Mega-OT, but here goes...

On Sun, 2002-11-10 at 19:20, Wagner Lipnharski wrote:

As far as Digikey goes, as a customer I've rarely experienced what you
have.  I hope they're not on the downward side of the quality curve.

Not to get off on a rant here, but...

> My standby personnel answer emails within 6 hours of contact.  On evenings
> when we most receive emails from customers, they get surprised that we
> answer in minutes up to 2am.  My company is NOT on ISO-9000 yet, but
> appears that we don't need it, we do our job as planned and as promised,
> except, when a lousy supplier messes up with our plans.

You may or may not ever need it.  Thank your lucky stars that you have
such dedicated individuals on your staff, too.  (And thank *THEM*
often.)

The only time you need the certifications is just like in your personal
and professional life.  If you couldn't apply for a job you wanted to do
or to bid on, because you didn't meet the prerequisite requirement of
having a certification, you'd go get the certification.

If your customers seem to think you need it to do the job, or worse,
your customers say that only ISO-certified companies can bid on their
projects... you get certified.  Because that's the game.

(Once the customers figure out that there is little value in the
certifications the requirement will pass -- rejoice when a company
that's "certified" makes a mistake... it will help kill the perception
that there's value in the certification.)

In the three organizations I've been involved in that did ISO
certifications, the only thing they appeared to learn internally as a
skill they could retain from the process was how to create more
paperwork and less sale-able product, and their marginal cost of
production went up.  Way up.  (As best as I could figure.)  But because
of the cost involved, once they started down that path it was typical
"herd" mentality... It *MUST* be good to have this certification,
right?  Everyone else has it!  And we're almost there!

The last company I worked for that was doing an ISO-9000 certification
dropped the process when hard times hit... they realized they could
better service their customers with their "downsized" staff by working
on customer issues, rather than on the reams of documentation necessary
for ISO certification.  And the proof is in the pudding.  They're still
alive while competitors died off.  It was the right choice for their
niche.  Depending on your industry, choosing to not certify may not be
right for you.

If you already know how to design, document, and deliver product to your
customers properly, and they're satisfied with your performance, no
piece of paper like ISO will ever speak louder than the personal
references of your customers and their experiences with your
organization or you... UNLESS there's a REQUIREMENT that you have the
certification to sell to certain customers.

For a while in any closed market there will be powerful interest in NOT
dropping the requirement because other larger organizations (with more
cushion of time and money to waste) will see the money they spent
getting the certification (instead of servicing their customers) as
valuable to them -- even a "competitive advantage" -- and they'll defend
their closed market of customers who say "we require you to be
certified" and even actively foster that opinion with their customers
"Hey!  We're better, we're ISO Certified!".  But eventually customer
service and delivering what the customer wants always wins.

Many technology certifications for individuals are similar -- if the
individual already has proven aptitude toward learning specific types of
skills in system administration, network configuration, and/or operating
system and application software setup and configuration -- forcing the
individual to have a certification in those topics on a specific
technology is relatively silly, because most of the technology is not
"new" but just "repackaged" every few years.  However, Human Resource
departments do this all the time.  Serial data is still serial data,
TCP/IP is still TCP/IP, storage management is still storage management,
databases are still databases.

[Another side rant: When did we become Human Resources and not
Personnel?  Don't you think that choice of words says something right
there to the brilliant, intelligent employees you need to run your
business?]

As a person who has been a hiring manager before in a large organization
in the past -- I *dreamed* of getting something other than the
sanitized, sorted, and censored resumes the HR department forwarded to
me.  (And this is probably why personal references still get people jobs
80-90% of the time over resumes... interviewing and hiring the RIGHT
person is hard to do from a piece of paper that summarizes their life.)
Show me the crappy looking resume of the guy or gal that dragged their
butt up from a menial "non-thinking" job to a entry-level help desk
position while working two other jobs to pay the bills while they were
learning, instead of the freshly-minted "MCSE" from the technology
"college" in the burbs who thinks he or she deserves the job... any
day... I know who I'll hire and want to mentor.

I've long ago left management.  I'd rather play with the technology, and
I will probably always be that way.  And I'll always remember what my
first "real" manager taught me to remember as I worked my first
engineering job... "Quality Assurance is not a department.  It's an
attitude.  Do it, and admit your mistakes.  Never rely on someone else
to check the quality of your work -- it's your work.  Even if it's their
job to check it."

His words have carried me far beyond what anyone ever expected of the
kid who didn't have an engineering degree.  I've been the lead product
support "engineer" on numerous very high-dollar complex projects, and
can walk the talk.  I have the utmost respect for those with an
engineering degree who apply their knowledge -- they can easily whoop my
backside any day of the week.  If they want to.  And they deserve the
title of "Engineer" (with a capital-E) far more than I do.  But I've
learned that people are ultimately lazy creatures, and those who have
the mathematical talent and educational background sometimes believe
they're entitled to a certain lifestyle because they "know more than you
do".  About that time is when I put on the steam, pour the coal to it,
and whip them by taking better care of their customers than they do.

I'm usually not in it for the accolades, or awards or anything like
that... that's just the icing on the cake... Sometimes I am motivated
just because they said "you can't do that... you don't know how."

Nothing motivates me more or gets me more charged up than to make
someone else's customer happier with my service and abilities than a
competitor did... ESPECIALLY if they're supposed to be "certified" or
"qualified" and I'm not.  Oh man, is that FUN!  But having a customer
REMEMBER you a decade later and tell you that you always gave them the
best service... That's something to be treasured.  It doesn't happen
often.

Keep the faith -- take care of your customers and throw the pamphlets
from the ISO-selling certification people in the trash if you can afford
to.  Your customers will know you're the place to go when they need
something.

(And then my cynical side kicks in and says that... Then... your bigger
competitor who can't figure out how you did it will buy you out -- but
hopefully that means you'll laugh all the way to the bank... and do it
all over again in something else...)

Just smile and grin when you see "ISO 900X Certified" -- that means the
other company spent a lot of their people's time, and a whole lot of
money on the certification that you can spend making things better for
your customers!

Nate, nate@natetech.com

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