Operational Definitions: Not a Perfunctory Exercise

We have a colleague whose favourite words these days is “perfunctory”, and he uses it frequently enough that I looked up the definition just to be sure I knew what it meant.

per-func-to-ry adjective \pər-ˈfəŋ(k)-t(ə-)rē\

1. characterized by routine or superficiality
2. lacking in interest or enthusiasm

That little exercise reminded me of how important it is to have common definitions at work. Never mind the embarassment of using a word incorrectly, which we’ve all done on occasion. (Well I have, anyway…) It’s about speaking the same language in the office, and avoiding any potential for misinterpretation and mistake.

My Definition is This (Bonus earworm for those who know that tune, for those who don’t, click here )

One of the things we are working on right now is a review of a PMO (Project Management Office) function in a large public sector organization. As part of any review, we conduct a number of interviews with various employees at all levels of the organization. And, as always, we find that people are working with differing levels of understanding of key operational terms, and that this is creating some confusion with respect to roles, responsibilities, and key outcomes.

Here’s a good example: what does performance management mean to you? Is it related to the work output and behaviours of an individual employee, and the ability of a manager to influence it positively?

No? Oh, well perhaps you feel it’s the use of key performance indicators to ensure that an organization meets its goals and targets in a timely manner.

Wait, what? You think it’s both?

If you look it up, even Wikipedia gives several definitions:

Performance management (PM) includes activities which ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, employee, or even the processes to build a product of service, as well as many other areas.
PM is also known as a process by which organizations align their resources, systems and employees to strategic objectives and priorities.
Performance management as referenced on this page in a broad term coined by Dr. Aubrey Daniels in the late 1970s to describe a technology (i.e. science imbedded in applications methods) for managing both behavior and results, two critical elements of what is known as performance.

If you’re working on a culture shift in your organization, then a great exercise involves getting groups of people together in a room and having work in small groups to define key terms. For instance, for a PMO conversation, you might have people define: Project, Charter, Project Manager, Process Owner, Project Sponsor, Communication Plan, Risk Mitigation Plan, etc. Here’s the trick: there’s usually no right answer. Just pick the one that works for most people, and stick with it! If everyone is speaking the same language, you’ll save so much confusion and time.

And there’s nothing perfunctory about that.

Give us a shout via Twitter @whiteboardcons using #betterfastercheaper or email us at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging.

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Until next week,
Ruth.

Voice of the Customer, or VOC, is perhaps one of the more misunderstood concepts in businesses today.

Everyone is pretty good by now at identifying their customers, both internal and external. What remains challenging is setting performance metrics that represent not only internal goals and objectives, but also reflect the wants and needs of those varying customer groups.

Do your organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs) reflect your VOC?

“Yes, we determine what our customers want each year.”

OUCH!

That’s not even hyperbole. Many organizations have well-intentioned strategic discussions in order to document their customers’ needs for the coming period. They “put on their customer hat”, brainstorm, and then translate that into targets for performance.

A for effort. F for execution.

What’s missing?

How about actually asking the customer.

Customer information can be gathered informally (feedback from social media, information from contact centres or snail mail) or formally (surveys, focus groups). Whatever the method, it’s something that just has to be done in order to be successful and engage the customer of your products and service.

Don’t tell me what success looks like to me!

Consider the following: Acme Book Company has a strategic and focused performance scorecard detailing its KPIs. One of those is delivery speed, measured by the time the order is received to the time the order is shipped. The target is 7 business days.

It seems logical, and yet there are a couple of flaws.

1. What does the customer care about when the order is shipped? They care much more about when it is received. The company might retort that they have no control over the postal service, which may be true to a certain extent. However, it’s still relevant, as it’s important to the customer, and may even spur ideas for alternate delivery methods.
2. Is 7 business days the right target? Do customers care about business days vs. days? In this day of speedy shipping and instant delivery of eBooks, is 7 acceptable or a little slow? Have they asked their customers?

If your organization has made the effort to set KPIs, it’s well on the way to doing the right thing in measuring and collecting performance data. The next step is to add in the VOC and measure the things that are Critical to the Customer from the Customer’s Point of View! Click to Tweet

What kind of metrics do you use? Give us a shout via Twitter @whiteboardcons using #betterfastercheaper or email us at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging.

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Until next week!
Ruth

You hear about this kind of thing all the time in sports – a team does badly, so you fire the coach or the GM or both. What about in business? How many times have you come across situations in which something appears to be terribly wrong in an organization, and the solution is to replace the people – whether the executive, the managers, or the staff – and yet the problem continues?

Sadly, it happens all too often even though conventional wisdom holds that it’s usually not their fault. In fact, W. Edwards Deming, famed statistician and father of modern quality methods, once said that you can put a good person in a bad system, and the system will win every time. He went so far as to say that only 15% of the performance of a system is within the individual’s control.

So why are the people blamed for poor processes?

Wet Noodle Policy

In a recent interview with a group of employees at one of our clients’ offices, a frustrated manager referred to some office policies as “Wet Noodle Policies”, and indicated that they (the policies) were vague, poorly designed, inconsistently applied, and caused poor performance.

Wow. Was he saying that poor performance was not the fault of the people in the organization?

“People get it!” he said, referring to the need to be more efficient. “Processes inhibit it!” In his office, the people are often blamed for poor processes. Click to Tweet

The thing is, even considering HR processes that can be painful, it’s often easier to change the people than the processes. To do an in-depth process review can be a lengthy project depending on how radical a change is required, and organizations are understandably be apprehensive about that kind of an undertaking.

Forward-thinking organizations are those that do it anyway, and thoroughly review their processes on a regular basis.

How to Tell if it’s the People or the Process

Although we are big fans of process mapping, and highly recommend it as part of any process review, there are a few things you can do if you’re not sure where to start:

1. Look at your performance metrics and standards. What? Don’t have any? Well there’s your first clue that process is a problem. You should have very clear goals and objectives for every process, and they should be communicated, visible, and reviewed on a regular basis. If people are held to certain standards, they will fix broken processes  because they are barriers to their personal success.
2. Ask the people. Pull together a focus group and ask them what’s going off the rails. Interview some key people one-on-one. You’ll soon find out if certain names keep popping up, or if people keep referring to policies, rules, or processes that are broken.
3. Envision Utopia. If you could start from scratch, what would the process look like? Now think of what’s in the way of doing things that way. Is it people? Is it policies and rules? Is it confusion?

Tell us your people vs. process story! Give us a shout via Twitter @whiteboardcons using #betterfastercheaper or email us at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging.

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Until next week!
Ruth