Chapter 6

Insightful Use of Existing Tools

“One important reason that development programs fail is a lack of holistic understanding (by managers)…As well as having their own areas of expertise, the best managers also understand the big picture. They know how the different areas link with each other. They know how to manage the whole…”

—Kari Tuominen¹

Going beyond continuous improvement does not necessarily involve the use of new tools. It does require using familiar tools with insight. Organizations that have developed broad mission and vision statements that are constantly reviewed and updated are better prepared to utilize familiar tools in insightful ways to more effectively respond to changes in the environment and technological advances than their competitors.

In this chapter we provide a discussion of the insightful use of three commonly used tools: technological forecasting, the house of quality, and benchmarking. This discussion is designed to illustrate the differences between the common use and the insightful use of these tools. We leave it to the reader to apply these concepts to other commonly used quality tools.

The chapter begins with a discussion of the insightful use of three approaches to technological forecasting. Insightful organizations recognize that the rapid pace of technological change poses challenges for traditional time series forecasting methods. They utilize information gathered from external constituents and experts to produce a variety of scenarios for the future. We follow with a discussion of the insightful use of the house of quality to use customer input to help develop breakthrough improvements. Insightful organizations must go beyond accepting ­customer supplied requirements at face value. The insightful use of benchmarking is a way to make radical improvements in your organization in record time by learning how other organizations, often quite different from your own, have achieved best-in-class performance levels. Finally, none of the information from forecasts, customers, and from best-in-class benchmark targets will make any difference unless it sparks changes in your organization. So, the last discussion in this chapter is about managing change.

An Insightful Approach to Technological Forecasting

Strategic planning begins with forecasts of what is likely to happen in the future—often in terms of general economic conditions and demand for the organization’s products and services. From these forecasts, the discussion often shifts to how the organization can shape or at least react to what the forecasts predict. Strategic technological planning also begins with a forecast, but in this case it is a forecast of technological change. It is important to be able to predict what is likely to occur in technologies upon which the organization’s current business is based as well as technologies upon which new products and services can be developed.

The following section discusses three approaches to technological forecasting. Because each has strengths and weaknesses, it is recommended that a combination of all three be used to increase the accuracy of the forecasts. Decisions based on accurate forecasts are more likely to result in significant improvements.

Time Series Forecasting

Time series forecasting techniques include linear trend, moving average, exponential smoothing, linear regression, and decomposition models. These traditional time series forecasting techniques have a role in technological forecasting but they are limited by the assumption that the drivers of past fluctuations in the parameter being forecast will continue to drive future fluctuations in the same way. They are good for relatively ­short-term forecasts within the existing paradigm. They are not effective at forecasting radical changes and they will lag significant changes in trends.

One of the most famous technological forecasts is known as Moore’s Law. In 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore forecast that the number of transistors on a printed circuit would double each two years until at least 1975.² He based his forecast on an analysis of data collected from 1958 through 1965; thus it was a time series forecast. He suggested in his original paper that at some point his forecast would fail because of cost and heat problems among other factors.

As Figure 6.1 shows, Moore’s forecast has been very accurate over a much longer period than he expected. In this graph, the vertical axis uses a logarithmic scale to transform the forecast into a linear model. While this model may be extrapolated indefinitely into the future, in 2012 researchers reported creating a transistor using a single phosphorous atom. According to the research team, this represents the physical limit of Moore’s law which may render further extrapolation irrelevant.³

Figure 6.1. Moore’s law time series forecast extrapolated to 2019.

While this time series forecast model has held up for more than 40 years beyond Moore’s prediction, it might be dangerous to continue to utilize this model into future years. For technologies with steep S-curves and products with short life cycles, the insightful approach to forecasting recognizes that time series models, while useful in the short term, would be poor choices for medium- to long-term technological forecasting. Time series forecasting methods were totally inadequate to forecast the future state of the slide rule technology discussed in Chapter 2 (Figure 2.6) and may have contributed to that industry’s demise.

External Environmental Scanning

In the section on strategic quality management we discussed SWOT analysis where an organization scans its internal and external environments. An insightful organization understands that this is a very important activity that firms should engage in continuously, not just once a year in conjunction with an annual review of the strategic plan.

Insightful organizations must also take a very broad view of their external environment. The point is not to limit the scanning to just the organizations’ immediate task environment, but to be keenly aware of relevant changes in the entire general environment. Specific responsibility for conducting these continuous scans should be assigned within every organization. In order to scan the general environment those responsible should read widely, interact with a highly diverse group of experts with expertise in a variety of disciplines, and attend conferences outside the general discipline of the organization including conferences such as TED, the nonprofit responsible for Ideas Worth Spreading.⁴ In short, they are assigned to learn everything they can about future trends in as many technologies as possible. At Laing O’Rourke, Britain’s largest privately owned construction firm, executive Dheeraj Bhardwaj is specifically assigned to establishing and maintaining scholarly connections and staying up to date on current research that might affect the firm.⁵ It is also useful to maintain a large and diverse corporate library containing a wide variety of publications available to all employees. The library should include an electronic database of e-publications. Sometimes employees not formally assigned to scan the environment will develop useful insight into new technological advances which may impact the organization. Procedures must be in place to allow the organization to be aware of these insights.

Insightful organizations realize that supply chain partners and customers should not be neglected when conducting the external environmental scans. These sources can be invaluable in forecasting future technological advances. No one organization can effectively examine one hundred percent of its technological environment. Suppliers and customers often will have valuable insight into some aspects of the environment that your organization does not. In addition, suppliers may be actively developing new technological advances that your organization can benefit from by learning of them first. Customers may be aware of developments that may fundamentally change their business and which may affect demand for your organization’s products or services. Technology forecasts that include information obtained from suppliers and customers can be much more detailed and accurate than ones obtained without those inputs.

In doing the scans of the broad general environment, it can be useful to ask Joel Barker’s fundamental question: “What is impossible to do today, that if it were possible, would fundamentally change the way we do business?”6 This is consistent with defining the external environment broadly. During the 1960s slide rule manufacturers thought it was sufficient to define their external environment narrowly as consisting of other slide rule manufacturers. During the 1970s, that narrow definition spelled their demise. They should have been monitoring advances in electronic miniaturization and defined themselves as portable computation device manufacturers. What was impossible with vacuum tube technology became possible with solid state electronics and it fundamentally changed their business.

Today, what industry is unlikely to be affected by the rapid advances in nanotechnology, quantum computing, and nonsilicon based electronic technologies? Is your organization monitoring the development of these technologies? If not, they are likely to become threats to your business. If you are monitoring these developments, they may turn out to be opportunities.

The results of the external environmental scans can be utilized in developing a variety of scenarios for the future. These scenarios can then be subjected to further analysis and probabilities assigned as to the possibility of each coming about within specific timeframes. This analysis can help organizations determine their responses to what they learn from the external environmental scans. These scenarios can be viewed either proactively or reactively. A proactive response would be to take action to capitalize on the emerging technological trends and capabilities to forge a dominant position in a new or significantly different future environment. A reactive response would be to take protective action to assure that the organization will continue to exist in the new or significantly different environment.

Jury of Expert Opinion

Experts exist in all technological areas and their insights can be valuable in staying aware of new technological developments and their ­possible impacts on the business of the organization. Of course, experts are not always correct in their forecasts. This may be verified by tracking how much more accurate economists are when explaining significant changes that have already occurred than they are in predicting those changes. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from listening to the economic experts’ predictions about the economy. In hindsight, Moore was wrong by more than 40 years and counting in forecasting that his law would probably only hold through 1975. Nevertheless, Moore’s law has been of significant value in forecasting advances in solid state ­technologies.

Juries of experts may be formal or informal, private or public. Insightful organizations often have an advisory council comprised of outside experts in a wide variety of fields who meet with the organization periodically. Other insightful organizations locate near major research universities for the express purpose of having easy access to a variety of experts in many fields. Often academic and industry associations will convene panels of experts on particular technological topics. Attendance at these events allows an organization to be exposed firsthand to the latest thinking of experts. In addition, attendees often are able to forge productive relationships with some of the experts serving on the panel and with other attendees.

Because expert opinions may differ widely and in some cases be just plain inaccurate, it is important to identify several experts, listen to what they have to say, and weigh that with information that is obtained from other sources. Forecasts derived from expert opinions reinforced by what is learned from external environmental scanning will almost always be more accurate than forecasts developed from a single source or technique.

The House of Quality

The house of quality, illustrated in Figure 6.2, is the first matrix used in quality function deployment (QFD) and can be an integrating mechanism between continuous improvement and breakthrough improvement when used properly. A 2009 informal survey of quality professionals conducted by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) found the house of quality to be among the top five most important quality practice innovations.⁷Developed by Professor Yoji Akao, ⁸ QFD is defined as “a structured method in which customer requirements are translated into appropriate technical requirements for each stage of product development and production. The QFD process is often referred to as listening to the voice of the customer.”⁹ QFD consists of a series of matrices which provide a systematic way to ensure that the customer’s definition of quality is considered during the product/service design process (the first QFD matrix is referred to as the house of quality) and throughout the production process (the subsequent QFD matrices).

Figure 6.2. The house of quality.

The Standard Employment of the House of Quality

QFD begins in the “west wing” of the house of quality with customer requirements. Typically, customer requirements are obtained from a variety of sources including customer surveys, interviews, and focus groups. The “second floor” of the house of quality is a translation of the customer requirements into design requirements. The “main floor” of the house is a matrix showing the correlation of the design requirements with the customer requirements. Each customer requirement should have a correlated design requirement. In the “attic” is a matrix which shows the interrelationship of the design requirements. This matrix is useful in analyzing tradeoffs among the design requirements. The “basement” contains the target values or specifications for the design requirements.¹⁰ The “east wing” compares current products and services with those of competitors. The process of creating a house of quality is illustrated in Example 6.1.

An Insightful Use of the House of Quality

The insightful use of the house of quality requires a new way of thinking about the “west wing”—customer requirements. Typically, customer requirements are obtained from a variety of sources including customer surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Product and service designers then convert these customer requirements into design requirements in the “second floor” and target values in the “basement.” The process is the same for the insightful use of the house of quality but the perspective—the new way of thinking—is different. Example 6.2 illustrates a more insightful use of the house of quality using the same customer requirements as in Example 6.1.

Insightful organizations make use of tools such as brainstorming, nominal group techniques, and multiple lenses¹¹ in conjunction with customer input when constructing the house of quality. The use of brainstorming and nominal group techniques creates an environment in which novel responses to customer requirements and innovative associations among inputs and ideas are more likely to result in unexpected design requirements. The use of multiple lenses challenges the team to look at customer inputs from a variety of perspectives—not just the most obvious one. This more insightful use of the house of quality often results in a much more innovative design than would result from the standard employment of the house of quality.

Benchmarking

There is a frequently encountered misconception that benchmarking is just copying what other successful organizations have done. What kind of new thinking is required to copy another organization? But benchmarking is not just copying and it can be an effective tool to reduce the time necessary to make major improvements.

Another misconception about benchmarking is that it simply compares one or more outcome measures to some national or industry average. This can only provide information about whether your organization is above or below average. It provides no information about how to improve. Benchmarking, when properly employed, provides insight into how best-in-class organizations achieved their level of excellence. That information can provide insight into how similar results can be obtained in your organization.¹²

Benchmarking is defined as “an improvement process in which an organization measures its strategies, operations, or internal process performance against that of best-in-class organizations within or outside its industry, determines how those organizations achieved their performance levels, and uses that information to improve its own performance. The subjects that can be benchmarked include strategies, operations, processes, and procedures.”13

What works in one organization is the product of that organization’s specific internal and external environments and is unlikely to work as well in another organization. During benchmarking, it is important to document the specific aspects of the best-in-class organization’s internal and external environments that result in the effectiveness of the strategies, operations, or processes being benchmarked. The benchmarking organization must then examine its own internal and external environments to determine how to modify what was learned to make it effective in its specific environments. Often, substantial modifications are necessary because the organizational environments are quite different.

At the routine or “understanding” level of awareness, organizations benchmark best practices in other departments and divisions of their own organizations or perhaps convenient competitors in their industry. In contrast, at the insight level, organizations seek to benchmark against best-in-class organizations wherever they may be. And seldom is an organization able to simply copy what the best-in-class organization is doing. The processes that led to best-in-class performance were developed around the specific internal and external environments of that organization. What is observed must be adapted to fit the specific internal and external environments of your organization.¹⁴

Two Examples of the Insightful Use of Benchmarking

Insight was required for two tired surgeons casually watching a Formula One race on television after a long day of surgery to recognize that what they were watching could enable them to transform processes in their hospital. That happened at The Great Ormond Street Hospital in London that benchmarked their handover process from surgery to ICU against the Ferrari Formula One Racing Team’s pit stop handoff process. The hospital learned that the pit crew engaged in proactive planning that made it better prepared than the medical team whose reactive strategy tended to be working out what they should have done after something has gone wrong. They learned four main lessons that translated directly to their surgical handover process:

1. The routine in the pit stop is taken seriously
2. Whatever happens in the pit stop is predictable so problems can be anticipated and procedures can be standardized
3. Crews practice those procedures until they can perform them correctly
4. Everyone knows their job, but one person is always in charge.¹⁵

This learning resulted in the development of a four-phase handover protocol at the hospital:

• Phase 0 Pre-Handover
• Phase 1 Equipment and Technology Handover
• Phase 2 Information Handover
• Phase 3 Discussion and Plan

The hospital experienced significant reduction in errors during handover after implementation of the new protocol—a breakthrough improvement.

Insight was required when two surgeons, one a pilot, at The Columbus Children’s Hospital (now Nationwide Children’s Hospital) realized that there had to be a reason for the phenomenal safety record in the commercial aviation industry and that discovering what that reason was might enable them to decrease errors in their surgical processes. They benchmarked the aviation industry’s checklist system with its built in redundancies and applied that to their surgical processes calling the program Operation Takeoff. The result was that wrong site surgical errors were virtually eliminated¹⁶—a breakthrough improvement.

Without insight, good performance in an industry other than your own is often merely an item of general interest, if it is of any interest at all. The potential to apply in your organization what a best-in-class organization has learned is often unrecognized at the understanding level of awareness and below. A typical response to benchmark findings is incredulity. When the benchmarking team reports their findings from a site visit to a best-in-class organization, their organization’s response is often “That’s impossible!”

While serving as general manager of a manufacturing organization, one of the authors had the opportunity to visit another organization to observe how they managed a particular type of manufacturing process. What he observed was quite different from the process in his own organization and the results were far better. When he related what he had seen to his staff, the reaction was incredulity. The manager arranged for his entire staff to make a benchmarking visit to the other facility to see for themselves. When they returned they were no longer incredulous. They were inspired to find a way to incorporate what they had learned into improvements to their process. The result was a radical improvement in both quality and efficiency in a very short period of time.

Another key to the insightful use of benchmarking is that the comparison be made to a true best-in-class organization. Xerox, who developed the benchmarking methodology, did not just select a convenient target to learn how to better process orders. They chose LL Bean who processed orders better than anyone else in any industry. The Great Ormond Street Hospital did not benchmark just any racing team—they benchmarked the Ferrari Formula One Racing Team. Radical improvements are unlikely to result from benchmarking an “ordinary” organization. You must benchmark an extraordinary one.

Similarly, individuals should choose their role models, mentors, and those with whom they associate wisely. Associating with insightful ­individuals and others who aspire to become insightful individuals provides the opportunity to benchmark, to broaden your horizons, and speed your progress on the road to insight.

Change Management

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.

—John Kenneth Galbraith

In most organizations change is difficult. In insightful organizations, change is much less difficult. But change is necessary and indeed inevitable in all organizations. A basic tenet in quality management is that your current system is perfectly configured to provide the results you are obtaining. So, if you are not happy with the current results, you must change the system.

The next time you chair a meeting, ask several of the participants to change seats without offering any explanation about why you are asking them to do this. You are likely to encounter overt resistance or at least receive some dirty looks as the participants reluctantly change seats. If it is difficult to make a trivial change such as changing one seat for an identical one just a few feet away without observing signs of resistance, imagine how much more difficult it is to make radical changes.

As we have seen in our previous discussions, it can sometimes be vital to make radical changes even if you are happy with the current system. This is what creates market leaders or at least survivors on the one hand and has-beens on the other. Those organizations that lead the change, lead the market. Those that respond quickly survive. Those that fail to respond or respond too slowly often fail. Kodak, which led the market in emulsion photography, failed to respond quickly enough to the introduction of digital photography. As a result, others became market leaders in the new digital photography paradigm while Kodak failed to respond quickly enough and found itself in chapter 11 bankruptcy.

There are many reasons why many people and organizations fear change. Change can affect the existing power, prestige, and political ­structures. Some will lose power and influence while others gain as a result of change. This can be unsettling. Others fear the unknown or are daunted by the extra effort that will be required to implement the change. Part of the fear factor may be a result of a questioning of whether individuals possess the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in the changed organization.

The organizational culture plays a huge role in how people react to change. Bureaucratic organizations that have cultures based on established products, services, and processes which have undergone improvement but little fundamental change will have difficulty accommodating change. Organizations with a more entrepreneurial and insightful culture and which have had to change repeatedly will have an easier time dealing with fundamental changes that need to be made. An organization’s attitude and aptitude for change cannot be turned on and off. If the organization’s culture has not been shaped by constant change, it can be very difficult to “turn it on.” But at some point in every organization’s existence, change we must. In the words of General Eric Shinseki “If you hate change, then you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

Fortunately, there is much we can learn from some of the theories underlying the change process that will assist any organization in better coping with change. One of these is Lewin’s force-field theory of change as shown in Figure 6.7. According to this theory, an organization will remain in its current state of performance (P1) so long as the forces for change are balanced by equal forces against change. Change will only occur when the forces for change exceed the forces against change. Then fundamental change can occur which results in the organization’s achievement of a higher level of performance (P2).

Figure 6.7. Lewin’s force-field theory of change. ¹⁷

The forces for change can come from within or outside the organization. An example of an internal force for change is an organization’s desire to create an innovative new product, and it was such a desire that led to Apple’s introduction of the Macintosh computer. Examples of external forces for change include changes in customer preference, new products introduced by competitors, and new technologies introduced by outside organizations. In addition to the fears of change discussed earlier, the forces against change could also result from the new product rendering an existing product produced by the organization obsolete.

Lewin also proposed a general theory of change which he named the planned change model shown in Figure 6.8. To move from the equilibrium state to a new state the organization must unfreeze—that is overcome the resistance to change. The force-field theory shows how to do this. Either the resistance to change must be diminished, the forces for change increased, or both approaches must be done simultaneously. Unfreezing can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Among the best approach is to communicate well and involve employees in the process of determining that change is necessary early in the change process itself. Employees who understand first-hand why the change is necessary and have a say in planning the change, will be less resistant to the change. Another approach is to provide incentives for change. These might include increases in pay in recognition of the increased responsibility associated with the change or bonuses for accomplishing the change on time and on budget.

Figure 6.8. Lewin’s planned change model.¹⁸

Once the organization has completed the unfreezing stage, the change itself can be implemented. Employee involvement as well as good ­communication is as important in this step as in unfreezing. Seldom do changes work as well as planned during implementation. The change manager should be ready to collaborate with those responsible for and affected by the change to determine improvements that can be made during the implementation stage. When working within the existing culture, aspects of the culture can assist the change manager gain acceptance for the change.¹⁹ A much more difficult challenge is changing the culture. This is particularly true for strong cultures.

But all is for naught unless the organization refreezes and makes the change the new way of doing business. Unless this step is adequately addressed, the organization may slip back into the old way of doing things. New standing operating procedures (SOPs) must be developed and the old ones removed from the workplace. Incentive and reward systems must be reviewed to assure they are still applicable in the changed system. Job descriptions should be reviewed to determine whether new skills should be included and unnecessary skills removed. Extensive training must be conducted with all employees affected by the changes. All levels of management and supervision should be involved in assuring that the change becomes the new way of doing business. Properly accomplished, the change will be accepted and become part of the organization’s culture.

Organizational Inertia

Lewin’s theories provide a succinct and rational depiction of the change process, but do not explicitly recognize the importance of organizational culture to the change process. In many organizations, the forces ­resisting change seem to be so formidable as to daunt all but the most determined change agents from attempting to overcome them. Why do many organizations systematically resist change? A major reason is organizational ­inertia.

Inertia can be described as resistance to change. In the physical world, inertia is directly related to an object’s mass. Organizational inertia is a function of both the size of the organization and the nature of its culture. Generally speaking, and there are many exceptions, larger organizations exhibit greater organizational inertia than smaller ones. More insightful organizations have less organizational inertia than less insightful ones.

The strength of an organization’s culture is the larger of the two determinants of an organization’s inertia. Cultures provide a framework for decision making in an organization and the stronger the culture the more rigid is the framework. Creating fundamental change in a large organization with a strong culture can seem as futile as ants trying to move an elephant (see Figure 6.9). In order to unfreeze, change, and refreeze in such an organization, considerable effort must be made to simultaneously reduce the forces against change and increase the forces for change. This process requires considerable skill by the change manager.

Figure 6.9. Trying to overcome organizational inertia.²⁰

The Change Manager

It is unusual for breakthrough improvement to occur due to the actions of a single individual. However, significant change requires a committed individual or group that is passionate about the change they are leading and who have the support of the organization’s management. These ­individuals are sometimes called change managers, change agents, or champions. Whatever their name, they are essential to the change process.

There are many sources of power within an organization. It is not always necessary for a change manager to have a high level of legitimate power—power that derives from the individual’s position and title within the organization. Legitimate power will be helpful, but the most important sources of power for a change manager are expert and referent power. Expert power derives from an individual’s reputation for being particularly knowledgeable and skilled. Referent power is a social construct derived from the admiration of the individual within the organization. ­Individuals with these sources of power command immediate respect from others within the organization. Other employees welcome the opportunity to work with individuals with such power. Individuals with expert and referent power are rarely assigned to insignificant tasks. This fact also increases the credibility for the change manager and the task.

Change managers have a reputation for getting things done where others might give up in despair. A passionate change manager can lead a change team over hurdles that would otherwise derail the project. They do this not by being prima donnas, but by being effective leaders, inspiring the team by their enthusiasm and optimism, being adaptable, and by taking advantage of the talents of everyone on the team. An effective change manager can make all of the difference in facilitating radical changes in an organization.

The team working with the change manager should be diverse. More diversity is required the more strategic the change is for which the team is responsible. Change which affects all aspects of the organization requires a team with key members representing a true cross section of the organization. Change which affects a single department should have representative participation from all areas and levels of the department. It is very useful to acceptance of the change to include lower level employees on the team. Input from those closest to the value adding work of the organization is often crucial to optimizing the design and implementation of the change. But the most important attribute of a successful change team is a shared passion for the change and a strong commitment to see that it is accomplished.

Conclusion

The insightful organization:

• Goes beyond the “textbook” or rote application of ­quality management tools. Examine your organization’s use of tools which are relied upon to provide information vital for the ­success of the organization. Using ideas taken from the ­examples discussed in this chapter, can you devise more insightful approaches to tool use that will yield better quality information and thus better decisions?
• Recognizes that the rapid pace of technological change complicates the task of forecasting the future. The insightful organization subjects the assumptions of their forecasting models to great scrutiny to assure that the information obtained is as accurate as possible. How long has it been since your organization carefully examined its approach to technological forecasting?
• Understands, as Apple Computer has proven to be able to do, that stated customer requirements do not ­necessarily ­conform to what is necessary to design the next market-­leading ­product or service. How does your company ­investigate ­customer requirements when designing or ­redesigning ­products and services?
• Recognizes it is not always necessary to “reinvent the wheel.” Benchmarking against best-in-class organizations can ­provide information that can reduce the time necessary to make radical improvements in strategies, products, services, and processes. Does your organization make use of benchmarking, and if so, is the benchmark target always a best-in-class organization?
• Understands that change is difficult in most organizations and the bigger the change, the more difficult the change process. There are theories and practices that can assist organizations implement changes. Is your organization aware of these ­theories and practices? Has it identified effective ways to overcome the natural resistance to change?

Forces for Change	Actions to Increase Forces for Change	Resistance to Change	Actions to ­Decrease ­Resistance to Change
•	•	•	•
•	•	•	•
•	•	•	•
•	•	•	•
•	•	•	•

Use this form when planning your next change management initiative to identify forces for change and specific actions you can take to increase these forces and to identify forces which resist change and specific action you can take to reduce these forces.

Throughout the book we have discussed change—big change variously referred to as paradigm shift, disruptive change, breakthrough improvement, or radical change. We believe strongly in the need for continuous improvement and we do not intend to diminish the importance of CI by our discussion. Our intent is to make the case for CI rarely being sufficient for an organization to assure its leadership position or indeed its survival over the long term (just ask Borders or the slide rule manufacturing companies).

We began in Chapter 1 with a discussion about the definition of quality. Many organizations use too narrow a definition. We discussed new ways of thinking about quality beyond conformance to specification or to customers’ stated desires. In Chapter 2 we provided the justification for our premise that CI is not sufficient for long-term organizational success. In Chapters 3 and 4 we introduced Plato’s concept of insight which we propose as being necessary on both an individual and organizational level for long-term organizational success. Chapter 5 discussed new ways of thinking for managers which will enable them to lead their organizations to dramatic increases in performance.

Finally, in this chapter we discussed the insightful use of some familiar tools and how to make the changes that will be required to achieve new levels of organizational excellence. The primary message of this chapter is that you do not need new tools to be insightful. Rather you need to use familiar tools in an insightful way. The discussion in this chapter is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all tools that may be used in an insightful way, but rather is a set of examples of the insightful use of a selection of familiar tools. We challenge you, the reader, to think about all of the familiar tools and procedures you use frequently in your ­organization. How might you use these tools and procedures in a more insightful way?

Our intent in writing this book is to inspire readers to start the journey to insight. The starting point will be different for different readers, but all can benefit from making the journey. The journey is never-ending and once the level of insight is achieved, continued effort is required to maintain that position of advantage. New knowledge, new technologies, new ways of doing things are proliferating at an ever increasing pace. Insightful individuals and organization must work harder and harder to remain at that level.

We invite you to contact the authors at [email protected] or [email protected] to tell us about the insightful ways you have found to use familiar tools and procedures and the results you obtained. If reading this book assists you and your organization to reach the insight level of awareness, the level of performance improvement will astound you.