perform. He’s keeping the first station busy, and it’s similar to first-in, first-out scheduling. But of course, now everyone knows that you don’t release work based on the availability of the first station. Instead, it should be based on the tempo of how quickly the bottleneck resource can consume the work.”
I just stare at him blankly.
He continues, “Because of how Mark was releasing work, inventory kept piling up in front of our bottleneck, and jobs were never finished on time. Every day was an emergency. For years, we were awarded Best Customer of the Year from our air freight shipment company, because we were overnighting thousands of pounds of finished goods to angry customers almost every week.”
He pauses and then says emphatically, “Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, who created the Theory of Constraints, showed us how any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion. Astonishing, but true! Any improvement made after the bottleneck is useless, because it will always remain starved, waiting for work from the bottleneck. And any improvements made before the bottleneck merely results in more inventory piling up at the bottleneck.”
He continues, “In our case, our bottleneck was a heat treat oven, just like in Goldratt’s novel, The Goal. We also had paint-curing booths that later became constraints, too. By the time we froze the release of all new jobs, you couldn’t even see the bottleneck work centers because they were surrounded by huge piles of inventory. Even from up here!”
Despite myself, I laugh with him. It’s obvious in hindsight, but I can imagine that to Mark, it was anything but obvious. “Look, thanks for the history lesson. But I learned most of this already in business school. I don’t see how this could possibly be relevant to managing it Operations. it is not like running a factory.”
“Oh, really?” he turns to me, frowning intensely. “Let me guess. You’re going to say that it is pure knowledge work, and so therefore, all your work is like that of an artisan. Therefore, there’s no place for standardization, documented work procedures, and all that high-falutin’ ‘rigor and discipline’ that you claimed to hold so near and dear.”
I frown. I can’t figure out if he’s trying to convince me of something I already believe or trying to get me to accept an absurd conclusion.
“If you think it Operations has nothing to learn from Plant Operations, you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” he says. “Your job as vp of it Operations is to ensure the fast, predictable, and uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business while minimizing the impact and disruption of unplanned work, so you can provide stable, predictable, and secure it service.”
Listening to him, I wonder if I should be writing this down.
He studies me closely. “Well, I can see that we’re not ready to have this discussion. Until you gain a better understanding of what work is, any conversation we have about controlling work will be totally lost on you. It would be like talking about acrobatics to someone who doesn’t believe in gravity yet.
“Rest assured, though,” he says, pointing at the job release desk, “in order to get to where you want to go, eventually you will need to figure out what your equivalent to that desk is. You must figure out how to control the release of work into it Operations and, more importantly, ensure that your most constrained resources are doing only the work that serves the goal of the entire system, not just one silo.
“Once you figure this out, young Bill, you will be well on your way toward understanding the Three Ways,” he says. “The First Way helps us understand how to create fast flow of work as it moves from Development into it Operations, because that’s what’s between the business and the customer. The Second Way shows us how to shorten and amplify feedback loops, so we can fix quality at the source and avoid rework. And the Third Way shows us how to create a culture that simultaneously fosters experimentation, learning from failure, and understanding that repetition and practice are the prerequisites to mastery.”
Although he now sounds oddly like Master Shifu in the movie Kung Fu Panda, I’m listening intently. The need for rigor and discipline, and constantly practicing and honing our skills are important lessons I’ve kept with me from the Marines. The lives of my men depended upon it there, and my job depends upon it here. Creating that predictability is what I’m most intent on instilling in my it Operations group.
Erik hands me a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Remember, there are four types of work. You’ve named business project work as one. When you have the other three, give me a call.”
He takes out his car keys from his pocket and asks, “Do you want a lift back to your office?”
It’s 5:10 p.m. when I finally get back to my cubicle. I log back into my clunker laptop to reply to e-mails. But I can’t concentrate.
The last hour with Erik was like being in a strange parallel universe. Or like being forced to watch a psychedelic movie made in a drug-induced haze.
What did Erik mean that there were four categories of work?
I think back to my meeting with Wes and Patty. Wes mentioned we have a separate list for it infrastructure projects and business projects. Are infrastructure projects another type of work?
As I ponder this, an e-mail notification window pops up
on my screen, indicating another e-mail expecting a response.
Are e-mails another type of work?
I doubt it. At the plant, Erik gestured to the entire plant floor. When he mentioned “work,” he seemed to mean it at an organizational level not at the level of an individual contributor or manager.
I think about it some more. Then I shake my head and quickly e-mail Steve, letting them know that I connected with Erik. I’m certain that a decade from now, I’ll be telling my friends about my brief encounter with the raving madman on the manufacturing plant floor.
I need to get moving. Paige will be seriously annoyed if I come home late on a Friday night. When I undock the laptop from the docking station, an incredibly loud alarm pierces the air.
“Holy crap!” I shout, realizing that the sound is coming from my laptop. Fumbling, I try to turn down the volume, to power it off, but nothing makes the sound stop.
Frantically, I flip the laptop over and try to take the battery out, but the tape keeps it attached. I grab a letter opener, finally managing to slash the tape and get the battery out.
The laptop finally goes silent.
CHAPTER 8
• Monday, September 8
I spent all weekend working on a PowerPoint slide deck for my meeting with Steve this morning. Despite all that work, I wish I could have done more to prepare.
I force myself to relax, visualizing having a healthy and vigorous business discussion with him, walking out with everything I ask for. I keep reminding myself how important this is for the company and my organization. Everyone worked so hard to prepare for this and now success or failure depends on how well I can communicate it all to Steve.
Stacy smiles when I arrive and says warmly, “Go on in. I’m sorry we could only get you thirty minutes.”
I stop just inside the door, where Sarah is sitting with Steve at the table. Sarah is telling Steve, “—you did an amazing job telling the story of where we’re going. These were some of the most skeptical analysts around, but they clearly got excited. You’ve also given them a reason for us to talk again when Phoenix goes live. They also seem pretty impressed with the Phoenix roadmap.”