Content By Paul Naysmith

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Managing Motivation
By: Paul Naysmith 01/04/2017

If you have ever used Maslow’s hierarchy of needs out of context, and especially as they relate to motivation in the workplace, I will track you down and tape you to a lamppost with a sign around your neck explaining your major error. Maslow’s theory dates back to ideas from the 1940s, and research has progressed since then. Some people, including Mahmoud Wahba and Lawrence Bridwell, have found there is little evidence to support Maslow’s hierarchy actually existing. (Rant over, for the moment.)

Particularly in the workplace, the art of motivation is firmly based on psychological and scientific principles. Companies spend vast sums on industrial psychologists to help change their “culture,” or to assist in promoting an expensive solution to improve some deep-seated issue within a poorly performing organization.

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Happy Birthday, Magna Carta
By: Paul Naysmith 05/19/2015

This June will you be wishing the Magna Carta a very happy birthday? An 800-year-old document might not necessarily warrant a lovely slice of cake, but I’m sure someone somewhere will be celebrating this anniversary. No doubt many readers will be wondering why I want to discuss the Magna Carta, but as I always do, I’ll ask for your patience and explain why I think it’s an important quality document.

The Magna Carta wasn’t born from the need to establish conformity to a required standard, as many documents are today. Its story, like any good tale from the Middle Ages, starts with a villainous character—in this case King John of England. King John longed for a war with neighbors across the English Channel that was going to be expensive, so he levied taxes on the impoverished inhabitants of his lands to pay for it. It became clear that some taxation balance was needed, so a few English noblemen, with support from the very powerful Church, set about creating a new set of rules to bring equality to society and remove some power from the king.

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Goodbye, America
By: Paul Naysmith 10/16/2014

I have four clocks hanging on my office wall, each one individually set for a strange and different time zone somewhere on this planet. I need to know these various times, as I am sure to engage with someone somewhere else at some point during the day.

From clock to clock, each second ticks loudly out of sequence, and although I have been able to block out this sound, I have not been able to obscure the knowledge that, after three years, I will soon be leaving the United States to start a new timeline in my life, and a new starting point in my professional career.

Strangely enough, I have become a little retrospective of late; I’m typically very forward-looking, thinking about what comes next. Today I’m mentally checking off all the things that I’ve done, including some of my proudest achievements. There are others I wish I had achieved.

I could list them here for you in their little circular bullet-point glory, butthat perhaps would not make for the most compelling of articles. I do, however, feel that one of my more eccentric moments may be worth playing out, simply to explain the benefits of doing something different in the pursuit of improving a business.

Like many great tales, it starts a long time ago....

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What Will Scottish Independence Mean for Quality?
By: Paul Naysmith 09/08/2014

If your preferred media outlet has yet to cover the current topic of conversation about Scottish independence, the following may be, well, news to you. On Sept. 18, 2014, the people living in Scotland will be given the opportunity to vote to become, once again, an independent and sovereign country, separating its ties with the government of the United Kingdom.

As a national of the United Kingdom, who was born, raised, and for the most part educated in Scotland, not to mention a subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Part Two, I won’t get to vote. Why? Because living in the United States precludes me from participating. However, as the token Scotsman in the office, I’m regularly posed with questions on the topic and often asked which way I’m going to vote.

Seeking independence isn’t really new to Scotland; in fact, 2014 marks the 700-year anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce, having received a motivational speech from a spider in a cave, defeated King Edward II with a much smaller team than England’s vastly more powerful army. Not so long after, at least in historical terms, an invading English army again took control of Scotland.

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What Is the Cost of Quality?
By: Paul Naysmith 07/23/2014

Recently I walked headlong into a conversation on quality costs, or the cost of poor quality (COPQ), or the cost of quality, or some other term I’ve forgotten from that discussion. I realized that this area is very well-developed in the world of quality, but perhaps not fully understood by professionals outside of the quality department. Perhaps this is due to “finance for managers” classes clouding the issue. Or perhaps it is genuinely not understood by management.

I believe that any manager should have a basic understanding of finance and accounting. Most companies, for-profit or not, need to have leadership that can appreciate which way money flows, and what are the costs in the business. Part of this involves thinking about the causes of your quality costs.

In my career, the cost of quality is usually a divisive topic, mainly due to a lack of a clear explanation as to what it is. There are two distinct camps: the group that believes quality costs are costs that go into creating quality in the business, and the other group that believes that quality costs are costs resulting from not achieving quality.

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Where the Magic Happens
By: Paul Naysmith 07/01/2014

From where I sit, flying high in the air, I can see the deep royal blue of the Atlantic. White waves are cresting around an island below, outlining the green and brown blob that, without a map, is nameless and unknown to me. I’m on my way to one of the islands off the east coast of Canada, an island with a miniature population where clocks are set 30 minutes off from the rest of the world’s. This is the first time I’ve approached Newfoundland when it wasn’t in the middle of a snowstorm.

A crackling voice comes over the intercom: “Ladies and gentlemen if you look out the left side of the aircraft, you can see icebergs.” This is interesting. I’ve never seen a real-life iceberg before. I remember the one in the movie Titanic, where it was the villain in the plot and a real hazard to the passengers. I’m transfixed by the marvelous, iridescent pale-blue block below me, bobbing peacefully in the vast ocean. I’m also disconcerted to realize the passenger to my right has decided my personal space no longer belongs to me, and that my knee makes a handy platform to support his frame as he presses his face against the window to get a better view.

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Quality Beyond Manufacturing
By: Paul Naysmith 04/24/2014

It was yesterday, a glorious sunny distraction of a day, and while alternately admiring the world outside my window and reading the latest issue of CQI’s Quality World, I came across a plea for help. In the letters section, a reader implored the editor to “help the large number of service industries in the UK to understand how Deming’s work can apply to them.”

The young lady who had written was a bit frustrated about how an article in a previous issue focused on the application of W. Edwards Deming’s philosophies in the manufacturing sector. I can appreciate this young lady’s frustration as there are a great many works about Deming in an industrial manufacturing sense, but far fewer about service. Since I work in a successful service company, perhaps I can assist in providing some relief in the way of an explanation.

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The Ghost of Walmart Future
By: Paul Naysmith 03/04/2014

It’s Saturday morning and Mrs. N. has a project for me: assembling her new bicycle. It has arrived in an imposing brown box, and I’m attempting to interpret the instructions. Looking over the variety of nuts, bolts, screws, and connectors in a little plastic bag, I’m performing a mental inventory of the tools needed, and I’m up to seven.

I scour the bottom of the box the bike arrived in, wedged head-first in a space as wide as a cereal box, and there are no tools included. I’m thinking I could easily write an efficiency improvement report on this assembly process; however, my client (Mrs. N.) just wants her bike built. I better get it done ASAP. I’m in the man cave and realize I need to buy more hand tools. So I’m off in my car and speed to the nearest Walmart. I need to get a few other things along with the tools, and since I despise shopping, getting it done at a single destination is perfect for me: grab and go.

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Right on Target
By: Paul Naysmith 02/03/2014

I’m one of those 40 million customers who had their bank card and PIN stolen while shopping at Target, one of America’s largest chains of general super-stores. Like most of the affected consumers, I first heard about the breach from my bank, another large network known as Chase. In a very frank email that arrived a few days before Christmas, I was told I’d be limited to $100 cash ATM withdrawals, a $300 spending cap per day, and would soon receive a new card and PIN in the mail—all because of a security breach at a place where I shop for food.

For weeks U.S. television and online news networks lambasted Target’s poor defenses and how awful its response was to its customers. Personally, I thought Target did a good job of managing the issue. It gave out 10-percent discounts during the weekend before Christmas to all who passed through its doors, along with free credit checks to any customer who asked. I’m sure that behind the scenes, Target was tightening security and working with law-enforcement agencies to find the perpetrators.

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Bridge Ices Before Road
By: Paul Naysmith 12/03/2013

For work purposes, I first made my way to the United States on a short business trip in October 2007. I remember it vividly. I was not long married, and my boss was putting me on the long haul into Texas and Louisiana.

Fresh in my mind was the memory of the unusually warm day in Scotland the week before, right splat in the middle of October. Surprisingly, the temperature had risen to a heavenly 17° Celsius (or 70° Fahrenheit) on our wedding day. It was so bright and warm that our photographer convinced us to take our photos on the beach, where children ran up to the newly titled Mrs. N. with ice-cream cones in their hands. This was unusual for Scotland, where we’re doomed to a climate that changes for the worse every 20 minutes. My mother will reference this at times as “soup weather,” i.e., so cold and terrible, the only remedy is eating soup to keep warm.