Monday, September 01, 2003

“Don’t apologize, be on-time”

“Don’t apologize, be on-time” was advice given by Sean Connery to Wesley Snipes in Rising Sun. It was one of the few true insights into Japanese culture in an otherwise poor movie.

Hence, it was with some surprise that I stood on the sidewalk outside my office last Friday waiting for my (Japanese) wife who was late. When I called her she was “2 minutes away”. 10 minutes later she showed up with 20 minutes to take me to an appointment which, at best, was 20 minutes away.

It turned out that she setout in plenty of time but got stuck behind a truck which had grounded itself turning off Ballard Bridge into Nickerson. On the return trip we hit the same jam, as emergency services tried to clear the mess with a heavy duty tow truck. In the end we were 10 minutes late. My wife’s journey which would normally have taken 20 minutes each way, actually took over an hour. Is it reasonable to attribute blame in this kind of situation?

There is considerable variance possible between my home and my office. The draw-bridge can be up - typical delay 5 minutes. There are numerous traffic lights. The level-crossing can be closed for a train - typical delay 10 minutes but alternative route available. A typical journey takes 20 minutes. A good time is 15 minutes. If most traffic lights are against, the bridge is up and the train is coming then it might take 30 minutes. However, if there is an accident or a fire (as happened last year) then the journey could take much longer.

These latter events are known in quality assurance as special cause. The others - train, lights, bridge - are common cause. To buffer for special cause events may allow for a face-saving delivery on-time but it is very expensive. Most estimates would be way over and projects would look far too expensive. For the collect husband and take him to appointment project a reasonable estimate for the round trip might have been 50 minutes. This would have absorbed all reasonable common cause variance with an almost 100% certainty of completing the job on-time.

Any reasonable senior manager should expect line managers to buffer common cause variance appropriately whilst accepting that unforeseeable special causes can still make a delivery late without attributing blame or fault.