Read and Misunderstand
PC Load Letter
Congratulations, your training program has a 98% completion rate!
Why are you still answering so many misinformed, half-baked and incoherent questions? Most quality professionals can’t go to the coffee maker, the restroom or to their car at the end of the night without, “…a quick quality question”.
“Aren’t you trained to that” and “Did you look in the process?” is the QA equivalent of IT’s “Did you turn it off and back on again?” There are no good answers to these questions. Whether they tried and failed or failed to try… they have a problem…and so do you.
Here’s the hard truth; if you wrote the process and nobody reads or understands it, it’s your fault. It’s my fault too… but I’m trying to do better.
Reading 100 processes in the first week of employment is demoralizing to team members that want to make immediate impact. I’ve come to the realization that most knowledge workers don’t want to follow the process, they just want the correct answer. Like it or not, that’s the world we live in. With search and now A.I. that reality will become ever more prevalent.
Read and Understand has been long dead. It’s successor, just bookmark and refer back has one foot in the grave. They’d rather ask you, the quality nerd. You’re basically A.I. that takes bio-breaks.
So, what’s the solution? Well, it depends (sorry, that’s another QA canned response).
Here are some concepts to consider.
Reduce - The number of trainings, procedures, numbers of pages and redundant information need to be drastically reduced. If you need 3 procedures to explain your CAPA process you have a problem.
Reformat - Read & Understand is hereby abolished. If your training program isn’t “Learn, Do, Teach” you are setting yourself up for waste and retention issues. No more 8 1/2” x 11” Portrait with 1 inch margins, headers and footers. Your teams are using laptops and mobile devices, not printing on a 90’s era Xerox. Target: one-pager processes with 16:9 aspect ratio with smart links.
Restructure - Every training offering, process and workflow should be designed to satisfy customers first.
What? The last one sounds to obvious? Well, why does your quality system look like it was designed to satisfy your Notified Body? Are they buying your product? Think about it.