Tony Dottino is the founder of Dottino Consulting and the primary author of several workshops that focus on performance innovation, employee engagement, organizational creativity, leadership development and more effective communication between all levels in an organization. Tony’s IBM experience was the basis for his current work
Tony’s financial experience at IBM inspired his focus of integrating these topics to produce measurable results that can be seen in financial , customer satisfaction, employee morale, and productivity metrics. Many clients find his story of how someone with such a strong financial background has put together such a powerful series of workshops that lead to cultural changes in their companies very helpful in understanding how his work came together.
1979 IBM
Tony Dottino’s work in the area of Performance Innovation began in 1979. All of his education and IBM work experience up to that time was in accounting and financial planning.
Tony had just received a promotion into the Accounting Department for IBM US HQ for US plants, Labs and Sales. A finance executive told Tony that he was being sent for a full week to Winter Park, Florida to attend a workshop given by Phil Crosby. The executive also provided Tony with Phil Crosby’s latest book, ”Quality Is Free.” Tony participated in the quality workshop in Winter Park, along with twenty Quality professionals. That session laid the foundation for Tony’s work in human performance.
Once on the job, Tony learned that a combination of aggressive Japanese business practices and IBM’s own internal quality problems were threatening to transform IBM into a marginal player in the computer industry. IBM executives had no intention of letting that happen, which meant they had to learn to be more proactive.
Nine-Month Performance Analysis Initiative
Tony’s first assignment was to determine how much money was being wasted at IBM doing non-quality work. He visited manufacturing plants, software and product development labs and headquarters in sales and service. Once the analysis was completed, the executive team asked Tony to present his work.
Tony informed the IBM Division Presidents that more than 20% of IBM’s costs for US manufacturing and service were spent on “failure” (wasted work, rework, mistakes, miscalculations, corrections, etc). This was in stark contrast to Crosby’s claims to expect 5% failure. A second review, this time with division controllers, revealed that the number was even higher, exceeding 25% failure. John Akers, IBM’s President, met with Tony directly to discuss possible solutions.
Tony agreed to research the current trends and solutions, only to discover that there were no existing precedents for what should be done. Working with key quality personnel, Tony developed a series of eighteen different functional studies that remain the basis of his work to this day. The studies showed that failure was everywhere, its cost most often hidden, buried in departmental budgets. Individual departments had failure rates as high as 40%. No one would mention the cost of failure during budget reviews.
Departmental Activity Analysis Tool
Tony needed to create a plan to eliminate the waste. He developed a tool called the Departmental Activity Analysis. It helped managers and front line employees identify the problems causing the failure. It also generated recommendations on the best ways to eliminate the failure. This tool became very successful across multiple business channels.
The next stage of development included Tony’s Accounting Director, Bill Grogan. They concluded that the same management disciplines which exist in manufacturing could be applied to business processes, departments and individual jobs. Using Bill’s department as the test case, they set out to build the formula for increasing departmental proficiencies by eliminating waste. The successful strategy they created at IBM is known today as Six Sigma.
Tony’s next mission was a dual position, equally shared between Grogan and the IBM Quality Institute. Tony continued to sharpen his quality improvement processes and skills while also teaching at the Institute two days per week. As a result, Tony’s theories were applied across multiple groups and opportunities.
During his teaching tenure at the IBM QI Tony interfaced with more than two thousand IBM executives from the company’s global geography.
Tony’s dual-role efforts earned him the IBM President’s Award , the only instructor to earn such a prestigious award. As a second piece of recognition, IBM invited Tony to participate in a request from President Reagan to create a national award for Quality. This become known as the Malcolm Baldrige Award.
World Trade Operation
Tony’s next position lasted for ten years. As a mid-level operational manager in IBM’s World Trade Operations, he continued to apply his performance innovation strategies and tools. Working integrally with operations in the Far East, Latin America and Canada, he had the same conclusion as in his earlier work. If any quality initiative was going to become a thriving part of the culture, the front line must be heavily involved. Tony developed a simple and pragmatic set of tools and skills they could use on an as-needed basis.
In 1983, this work was presented to the IBM Board of Directors and led to what IBM called Business Process management. The rest of the world calls it Six Sigma.
Throughout Tony’s stay in the World Trade Operation, he was able to demonstrate effective ways to deploy basic skills to the front line. The skills had had clear measures of improving financial performance, customer service, productivity and, finally, employee morale. He taught employees to improve their productivity by identifying work flow Tasks as either Required, Preventive, Appraisal or Failure (now known by clients as the RPAF Analysis). He taught managers the difference between Proactive and Reactive management approaches.
The results earned him a Chairman’s Award for Excellence and a second President’s Award for Teaching Excellence.
The Human Brain and the Future
During his tenure in the WTO, Tony met Tony Buzan, author on human performance and the brain, and an instructor for the American Management Association. Buzan believed that the next 10 years would reveal secrets about the human brain that would provide a significant opportunity to improve human performance. Buzan insisted that the pioneers who learned this new knowledge and found a pragmatic way to apply it would have an incredible opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives. This information would complete the puzzle pieces of Tony’s work.
1993 Leaving IBM
In 1993 Tony started Dottino Consulting. This move allowed Tony’s passion for human performance to move forward at a faster pace. He introduced his PITT Workshop (Process Innovation Through Teams), which is known today as Grass Roots Innovation (GRI). This work is introduced in detail in his second book, Developing Grass Roots Leaders. In these workshops, Tony and his co-founder, Evelyn Walker, introduce the groundbreaking work from IBM. The workshops equip front line employees, managers and senior executives in performance innovation and best practices for transforming into dynamic, Proactive organizations.
When Dottino Consulting is finished with a successful implementation of GRI, an organization has an aligned culture of people speaking honestly with a focus on company goals, that consistently leads to best practice results.
One of Tony’s clients summarized his passion for human performance best. “I am more than 40 years old and was sitting in a back office IT operation when he came along. After teaching me how to apply his tools to my job I am happy to say I am not sitting in a Directors Job and loving everything I do. And no one should ever feel like you cannot teach an old dog new tricks especially when Tony is around.”
