A summertime “muse” … a comparison of the P-D-C-A and L-A-OModus Operandi

Definitions

P-D-C-A := Plan, Do, Check, Act … a work management /results improvement process (and tagline especially in the ISO 9001 Quality Management System (QMS) community space).

L-A-O := Learn, Adapt, Overcome … a behavioural mantra (and tagline in various spaces including military workforces and actual in-battle-field circumstances).

Introduction

It is the summertime, and it has been a while since I last posted so I thought a brief pondering upon how we approach our work, opportunities/risks, and the systems facilitating our potential for success might be a refreshing conversation for all to enjoy.

This post is about improving our awareness to the methods, techniques, and processes useful for effective and timely results. It is also about how people might learn, apply, and re-charge (or even re-motivate) themselves when they feel that the number of opportunities/risks in their lives are overwhelming their ability to manage them, etc.

This post, from my perspective/history, is more applicable to the non-experimental or otherwise circumstances requiring us to moderate our desire to exploit an entire team’s innovation skills/experiences. That is, teams of people doing brand-smacking development in new technologies and /or highly complex leading-edge product/service development might, like me, be content with accepting some sort of hybrid of the P-D-C-A and L-A-O methodology as best suiting how to work effectively and efficiently.

I hope you find this both a quick and interesting read. I also hope you continue to feel free to reply to any of my postings (any time). And in short, I am not going to say that either one of these approaches is better than the other (in all cases); all I will say is that they are both always food for thought especially when you feel stuck-in-the-mud or just spinning-your-wheels.

The Discussion to Muse

One of the complaints against QMS systems, and in specific ISO 9001, is that they are seen by some as “dumbing down” the obvious OR as a bad idea for “paper pushing” away reasonable ways for gaining efficiency timely. That is, ISO 9001 is for the most part, readily seen to offer a method to obtain effective (complete, consistent, and correct) results but on the other hand, it can often cause “choke-and-gag” responses by persons unfamiliar with its applicability to the entire business management system of an organization (primarily because it doesn’t come to them via a sexy “app” or organization wide and seamless integrated CRM/e-tool … and hence appears to them as a not so easily transferable experience to embrace, let alone re-use/transfer job-to-job, sector-to-sector, employer-to-employer (or even list on their LINKEDin profile).

Over the years, the KISS thing always comes up! So, on that point, and relative to this muse … maybe a three-letter tagline is better than a four letter one! Especially since a fair junk of our population (e.g., spiritually or otherwise) is drawn to the number “three” and equally so, a fair junk of our population thinks “four letter” words are a bad thing (e.g., profanity) 😊

So … let’s look at those three L-A-O letters (again herein…) especially so as my previous articles may have caused you to think that P-D-C-A was all of the “bread from heaven” you needed.  To that, my discussion goes like this:

• Learn – who doesn’t want to do this? I mean, if you say you are all about effectiveness (let alone efficiency) than you surely must realize learning is something we never want to stop doing.
• Adapt – if you want to convince people you are a good communicator (, listener as well as articulator of the topic/opportunity at hand), can you honestly think of a simpler word that describes how opportunities/risks and those pesky schedule, cost, quality “bumps” are, in fact, actually mitigated?

Overcome – to this word, there can be some ambiguity. For example, are we overcoming ourselves (and or own fears / self doubts or those of our naysayers or both)? Or are we saying that a change for the sake of a change always makes things better? No, all we should say is that by learning and adapting we better positioned ourselves for and more reasonable course of actions from which something good / valued is more likely to happen timely.

I will also say, the P-D-C-A tagline has sometimes seemed to me as a slightly over-serialized process for managing what happens in the many parts of our lives and work circumstances. Specifically, “A”ction is agent of change.  Whilst “P”lanning , “D”oing and “C”hecking are the recipe needed for effective change – as well as the essential elements or properties (e.g., inputs, processing, output) of all good processes.  So, do we really want to create products/services that don’t act upon the feedback (e.g., KPI/process measures, customer satisfaction, self-health-monitoring and diagnostical) data that is often readily available to them? And do we really want to work in a chaotic or reactive change management mindset?

The answer is obviously “no” … especially if we want to succeed, have fun, and stay safe all year round, year after year!

Summary

The L-A-O methodology to me, inherently implies that continuous improvement exists at each of the activities associated with each of the three letters in its name … regardless business sector/type and work circumstances therein. And that is exactly one of the primary goals and attributes of any “good” QMS which is why I often make it my “tagline” when helping my team-mates to break-out of paradigm paralysis circumstances, etc.

Conclusion

I am not trying to sway you to one OR the other mindset. Rather, I am just hoping you might identify with the discussion above and may have an opinion on it or even just share a smile upon it.

Again, may you continue to have a great summer – from the guy who always says “quality” is a both the goal and the necessary behaviour for success and who also hopes that you found this post “a-mu-sing”!

Annex-1 … Addendum of Some Relevant Images that also suggest P-D-A-C is equal to L-A-O

Whether for a product, process or service change, the management of an opportunity/risk is often done using a continuum of effort.

Yes, on occasion, some issues are resolved or (minimally) improved upon in a (generally) linear fashion but overall, it has been my experience (especially in recent decades) that teams of people work better under well planned and managed incremental (and not step) approaches to their ultimate successes in many of their daily assignments. Especially, so in the less complex, or more precisely, within the circumstances in which non “breaking”/leading edge technologies or near recently (released) product/service results are at the core of the effort being used to manage, maintain, re-engineer, optimize, or even create near similar product SKU’s or service variant offerings that are proposed for OR in response to the varying demands of the implicated customers, suppliers, self-imposed obligations, or business goals.

Finally, if you have more attractive and insightful artwork for the L-A-O tagline (process method discussion), I am open to further suggestions (as I am a written word kind of person):