This thread is for student discussions of the Red Pen/ Blue Pen Exercise held on February 10.

Note: The exercise was developed by Dr. Bill Bellows of Boeing and In2InThinking.

Sorry I was unable to attend class that evening, can you give me the gest of the experiment, or suggest a location where I might read about it? :o

The red pen/blue pen exercise has been a great way for me to summarize in my mind the do's and don't's that a successful business should follow. Sometimes it can become overwhelming to think of each individual aspect and decide which is the most beneficial way to go. It is interesting to think what a "purple pen company" would be as a combination of the two. Maybe they deliver a great and sound product due to a regimented work environment with well-maintained machines and facility, and pays very well but has a high turnover rate because it attracts employees that want better pay but then burns them out quickly because of required overtime, mediocre benefits, and treated as a robot. The pens would have to be expensive to recover the higher salary and turnover cost. More expensive pens will likely not be as competitive and eventually the business would shut down. The purple pen company must become more like the blue pen company or the red pen company to remain competitive in the business. In hardship the tendency is to go toward the red pen ways, but it would be more beneficial to fight this tendency and become like the blue company. Which direction they go would be a determinant to success. I guess most companies are in the purple range and always striving to find their niche on one side of the spectrum or the other.

Sorry I was unable to attend class that evening, can you give me the gest of the experiment, or suggest a location where I might read about it? :o

There is a description of the exercise within the following link:
http://in2in.org/resources/byers_2004_forum_report.pdf

This is probably the wrong response, coming from "LA LA Land" and being quoted as saying "the sky is blue", someone also mentioned something about cats and dogs.....anyway, before we start making pens of any colour (this is the correct spelling of 'color'), why doesn't someone ask potential Customers what colour pen they want...

This is probably the wrong response, coming from "LA LA Land" and being quoted as saying "the sky is blue", someone also mentioned something about cats and dogs.....anyway, before we start making pens of any colour (this is the correct spelling of 'color'), why doesn't someone ask potential Customers what colour pen they want...

Please see my previous response for an internet page describing the exercise. Basically, the "blue pen" is to represent an enlightened corporation, a good place to work, while the "red pen" respresents the stereotypical regressive, bad place to work. But I have been impressed that the exercise allows for a certain amount of visualization and imagination that personalizes many quality and management principles.

Thanks, I'll look it over and get back to you.

Sorry for butting in, but I found this an interesting exercise. When I refered back to the link, however, I found a statement that I felt HAD to be repeated, especially to students in the Quality Program.

This, IMNSHO, is one of the keystones of quality (and of business in general) and cannot be overstated:

'Customer satisfaction? It depends, also. Satisfaction means meeting expectations. If we don't meet expectations, we disappoint. If we exceed expectations, we delight. Customers will tell others about disappointment or delight, but not so much about satisfaction. So how important is it? Where do you spend the money to acheive delight? Not everything about the customer's experience can be delightful.'

Hopefully this will give you something additional to think about during this exercise. I know it did for me.

Sorry for butting in, but I found this an interesting exercise. When I refered back to the link, however, I found a statement that I felt HAD to be repeated, especially to students in the Quality Program.

This, IMNSHO, is one of the keystones of quality (and of business in general) and cannot be overstated:

'Customer satisfaction? It depends, also. Satisfaction means meeting expectations. If we don't meet expectations, we disappoint. If we exceed expectations, we delight. Customers will tell others about disappointment or delight, but not so much about satisfaction. So how important is it? Where do you spend the money to acheive delight? Not everything about the customer's experience can be delightful.'

Hopefully this will give you something additional to think about during this exercise. I know it did for me.

Hmmmm ... might make a good final exam essay question.

Please see my previous response for an internet page describing the exercise. Basically, the "blue pen" is to represent an enlightened corporation, a good place to work, while the "red pen" respresents the stereotypical regressive, bad place to work. But I have been impressed that the exercise allows for a certain amount of visualization and imagination that personalizes many quality and management principles.

The "red pen" company sounds all too familiar to me. This type of organization is all about control, but control is an illusion. It is like a flea circus. You know the fleas are there on the tiny carousel, but you cannot see them (This is a great line from the Jurassic Park Movie). But it certainly holds true with this type of an organization. Managers control and micromanage employees, and berate them for not meeting meaningless quotas. They cannot see that the system or the process is the problem, not the employees. Employees become frustrated and try to do the best they can, trapped in an inadequate system and sub par processes.

So why do companies not change and become a "blue pen" company? As was stated in the exercise, the "red pen" philosophy of running a business is completely pervasive. For most managers, this is the only style of management that they know. They have not been trained to view the system holistically. They think that if they exert more control and force on the parts of the processes or system that production and the employees will improve. Employees in this type of system feel helpless and become desperate. They feel that they have no influence or capability to bring about change. So the managers and employees plod along doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I believe that the term for this is insanity. They do not try to change and do things differently, even though there are no rules that say that the processes and system cannot be changed (just like the exercise). In the meantime the customers, who wanted blue pens anyway, become disillusioned with the company and take their business elsewhere.

The end result is that quality suffers, productivity drops, profits diminish, expenses continue to rise, and in the long run the red pen company will be out of business.

:topic: You realize, of course, that a "flea circus" NEVER had "trained" fleas. The entire "circus" was a clockwork machine which ran in fits and starts as if there were live creatures pulling the wagons and swinging on the trapeze. Magnets attached to the clockwork actually moved the various apparatus that seemingly "rolled" when pulled by the fleas. The music box music played to drown out the sound of the machinery.

When fleas were actually present, they were glued to the apparatus (alive or dead.)

In a way, a red pen operation is like a flea circus - it runs the same way every time (every show) and sometimes the individual performers are dead, but the boss doesn't care. And there's lots of noise and music to mask the sound of the creaky machinery.

:topic: You realize, of course, that a "flea circus" NEVER had "trained" fleas. The entire "circus" was a clockwork machine which ran in fits and starts as if there were live creatures pulling the wagons and swinging on the trapeze. Magnets attached to the clockwork actually moved the various apparatus that seemingly "rolled" when pulled by the fleas. The music box music played to drown out the sound of the machinery.

When fleas were actually present, they were glued to the apparatus (alive or dead.)

In a way, a red pen operation is like a flea circus - it runs the same way every time (every show) and sometimes the individual performers are dead, but the boss doesn't care. And there's lots of noise and music to mask the sound of the creaky machinery.

Yes, that is, of course, the illusion of control. Viewers of the flea circus believe that the fleas exist and that the fleas (even though they are imaginary) are so well trained and managed by the leader of the circus. The same is true of the boss's manager in the red pen operation. The boss's manager is also fooled by the illusion of organizational control exhibited through meaningless quotas and performance numbers.

I thought that the exercise was interesting because all of us students were able to readily describe the characteristics pertaining to "blue" and "red" companies. We all wanted to work at blue ones and did not want to work at red ones. But as I left class I wondered if us students could easily identify the blue and red characteristics, can the management of red companies also identify those red characteristics of their companies? If they can, why don't they try to make changes to their corporate cultures or employees' perceptions? Or maybe they don't know/care? Anyway, when I went to work the next day, I put the exercise under my glass blotter on my desk so I could see it frequently during the day. In this way, over time I can identify the red characteristics of my organization and within my small zone of empowerment, maybe I can change the red perception to blue. I'ts worth a try...

I believe many companies are purple pen companies. I say this because I have seen managers that are blue and I see others that are red. The red pen managers seem to be more worried about fixing today's crisis and have a shorter outlook then the blue pen managers. Overall I get more work accomplished and the company is better off when I am helping a blue pen manager, but there always seems to be the red manager that demands that you fix their crisis. By fixing the red pen managers problem at the expense of the blue manager, the red pen managers are percieved as the manager who fixes things and gets things done. Therefore making the company a little more red as time goes on.
By always fixing todays problem you are never looking ahead and preventing tomorrows. This fire fighting can become a viscious cycle if the system is guided and corrected to become more blue.

But as I left class I wondered if us students could easily identify the blue and red characteristics, can the management of red companies also identify those red characteristics of their companies? If they can, why don't they try to make changes to their corporate cultures or employees' perceptions? Or maybe they don't know/care? Anyway, when I went to work the next day, I put the exercise under my glass blotter on my desk so I could see it frequently during the day. In this way, over time I can identify the red characteristics of my organization and within my small zone of empowerment, maybe I can change the red perception to blue. I'ts worth a try... :applause:

This is a really interesting assessment, I believe we often see things that look like "red pen" in our daily business lives and fail to change them because we feel we can't, whether "its always been done that way" or we don't feel we have the power. But I believe Ms. Wall is right that we need to remind ourselves frequently that change is needed and chip away the red every chance we get. Thanks for the insight. :agree1:

I found this to be a very interesting exercise; however, as we exercise we along, it seem familiar to me. I see way too much control in the red pen company. Managers want to control employees to the point that employees aren't allowed to think for themselves. For example, following procedures to the point that every action step in every single procedure has to be signed off by the person performing the step. I agree that some critical procedures require this type approach but it doesn't always work. For example, I worked at a place that believed in the blue pen approach. Ever procedure was signed off by the person performing the work; however, a technician signed off on a step that had not been performed. The results was a recyle tank almost overflowed. I think that if Management had explained why this procedure was different from other less critical procedure, the technician would have paid more attention and understood the criticality of the procedure step. They became complacent. Managements mindset was don't think just write.