Leadership Quality Awareness SessionsRuth Olson

SFS Customer Service Vision

Payroll's PACERs

Q&A

Announcements

A Sincere CFD Thank You!

The Recognition Review

Where Are We Now?

Survey Results

Measure for Measure

And various and sundryarticles for your edification

and enjoyment

Using a similar process to the one usedo for the Leadership Qualities, four~Q randomly selected focus groups

~-:::,. (including approximately ten~ staff members with Leadership

focus group experience) willconsider the question, "If I couldbuild the ideal co'worker, whatqualities would that personhave?" Training and Develop,ment, led by Karen Crowder,acting manager, will coordinate

and facilitate these groups. If youare not randomly selected, but

want to participate in case ofvacancies or to get on the list of

substitutes, please contact Trainingand Development at 3,1957. Nameswill be drawn from this list to partici-pate.

Our Focus

while others still suggested that theirleaders needed improvement. As weproceed with the organization-wideleadership assessment, we expect tofind similar varying views.

The EIT and I welcome any addi­tional feedback on your experience atthe Leadership Qualities AwarenessSessions. Weare interested in knowingif the content of the sessions is beingdiscussed in your departments, if theapproach taken is working for you or ifyou found yourself motivated todevelop your skills as a result of thesessions.

Staff Qualities Focus Group

During January, the development ofa Staff Qualities statement will begin.

hank you to all whoparticipated in theLeadership QualityAwareness Sessionsin December.

Ninety percent of the FinancialManagement staff attended thetwo, hour sessions and the overallfeedback was positive. In mycombined roles of Champion andprogram coordinator, I had theunique opportunity of being presentat all sessions. Through my conver­sations with Financial Managementstaff, both in the sessions and after,ward, I heard varied comments includ­ing "it was marvelous," "it was great tosee the progress from the focus groupsto this statement," "I liked the smallgroup discussions the best, and espe­cially mixing people up from through,out the organization." Based on earlyconstructive feedback, the EIT pre,senters modified the program to allowfor more group discussion, increasingthe time spent in small groups from 20minutes to 45 minutes. It became clearto the EIT that small group discussionswere of greater value than the formalpresentation!

Some comments gave us pause tothink. We heard from some staff whothought it unnecessary to first identifyand then discuss the qualities andbehaviors of effective leaders in Finan,cial Management. These qualities wereones that any good leader shouldpossess. Others thought that theirleaders already possessed the traits,

SFS Customer

Service visionPayroll's PACER's

The PACERS

Sally Schwartz

he 1994 Quality Focus for

CllFinancial Management

Ii( includes three areas:j) Customer Service, Major

Processes and Leadership.As part of the customer initiative inSFS (Student Fiscal Services), theleaders group started with the well,worn statement, "... to meet and exceedcustomer expectations..." Now, whatdoes that REALLY mean?

After much discussion, the leadersgroup finally decided that there werethree primary elements to customerservice: training employees on process,es and procedures, talking to our cus­tomers on a regular basis and involvingour process partners in improvements.These key elements were the basis forthe final customer service vision:

We will expand our ability to serve ourcustomers through increasingour knowl,edgeof student services processesand ourshared understanding of their needs.

We will engage our customers to deter'mine what is important to them and howwell we are doing.

We will work with process partners inour efforts to improve customer serviceand the Schmitz Hall image.

We hope that this statement canprovide a common vision for all threeoffices in SFS, a common definition ofcustomer service, a ranking of studentexpectations and an understanding ofprocesses across all three offices.

It will also serve as a tool to guidedevelopment and provide a standard toevaluate future and current endeavors.

ayroll's support and report

lteam, the PACERS, chosetheir name because of theworkload and the SPEED in

0, which they work. Gerry Ac,uesta, Betty Light, Cathy Stewart, andLinda Braziel proclaim that there isNEVER a dull moment. This team's re­sponsibilities include receiving, proper,ly sorting, distributing and filing allincoming payroll documents (12,000pieces per month). Annually, the PAC,ERS also receive 100,000 pages of sala­ry certification reports from campus,and these must be maintained so thatrequests for informationcan be an,swered. In addition, the PACERS areresponsible for maintaining the filingsystems for all documents associatedwith the Payroll Office: individual em,ployee files, microfiche files and recordcenter files (the retention for recordcenter files is 50 years). PACERS arealso responsible for support functionssuch as preparing calendars for campus,forms management and control, pur,chasing, "signing" payroll checks, pro'ducing phone and e-mail listings, andwhatever else you may think of that re­lates to support functions.

The team is currently involved inthe solution phase of problem solvingand we are working on ways to stream,line and to keep the payroll documentsprocess current. We had no problem

PROBLEMS OFTEN LOOKO'IERWHElMING AT FIRST.

proving the existence of the problem.However, temptation reared its uglyhead as we faced staying away from off,ering solutions during each problemsolving step: problem identification/definition, investigation, and analysis(sound familiar?). With the help of OUf

wonderful facilitator, Monica Banksfrom the Receivables Collection Office,we're where we want to be.

And, we have something exciting totalk about! During 1994, we named30+ accomplishments to date. Theseaccomplishments include improvingPayroll's distribution of checks on pay'day so that campus representatives'time to wait in line decreased from 15minutes to 3 minutes. Thanks to V'Ellaand our sponsor, Patti Kimpton, wehad the opportunity to take four train,ing modules from Training and Devel­opment: communications, consensus,conflict and teambuilding. We werefortunate to have a great training lead,er (we'll give you a hint). The personno longer works in Training and Devel ­opment and now works for FinancialManagement. These modules were fan,tastic! They enabled our team to cometogether and work as a highly success,ful work team.

We won't list all of our accomplish,ments now-we need to run off andmake some kind of improvement'somewhere.

FOR fXAMPLE. I'MSUPPOSED TO REAP llUSENTlRE ~ISTORY CAAPTtR.IT LOOKS IMPOSSlnE. SO I~EAK 'THE PROflEM POWN. .-.----

Q: When I am asked to attend a FM...wide event, how is my supervisorsupposed to know about it?

A: As with any commitment that takesyou away from your regular jobduties, you need to talk with yoursupervisor about it so you cannegotiate for coverage and anyreshuffling of workload. In somecases, the supervisor may knowabout it already, but in some casess/he may not. Some informationflows from the EIT to the supervi...sors, but not all.

Q: What if my supervisor won't let meattend?

A: In most cases you, your supervisorand work team should be able tofigure out a way you can attend. Ifmany people in the same unit areasked to participate at the sametime, however, some may not beable to go if preserving customerservice is a problem or if workload isunusually heavy. If you can notattend a particular event, youshould make arrangements to gothe next time.

Q: What does the Champion do?

A: The Champion has many variedactivities all aimed at encouragingthe organization to keep up theefforts toward quality improvement.Her daily activities may includefacilitating teams, assisting withdepartmental planning, researchingand presenting new ideas or ap...proaches to improvement training,editing Directions, helping withconflict resolution, visiting unitsand helping out, and coachingleaders.

Q: If I want to talk personally with theChampion, how do I do that?

A: You can reach the Champion inmany ways. Ruth can be called at5...9838, e...mailed at rolson, stoppedwhile visiting in a department or ata meeting, or through written note.Although she is not often in heroffice, Ruth will return calls ore...mails promptly and set up ameeting in person or on the tele ...phone.

FacilitatorsRoundtable

Cindy Gregovich

~facilitators roundtable washeld November 28, 1994.An ice breaker, small groupdiscussion, and a presenta...tion on team building by

Ruth Olson were part of the session.

The presentation reminded us allthat team building is an ongoingprocess. New ideas need to be broughtto the team meetings to make theminteresting and to keep the membersfocused. Among the suggestions were:group discussions, break into smallgroups or pairs, individual/teamassessments, simulations, group exer...cises, ice breakers, lectures, roleplaying, bring in a different facilitatoror show videos. The session wasdesigned to assess the needs of facilita ...tors and to see how the Inciters (thetraining and facilitation team) can helpthem meet their teams' needs. Goodfeedback was supplied and will be usedto plan future roundtables.

If you were unable to attend andwould like to offer your suggestions,please e...mail an Inciter Team member:(Linda Braziel: lbraziel, Jane Wiseman:wisej, Cindy Gregovich: cingreg or RuthOlson: ralson).

Thank you, facilitators, for yourthoughts, ideas, and the time youdevoted toward making QualityImprovement a success.

CorrigendumThe article entitled Open Tearn Revisited,featured in the last issue of Directions, wasincorrectly attributed.

The authors should have been listed as: KarenAgy,[enae Andershonis, BarryCross, Dee Neal,Tram Nguyen, Lynn Restrepo, Nguyet Sin andCatherine Wicks.

Announcements• On January 14th

, the ServQualNetwork will feature Gary [usela,Boeing's corporate director of execu­tive education and development, whowill speak on "Creating SystemsWhere People Can Thrive" which willfocus on organization and leadershipdimensions of high quality workplaces.This free event is offered monthly forWashington State employees andagencies working on total qualitymanagement. Contact Naomi Nobles(3,4990 or e-mail at nmn) to reserve aride in the van.

• A variety ofTQM resource materi­als are available on the 2nd floor of theAdministration Building in FinancialManagement. All FM staff are encour­aged to utilize or check-out the manyarticles, books, and videos on topics ofprocess improvement, leadership,measurement, and team building. Inaddition, a complete suggested re­source list is available courtesy of theCQI,L electronic mail network. Pleasecontact Ruth Lindgren, NaomiNobles, or Ruth Olson for moreinformation.

• The Inciters (otherwise known asthe Training and Facilitation Team) iscurrently on hiatus until a structure fortraining is better defined. In themeantime, if you have training orfacilitation questions, please contacteither Linda Braziel (3,5177, lbraziel),Jane Wiseman (3,8282, wisej) , CindyGregovich (3,7?60, cingreg) , or RuthOlson (5,9838, rolson). Upcomingsessions on Awareness, ProblemSolving, and Recognition are beingplanned beginning in January.

A Sincere CFD Thank You!Jackie Levine

Mike Bryant, realizing these folks are serious about the pie,makes a final offer.

~s of this writing, Financial Management is number 1 in participationfor the 1994 UW Combined Fund Drive (CFD) with 85% of usparticipating. This is a 19% increase from 1993's 66% and we also hada 21% increase in dollars donated. That is quite an accomplishmentand I believe most of our success is attributable to our training and

experience with QI and the generosity of the staff of Financial Management.

I would like to share with you how this all came about. First a call went out tothe division for volunteers for the position of overall coordinator and for depart,men tal representatives . Those replies came in very qu ickly . I volunteered to be thecoordinator and the following people volunteered to be their department's repre­sentatives: Marie Hurlbut-Accounting Operations, Mark Landis-StudentLoans, Lolita Hidalgo and Hyang [a Kwon-Accounts Payable, [acki Wrigg­Grant & Contract Accounting, [oni McDonald and Edna Ramos-Payroll, StuartEng-Student Accounts, Gordon Hammond-Financial Accounting, RuthLindgren-Controller and Investments, and Linda Sexauer-Receivables Collec­tion. Some of these people volunteered in past campaigns, which was a big help tothose of us new to the campaign.

Once it was determined who the reps were, we got together to meet each otherand our CFD loaned executive, Andrew McCullough from US West. We beganpreliminary discussions and arranged to meet after we all attended the CF Dleadership session.

Continued on Page 6

Express SuccessMary Brokaw

A RecognitionYear in Review

1lJecognition Express, theRecognition Team's latestAD~venture, is off to a

!J flying start!

The first station stopwas at the Payroll Office on October 4... a 2:00 P.M. "cake and cola" partybrought by four Recognition Teammembers. The response from Payrollstaffers was very enthusiastic. Theyenjoyed the party atmosphere andparticularly loved the colorful banners,decorated with witty and affectionatesayings appropriate to Payroll. Theconsensus was, "It made us feel reallyspecial!"

RQT's second enterprise was a safarito Student Loans on October 5. GhanSachdeva, RQT representative fromthis department, was particularlyexcited to see his colleagues getrecognized. "From their comments andsmiling faces, I can easily guess thateverybody liked it," he said. O thercomments overheard on this occasionwere: "Great Idea, the food is alwayswelcome, but more important was therecognition for a good job," "I thinkRQT Express is a worthwhile program."The entire staff appreciated beingrecognized as a WHOLE, and all at onetime.

The Recognition Express took theirtrain to Student Accounts Office onOctober 14, where they and theirgoodies and banners were again greetedwith delight and surprise. Everyoneliked the banners; the morale-boostingmessage had even more impact becauseit was tuition-deadline day, so many oftheir customers also appreciated the"specialness" of the Student Accountsstaff and their being recognized in sucha way!

Financial Accounting was probablythe most surprised group. When wearrived on November 16 with ourgoodies and balloons and banners, theyhad assembled in the GAO conferenceroom, and were looking very seriousindeed. They were expecting a budgetmeeting; but instead .. . they gotRECOGNITION. Jon Garcia expressedit as "uplifting, NOT a calorie-countingoccasion." O thers also remarked onhow surprised they were, and what a lotof fun they had. One person alsoremarked that, because of the nature oftheir work, they have few occasions tobe together as a group, so this one wasespecially nice!

The Recognition Team has discov~

ered again in a personal way thatrecognition, like many other reward­

ing experiences, works bothways. When you give

.......~!IliIi:io~\ recognition, the pleasure isindeed a shared one!

Ci1he Recognition Quality

J- Team looks back on 1994

as a year of progress andchange. We would beremis s if we neglected this

opportunity to express our sincereappreciation to Jackie Levine for theoutstanding contributions she made tothe RQT while serving as its leader.Jackie, you have provided an exampleof enthusiasm and commitment whichis an inspiration to the entire FinancialManagement organization. Thank youfor everything. Peggy Fitzwater, whofollowed Jackie as leader, is well on theway to establishing herself as a worthysuccessor. Keep up the good work,Peggy!

During 1994, four AIM awardeeswere honored: Fred Bailey, GaryComfort, Marie Hurlbut and DickSimmons. In addition, three individualTOPS awards were made: JoanneBedier, Bren da Grayson and HienTran.

Also, the Sweet Peas Team (LeenaAmaraweera, Doris Coxon, SusanElvert, Ken Haines, Pam Jacobs andFrances Wilson) and the group respon­sible for the NACUBO award proposal(Doug Breckel, Michael Fero, JudyFingar, Ken Haines and V'EllaWarren) were recognized for theircontributions with T OPS awards.

Thanks to everyone for a great year-let's do it again in '95.

CFD Thank You(Cant/d)

We were all invited to a CFDLeadership Session for an informationbriefing. We learned about the cam,paign, some of the agencies that benefitfrom our contributions, and some ofthe activities that worked for otherareas.

Since we all had training andexperience with QI principles, it waseasier for us. We immediately calledourselves the CFD Team. We set areasonable measurable goal for thedivision and discussed ways to help usreach that goal. We brainstormed ideasfor disseminating division,wide infer­mation and planned for a celebrationevent. We massaged those ideas into a

very informative day of speakers andvideos for the whole division to learnabout some of the charities in theCombined Fund. We then planned acelebration to say thank you to our co'workers for their generosity this yearand in past years. The pie-in-the-facepart of the celebration was a littleuncomfortable for some so we workedon that idea until there was consensusthat this could be fun.

As the campaign came to a close, weknew we would exceed our goal of a5% increase in participation for thedivision (because of the tremendousincrease from Accounts Payable andStudent Accounts, our overall increaseis 19%). Our last task as a team was thecelebration on Nov 'l": We had a veryshort time span to be in the room werented in the HUB. Only because ofteam effort (and help from Mary

Brokaw, Nabil Girgis, andHenry Tan)were we able to transport balloons,food, and prizes and set up the room by12 noon. This was the first time thatwe treated the campaign as a division,wide event and I think that it workedvery well. We all shared the things thatneeded to be addressed for this event.The best compliment I heard was,"This was your first event of this kind?I thought that this had been donebefore."

If this event happens next year, wewill need to think about a guest piereceiver. Mike Bryant told me not toeeeeeeeeeven think about calling himnext year. He won't be taking any callsfrom me during the months of Septem­ber or October.

Congratulations and thanks to all!

Where Are We Now? Survey ResultsIn the September issue of Directions we asked our readers to respond to the question, "With regard to Quality Improve,

ment, where do you think you/your department/senior management is/are (Denial, Resistance, Exploration or Commitment)relative to work place change?" The graphs below summarize your responses and are largely consistent with EIT views.

1

You

Denial

Resistance

Exploration

Commitment

Your Department

20

Executive Improvement Team

Susan Ball

Measure for Measure

everal years ago, the In,

~vestments Office formal,ized its partnershipefforts with a key suppli­er-The Northern Trust

Company. This Chicago bank is thecustodian for the University's invest,ment portfolios and an organizationthat embarked on its own quest forquality improvement in the early1990s. In April 1993, five members ofThe Northern Trust representing vari­ous facets of the service relationshipwith the UW met with six members ofthe Investments Office staff in an infer­mation sharing and problem identifica­tion session. Among the issuesidentified was the need to develop pro,cess measures that would focus the sup'plier on areas of critical importance tothe customer (i.e., us!).

Together the Investments Officeand The Northern Trust decided upona team name-the Pioneers. And wedid feel as though we were chartingnew territory. Here in the InvestmentsOffice we were being asked by our sup'plier to identify our needs and qualitystandards in order for them to betterserve us! The shoe was on the otherfoot but that did not make it any easierto answer the question. We even beganto feel some sympathy for all those cus­tomers we had approached with similarquestions only to be met with puzzledexpressions and that annoyingly un­helpful response, "I'll know it when Isee it."

The Quest for Perfection

It wasn't exactly true that we didn'tknow what we wanted. We wanted ev­erything. On time. Accurate. And inan easily accessible form. End of discus,

sion. And so we were perennially dis,satisfied. The Northern Trust respond,ed by sending us everything they had- box loads of reports on our invest,ment managers every month. Some,times they arrived later rather thansooner which gave us an excuse towhine a little. Sometimes the reportshad dreadful errors embedded in themthat gave us an excuse to whine a lot.To make matters worse, we kept"changing the process"- hiring newmanagers, firing others, and modifyingour investment policies to allow foreven more complexity in our invest,ment portfolios. Turnover of key per,sonnel servicing our account at TheNorthern Trust helped ensure our liveswould stay interesting. The misery justkept compounding.

We were the Customer... by definition, wewere always right.

The 'Blame' and 'Whine' Factor

And still, we kept asking for every,thing and whining when "it" was notquite what we had in mind. No matterthat we hadn't really gotten around todefining just what "on time" and "accu­rate" really meant! We were, after all,The Customer! By definition we werealways right! Besides, it was sometimescomforting to be able to roll our eyes,gaze meaningfully at each other and say"Guess who messed up AGAIN?"

The Pioneers' Progress

In spite of ourselves, we were gettingcloser to our goal. Early in 1994 we

completed our team charter. In it weclearly identified measurement as a pri­mary objective. We held two more on,site working sessions with TheNorthern Trust in the first half of 1994and by the end of the second session,we had defined an approach to mea,surement acceptable to both sides ofthe partnership. We did some backtesting and implemented the measure,ment tool in July 1994. Now THIS wasprogress!

We learned many things along theway. First of all, it is impossible to mea,sure "everything." We had to thinkabout the areas of supplier service thatreally made a difference in our abilityto meet OUR customer needs. We hadto PRIORITIZE. We then had to com,municate our priorities to The North,ern Trust in a way that would enablethem to change their processes in orderto better serve us. That meant ourmeasure had to be well-defined, objec­tive, and easy to understand.

By George, We've Got It!

The amazing thing is that it appearsto be making a difference. A key reportwas reformatted to include helpful doc,umentation on investment activity.This change resulted in process effi­ciencies at our end such as shortenedinternal reviews. Importantly, this im­provement was instigated not by us butby The Northern Trust. Our expecta­tions are not only being met, they arebeing exceeded! Even more encourag­ing, The Northern Trust is now fo­cused in a way that enables preventionand/or correction of errors before infer­mation is passed on to us. An improve,ment? You bet!

Directions is published quarterly by theOffice of Financial Management,

University of Washington.

For more information, please contact:

Ruth Olson, Editor (545-9838)or rolson@u.washington.edu

Where Quality Emphasis Lies

I

Measurement I •___________.7..5.5 : II

Teamwork •••••••••••••••7•.8.1II

10 Tips to Insure A QualityCustomer Driven Culture

Source: Pacific First Bank

1. Assess your present culture. (Attitudes,Values, Commitment)

2. Form your vision for Quality Service.(Mission, Philosophy, Values)

3. Develop your Team. (Shared responsi­bilities, leadership)

4. Establish a Commitment to Values.(Develop a passion forqualiry Service)

5. Develop a structure for continuousimprovement. (Quality & Service)

6. Establish standards for performance.(behaviors that yield quality)

7. Develop a measurement and monitoringsystem.

8. Implement a recognition and rewardsystem.

9. Evaluate results for continuous renewal

10. Refer back to step one.

8.48

Involving employees 1••••••••••••••

7.•1.7.Quality training I 7.01

1

.... .Rating of Emphasis: 1 (low) - 10 (high) scalec=J Present _ Future

Management commitment ICustomer focus r -_______lIIIIIiiiii

Source: American Society for Quality Control and the Gallup Organization

There are formal quality programs in place at 58% of U.S. companies. A survey ofthe American Society for Quality Control and The Gallup Organization finds thecurrent and future TQM priorities as follows:

COOLEY, DIANE LPE-10

Financial Management

AG-80

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