Summary Report

ASQ Emerging Quality LeadersGE Healthcare Site Visit | November 2014

EMERGING

ASQ, the Global Voice of Quality, continues to be the leading provider of quality knowledge, information and tools, enabling our members to lead quality improvements wherever they may be. ASQ strives to be innovative, finding new and better ways to serve our members, customers, and partners around the world. The Emerging Quality Leaders Program is a great example of that spirit of innovation and service. This program improves both our value to you, as you grow and develop in your career, and your value to your organizations, as you gain new experience and perspectives.

— ASQ Chair Elect Cecilia Kimberlin; Welcome Message to the Emerging Quality Leaders on site at GE Healthcare

EMERGING QUALITY LEADERS GE HEALTHCARE SITE VISIT SUMMARY REPORT2

Overview

The ASQ Emerging Quality Leaders took up a multifaceted agenda last month for the second site visit in the first year of this program, delving into innovation from multiple points of view—both divergent and convergent—as delivered by GE Healthcare quality, engineering, technology, design, and business unit executive leaders.

In the day-long discussion held in the comfortable surroundings of the GE Healthcare Institute just outside Milwaukee, WI, the program cohort learned of GE’s fresh, ambitious move to a “Culture of Simplicity”—a companywide, bottom-up, top-down initiative for the organization that, until recently, has been steeped in Six Sigma and lean since Jack Welch’s tenure. In describing the culture of simplicity deployment, launched in 2014 at the multibillion-dollar division, GE quality engineering executive Dave Deaven characterized it as “a constant hunger for simpler, for what’s better, for a lean structure, to be more straightforward, always with a focus on the customer even as we are spending more on engineering excellence.”

“Culture of simplicity is a religion” at GE, Deaven continued. “Simplification is about unity … to fight complexity. Employees are measured by simplification metrics. Simplification is the way we lead. And it is from the top and throughout. … We need you to lead your teams with the simplification message; build strong team processes around a simplification culture—a lean and distributed structure—to achieve market intensity and competitiveness based on speed.”

Yet, even as the drive and desire for simplicity are strong—and required in the company and its divisions—change is challenging, Deaven acknowledged, given GE Healthcare’s one quality system, one quality policy, one program management system, and unified language across the business. Complicating the picture for GE Healthcare are: regulatory processes and requirements of each country where it sells products or offers services; organizational silos; and corporate targets for growth and innovation, both near and longer term.

To put a fine point on the simplicity goal, “GE is taking 300,000+ employees and moving them from an old-school to a new-school company,” noted Deaven.

EMERGING QUALITY LEADERS GE HEALTHCARE SITE VISIT SUMMARY REPORT 3

In illustrating the everyday dynamics of cultural evolution for the ASQ group, Paul Mullen, GE Healthcare general manager for point of care in its ultrasound business, conveyed that it has become essential to change the way questions are asked and projects are prioritized. “I love the discipline of following process and protocol,” he said, “yet sometimes we need to turn it over and think about it anew.”

Mullen also referenced ongoing debates in his business unit in light of cultural shifts, including:• Team structures—“the teams that break down early [in trying to solve a problem]

are the most innovative because they tend to give up on sacred cows and start over earlier” with the problem

• Product documentation—how much is enough, for what customer, with what level of knowledge

• How, when, and whether enough control has been put into the product/service, even to the process, to manage the risk

In a reverse panel discussion, Bob Hauck, GE Healthcare chief engineer, Andy Sorrentino, director of QA programs, Vivek Bhatt, CTO, and others from GE lobbed questions to the leader cohort, and the group volleyed back. Among the questions/comments, were the following:• In your industries, how do you define and measure quality?• How is engineering measuring “engineering quality?”• In using big data or remote diagnostic tools, do you run into privacy issues?• GE design engineers have the requirement to improve delight as a key

deliverable—improve patient delight in healthcare: How do you measure delight?• How do you measure against the expectation of compassionate delight in healthcare?• If you have the opportunity to add six more bodies to your [project] team, who

are you going to add; what types of people; what do you buy on the outside; what do you need in-house?

• GE wants to look, feel, and act like a startup. What do you have in a startup? You have people who do everything.

• What is the role of the regulator [in our business … in yours]?• What is the role of the consumer?• What is the role of standards?• What is your “as low as reasonably practical” (ALARP)?• How do you deal with reasonably foreseeable misuse [of your product/service]?• How do you keep from over-innovating?• How much quality is allowed or needed in the innovation phrase?• When do you go from proof of concept to prototype environment?• Are you doing anything via crowdsourcing?• Does a team know what is good failure and what is not-good failure?

At the end of the panel and the day, precise answers and conclusions may not have been reached, but it appeared the leader cohort—those visiting from the ASQ group and those visited with from the GE core—had learned lessons, perhaps some for a lifetime, including the following, which was repeated throughout the day: Culture trumps process every time.

The Zen of MurfLaws and lessons of Lawrence “Murf” Murphy, GE Healthcare chief designer, and other quotables, as shared with ASQ Emerging Quality Leaders 2014–15

• Giving you the tools you had when you were 10 years old: drawing, building, sharing, telling stories … those things matter, those things connect people.

• It’s easier to be in a team dynamic if you are just yourself—so be yourself.

• Encourage unorthodox thinking.

• Creativity is just understanding what you are good at and applying those skills at what you do.

• The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

• Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

• Are you disruption ready?

• Attempt to solve a problem differently than you have in the past.

• It is critical vision alone that can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

• Observe first; then innovate.

• The magic and science of empathy … the infusion of empathy will give you the opportunity to disrupt your brand.

• The dilemma you must move to change is your predicament.

• Don’t be afraid to put in the room people who you’ve never put in a room before to solve a problem.

Takeaways

Emerging Quality Leaders Take on Challenges Facing GE HealthcareIn a small-group exercise in the second day of the site visit, the Emerging Quality Leader cohort compiled views and creative approaches to the business and cultural changes, and challenges, that surfaced in the GE Healthcare site visit. Takeaways from the group work included:

• Changing the culture requires engagement across the boardPrivileged young people vs. the “old timers”: Issues stem from focusing only on one or another

• Re-engaging individuals who have been in the industry for 10+ yearsMove them to a different department and reintroduce them to a project/program that will interest them/re-engage them

-Open dialogue between the company and the individualFinish a project/objective that motivates people

• “Golden handcuffs”: Staying with the company out of loyalty or pensions/benefitsIf employees are not contributing to making the company better, they are dead weight

• Baby Boomers heading out the door: New people taking over who don’t know the history Turn to an archivist Have food together to create an environment where people can talk

• Undercover boss: Never outsource understandingOutreach can provide insight beyond what’s normally experienced in the work environmentChanges what people realize as an “ah-ha!” moment

• Agile QMS: SimplifyWhile a QMS may be very flexible, how is accountability demonstrated?Design itself is going to satisfy different markets, but the product can be tailored based on what the customer wants

• Tradition doesn’t allow you to “see through the trees”Too much data

-Mounds of data being used to look at what was done yesterday-Find one piece of information and turn it into a future solution

Keep focus on customers-Emphasis on past success causes a company to miss current customer focus-Unique products don’t satisfy certain markets’ needs