ASQ CQE Certified Quality Engineer – Section I – Management and Leadership (18 Questions) Part 5

43. 1E-2 Facilitation Tools – Brainstorming

In the list of facilitation tool. The first tool which we want to discuss here is the brainstorming. This one is the most commonly used tool for facilitation and for many other purposes as well. So if you go further in this course and when we will talk about quality tools, one tool which is cause and effective diagram or the fish bone diagram there you will see that brainstorming plays an important role there as well. Another tool is affinity diagram. There also you would see that the basis of that affinity diagram is the brainstorming. So brainstorming is a group or individual creativity technique.

So this could be done as a group or this could be done individually as well and this is a creativity technique where you come out with number of ideas, number of creative thoughts either as a group or as an individual. And what you want to do here is you want to solve a problem by having number of ideas which are simultaneously contributed by members or yourself.

You can do individual brainstorming as well here the intent is to get as many ideas as possible. Don’t bother about the quality of the idea, just look at the quantity, how many ideas you receive that is important, not the quality of that because any idea which you might think in the first look as a stupid idea might really be a great idea. So very important thing here in brainstorming session is that you need to defer a judgment, don’t judge any idea.

So in a group, if you are doing something and if you think that someone has given an idea which looks like a stupid idea, don’t argue, don’t judge that, just note it down. That’s very important in brainstorming that you don’t judge ideas when you are collecting these ideas. Let’s look at four important rules in brainstorming. These four important rules are focused on quantity.

We talked earlier as well that you don’t judge the quality and withhold criticism you don’t criticize an idea even though that might look off track outside the box. Just record that and then you need to welcome unusual ideas because that’s the whole purpose of brainstorming. Look at what all possibilities are there. If something looks unusual, then even then you record that and then combine and improve ideas. So once you have done that main brainstorming session, then you can combine all these ideas, discuss about that and improve that. But that’s later part of that not in the main brainstorming session. So this was brainstorming as a tool for facilitation.

44. 1E-2 Facilitation Tools – Nominal Group Technique NGT

Coming to the next Facilitation tool which is nominal group technique or NGT. NGT is similar to brainstorming. Here also we are collecting number of ideas from the group. But the problem with the brainstorming is that when you do brainstorming as a group, there are some members who are very dominating. So they will have lots and lots of ideas. After ideas, they will keep on talking.

And then there are some people who really don’t open up in the group so they keep silent even though they have good ideas. But they are scared to talk or somehow they are not able to talk in that group. That problem is solved by nominal group technique. So this is similar to brainstorming here also the aim is to generate as many ideas. So this is done in five steps.

Step number one is introduction and explanation, where you introduce explain the problem on which you want to generate ideas. So now everyone sitting in the room is aware of the problem. The second part of that is Silent Generation of ideas. Unlike brainstorming, where everyone starts talking and someone keeps on recording on a flip chart. Here, everyone silently generates idea. Put on a piece of paper.

They take some time. No. Doubt whatever their thoughts are and then they start sharing ideas one by one so everyone gets a chance. So person number one tells one idea. Person number two will tell one idea. So once you have done with the whole group. Then again, coming to person number one, so that way everyone has a chance of speaking out and sharing his or her ideas. So that is what is done in this third step, which is sharing ideas.

Once everyone has shared their ideas then you can have a group discussion, you can discuss those ideas and then you can have voting and ranking to pick the ideas which are most suitable for your purpose or your problem. So this was nominal group technique, similar to the brainstorming, but with a little bit of difference, where everyone gets a chance and ideas are silently recorded first by each individual and then shared one by one and then evaluated. So this was tool number two in facilitation, which is nominal group technique.

45. 1E-2 Facilitation Tools – Multivoting

Previously when we talked about NGT or nominal group technique there we said that ideas are recorded. Everyone individually notes down the ideas, then these are shared and then later on these are discussed and voted. Voted to find out what is the best suitable idea for the problem. That’s where you could use this multi voting approach. What cultivating approach is that? Here in this, each member is asked to select, let’s say five number of ideas. So you have selected, let’s say, 1015 ideas. Then you ask every member to select five best ideas out of that and give them a rank. So five marks for the best solution and one mark for the least solution out of these five ideals.

So for example, I pick five items and in that I grade them from five to one. Five being the top preferred idea and one being the least preferred ideas out of these five. And then based on that, you can calculate and come out on a decision to select an idea. Let’s look at a simple example on the next slide. So here I have five members, member ABCD and E.

So five members are doing brainstorming. And then what we are doing brainstorming on picking up a color, color for the car, color for something. So now there are ten colors. Let’s say color number 1234. These things you can read as idea number 1234 up to ten. So let’s say there are ten ideas here. Now, each member is supposed to pick five. And for the sake of simplicity, let’s say we have made this three.

Now, each member is asked to pick three ideas out of this. So if you look at member number A, member number A picked color number two, color number five and color number six. And member A gave three marks or the best option to color number two.

So you can see that under A you get three marks in front of color number two, two marks for color number five and one mark for color number six. Same way, all these members have selected three colors and given them a ranking of three to one. For example, member number E preferred color number four the most.

And that’s the reason E has given three marks to color number four. Now, once you have done this, you can simply add these add the marking against each of these ideas. So if you look at color number one, the total of that is three only because member D wanted that as a first choice. So idea number one or color number one gets three marks. Color number two gets nine marks. Color number five gets nine marks. So based on that, now you can decide that if you have to select that, probably you will select anything between two or five. So either you will select two or you will select five based on some other factors. But then based on this group consensus, now you know that the best choice or the best ideas are idea number two and idea number five rest all you can discard. So that’s how you pick ideas from the big list using.

46. 1E-2 Facilitation Tools – Conflict Resolution

In facilitation. The third tool which we want to discuss here is conflict resolution. So when you are doing facilitation, you are helping team to achieve their objective without proper power, without official power. Then there are a number of cases where you will end up in conflict. That conflict could be between what you think and what team thinks. Whatever conflicts are there, how do you address conflict? So this is another tool or another thing which you learn when you need to facilitate. How do you resolve conflicts? So let’s understand first what conflict is. Conflict is when there is a difference between what I want and what you want. So let’s say if two parties are there, you and me. Now conflict comes when your interest and my interest doesn’t match. If both of us agree to do something, we are okay. Both of us agree not to do something, we are okay.

But when you have a different opinion than me, then only conflict comes. So conflict is a balance between my interest and your interest. So there are a number of approaches or there are a number of ways here. One way could be if I’m powerful then I will do what is in my interest. Or probably if you are powerful, you could do what is in your interest and forget about my interest. So we could come to a situation where you don’t care about each other’s interest and do something.

But then there are some mid ways as well. Let’s look at the next slide and that will make it clear. So here we have two axes. One is empathy and second is assertiveness. Empathy is your interest. When I take care of your interest, that’s empathy. That’s on x axis, on y axis. This is assertiveness. Assertiveness is my interest, how much I take care of my interest. And based on that, you can resolve conflict by these five ways. Let’s look at one by one here. If we look at accommodation, what do we do in accommodation? In accommodation, let’s say I accommodate whatever you want. So when I accommodate means that I don’t care about my interest and I’m caring about your interest. So empathy was your interest, assertiveness was my interest.

So if you see accommodating, accommodating is low on my interest. I’m not taking care of my interest, but I am taking care of your interest. So I am accommodating you. Similarly, if I go to this bottom one, avoiding if you look at this axis, this is my interest and this is your interest. This is my this is your accommodating is on negative side of both of these. It’s somewhere here accommodating. So it’s neither taking care of my interest, not taking care of your interest. So basically we are just avoiding the conflict. Neither you get something out of that nor I get something out of that. Coming to this one third quadrant here, which is competing.

So what we do in competing, competing is that my interest is high and your interest is on the lower side so I am maximizing concern about myself and minimizing empathy and minimizing your interest or concern for you. So that case we are competing so I’m just taking care of my interest and that will lead to the competition. The fourth quadrant here is, which is the most important one is collaborating. Collaborating is where your interest is also high, my interest is also high so I’m taking care of my interest and as well as I am taking care of your interest and that is what is collaborating.

Collaborating is a win win situation and somewhere in the middle is compromising where you somehow take care of something your interest and you partially take care of other person’s interest. So that’s a compromising. So these are five ways to deal with conflict so depending on number of situation, depending on how much power you have, how much bargaining you have, how much interested you are in the solution, you could end up in five of these strategies for conflict resolution. So this was the third tool in the facilitation which is conflict resolution.

47. 1E-2 Facilitation Tools – Force Field Analysis

The fourth and the last tool in this section for Facilitation is forced field analysis. Forced field analysis is the balance between the driving forces and forces resisting the change. So whenever you are planning for some change, you need to see that what all is helping in getting that thing changed and what all is resisting. Finding out the balance is the force field analysis. So you just need to find out what’s helping and what is resisting. So here, if you see there are some forces which are in favor of the change, there are some forces which are against the change, you need to find those out and that can help you in making that change successful.

So if we look at some of the example, so what are the forces which are against the change? Against the change is somewhere here which is reduced over time. Let’s say if you are making a change with the help of that, things will get faster, there will be less overtime. So worker might be resisting that. So these are the things which are resisting change. And then there’s an initial investment. Let’s say if this change requires some initial investment that also is a resistance, management might not approve them. And then there is a fear of new technology and there could be a number of factors. These are just simple examples which I’ve taken.

But then for whatever change you want to make, you need to list down that what are the factors which will resist the change. And on the other hand, you list down, you make another list which has the list of factors which will help in this change. So let’s take some simple example here. Customer looking for less defect that will help us in making that change. Because whatever solution you are providing is helping in reducing the defect rate, so that’s something which is a positive thing or in favor of the change, in favor of the change is low downtime, could be increased sale and many other things.

These are just the simple examples. These factors might change from case to case. So whatever change, whatever thing you are going to implement that, you just make a list of two things, what all will help you in making that change and what all will resist that change. And then you can look at each of these and find out that what you need to do. So let’s say if you have a resistance which says that initial investment is a problem, is something which might resist the change, then make sure that you talk to management beforehand and get their approval. So this was tool number four for Facilitation, which is forced field analysis. So with this we complete the body of knowledge, one E, which was Facilitation principle.

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