I didn’t think my family would ever become a case study for how not to be process oriented. But everyday life provides examples that translate well into stories about how not to run a process. This morning I was feeling like I was on candid camera. Honestly, nothing could go wrong at the same time as it has for me in the last three days.
On Tuesday it was finally cold enough for us to want to turn our heat on. As you may or may not have read in a prior post we own a very old home, so a good week of chilly weather will make our house less than comfortable – 64 degrees inside, in this case. Alas, there was no heat!!! I called the company who had installed a new Tekmar Thermal Temperature Reset on my furnace. On a side note, this is a cool device. Basically, a forced hot water furnace is dumb to the temperature outside, so in the middle of the summer it will heat itself in preparation for the off chance that you’ll need heat. The temperature reset will force the furnace to stay off if the temperature is above 64 degrees outside and circulate cooler than maximum temperature water unless it gets cold enough outside. The idea is that the furnace doesn’t work as hard and you save money. I’ll probably have a report out on the data sometime in the future, but I digress.
The company who attempted to do the repair (and who shall remain nameless) came on Tuesday to look at the problem. The technician tells me “I think the Tekmar controller is broken, but I’m not sure. We don’t keep the part on the truck though, so we’ll have to come back tomorrow to replace it.” I’m thinking “OK, but you knew what work you just did to install it, so wouldn’t you come prepared?” Anyway, a different technician came back Wednesday. After a couple hours fiddling around in the basement he comes up and tells me he’s confirmed the problem is the controller, but he too doesn’t have the part on the truck. This is just getting silly!
I call the company to complain about the service quality. They tell me that they’ll have someone out there Thursday afternoon. I reject their offer, since I won’t be home Thursday afternoon and tell them this is getting ridiculous and that they need to be there Thursday morning. They tell me that they’re fully booked on Thursday morning, to which I reply (essentially) “that’s not my problem, you’ve been here two days already and not solved it, and I’ve been more than accommodating to hang around the house while you fail to fix the problem with the work you did.” The very nice office worker (yes, she truly was understanding and nice) says she’ll call me back. When she calls me back, she tells me someone will be there at 10:30am. I remind her to send the parts they’ll need for the repair. I was half joking, half serious.
Thursday morning comes and I’m sitting in my office when the furnace guy shows up. It’s a new technician, who introduces himself as Joe. He tells me he’s the company’s ‘troubleshooter.’ I ponder who they sent before for a moment. If it wasn’t the guy who could troubleshoot the problem, who exactly was it that they were sending? Joe is down there for approximately 10 minutes when he comes up from the basement and tells me that it’s a simple wiring problem. He doesn’t fix the problems though, so the technician from day two shows back up to actually redo the wiring they did incorrectly in the first place.
While the wiring is being redone, I get a frantic call from my wife. She’s locked herself out of the house she nanny’s at. Fortunately, the kids were outside with her. This would be an honest mistake had she not done it before. She says she’s tried to call the mother, but can’t reach her and was wondering if I could look up the phone number of the father. Fortunately, the father runs his own business so his number is well advertised and reaching him is easy.
This, yes I know you were waiting for it, is where my two stories collide. The furnace company and my wife had both made the mistake they made before. The company shows up unprepared to deal with the issue they have; my wife locks herself out even though she knows that it’s a possibility it could happen.
Most people don’t obsess about their mistakes. This is unlike me who will unmercifully flog myself over anything stupid I do. Sure, I come off as a having a bit of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but one thing is for sure about me, I NEVER make a mistake twice. I’m obsessed with my own measurement of “personal quality” – not making mistakes I think are dumb. That includes being obsessed about using Quicken to track my finances (on the more normal side of the spectrum) and having to check my alarm clock setting at least 3 times before going to sleep (on the more crazy side).
And that may be what makes me a good process person. I’m obsessed with quality - my quality, everyone’s quality. Obsessed I tell you, and I mean it. When I do an analysis of a process I’ll hack away at it trying to prove myself wrong. It’s not that I want to be wrong, but I’ve been wrong before, so I have to remove all self doubt that I might be wrong so that nobody ever catches me being wrong. It’s also where I consider my OCD to be at a healthy level. I still get lots done, but I reach a defensible level of confidence and can let it go. If I couldn’t let it go I’d never deliver anything.
The furnace company and my wife are at the other end of the spectrum. Make a mistake, that’s OK. Make it again, that’s OK too. For my wife, it was pure frustration that she had to suffer through. For the furnace company, it cost them two days of labor by being unprepared. Two unbillable days of labor – they couldn’t charge me a penny because they were under their warranty of their work.
So it’s your choice: don’t sweat the mistakes ever OR become a little obsessive about your personal quality. I’m thinking if everyone was obsessed with getting it right, and embarrassed to be caught being wrong, a lot of the quality issue would take care of itself. I’m encouraging you to be a little obsessive.
September 29, 2008 at 11:41 am |
An entertaining post with a good point. You unintentionally demonstrated two other concepts that perhaps you weren’t aware of: dichotomous thinking and overgeneralization.
Your last paragraph beautifully illustrates dichotmous thinking. You present two extremes as the only possible options. Either NEVER sweat the mistakes OR become obsessive about them. Have you considered the possibility that others may function optimally on some point on the contunuum between these two extremes? Which leads to the next point…
You present your obsession with personal quality as a universal prescription for process excellence. You’re assuming that because something works for you, then it must work for everyone else as well. In reality, some people experience anxiety when they try to adopt this level of obsession and end up making MORE mistakes then they would otherwise.
Even if you HAVE somehow discovered the optimal level of obsession for process excellence, you’ll have to accept that most people have higher priorities. Checking my alarm clock three times a night might increase the effectiveness of my alarm (maybe), but is it worth the extra effort? If our existence is conceptualized as a process, the relevant bottom line metric on that process is quality of life. The (very) marginal improvement in alarm reliability is more than offset by the reduced quality of life I experience as a result of checking the clock three times a night.
That might not be true for you, and that’s my point. Human beings are not a standardized input. The level of variability is so high and poorly controlled that emotional prescriptions (i.e. “be a little obsessive”) are probably not going to be effective.
September 29, 2008 at 4:28 pm |
Wow, thanks for the comment! Yes, true, I did present two ends of the spectrum as an option, though my one end is “a little obsessed” and I should stress “a little.” The far end of the spectrum would be full blown obsession, which of course, results in suboptimal behavior as well. Fortunately, my obsessiveness doesn’t interfere with knowing when the costs outweigh the benefits, and I think that’s the goal.
Rereading my post, I see that I didn’t tie back the original story that got me started in the first place – the two instances I remarked on were on the other end of the spectrum. Neither the furnace company nor my wife were obsessed enough with not making the same mistake, and so repeated it. As a result, they both incurred fairly significant costs that could have been avoided at a very low cost.
As for people who have higher proirities than being great at what they’re paid to do… I hope they don’t work for me.
But, then again, that truth ties in with my belief system for exactly why processes need to be error proofed, because people DO have other priorities.
Thanks again for the great comment!!!
September 30, 2008 at 11:27 am |
Thanks for the clarification–I think we’re on the same wavelength now. It seems you’re using the word “obsession” in an informal way to connote conscientiousness. I was interpreting the word based on my own experience, in which obsession implies an unhealthy or irrational fixation.
As for your last point, I can only say that I routinely choose to work with people who don’t make work their top priority because many of them still outperform the more obsessive folks of average ability. (In thea area of process improvement, for example, your 70% effort is probably more valuable than my 100% effort.)
September 30, 2008 at 12:46 pm |
Yes, correct. My personal obsessiveness is about reducing mistakes. Obviously ‘a little obsessive’ is a bit of an oxymoron, since obsession, as you pointed out, is an unhealthy behavior.
You bring up an interesting point about workoholics (obsessive folks of perhaps average ability), of which I’ve had a few working for me in the past. It’d be a great blog topic, so keep an eye out for it in the future!
September 30, 2008 at 1:12 pm |
[...] need not apply In my prior post, I related a story about how both my wife and the service company failed to be conscientious enough [...]
October 1, 2008 at 1:02 pm |
[...] The Problem With Not Being Obsessive About Mistakes at Process Rants. I’m thinking if everyone was obsessed with getting it right, and embarrassed to be caught being wrong, a lot of the quality issue would take care of itself. [...]