In Simpsons episode Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes Mr.Burns awards Homer the "First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence" and a US$2,000 prize in exchange for a legal waiver against any claim for his radiation induced sterility.
In most Employee Recognition Schemes there is a complete lack of transparency and no-one knows whether the selection of the winners is a matter of legitimately recognising excellence or whether it is more a matter of quid pro quo. (It isn't just Employee Recognition Schemes by the way: the same doubts concern honors lists and knighthoods in Commonwealth countries and comparable awards in other countries.)
This lack of transparency is even more problematic in organisations where there is not a lot of trust to begin with. And it is further multiplied when there is management involvement or interference in the selection process (as described in a previous post.) And the fact that guidelines as to how the winners will be chosen are not made publicly available just raises more suspicions.
Then there are issues with things such as suspected quotas ("Last year we gave it to someone from that Division so we can't give it to someone from that Division this year") or the fact a person may win who everyone knows (apart apparently from the selection committee) causes more problems to the organization than they solve.
And the perception that the selection process is unfair and biased simply leads to disgruntlement and disengagement from the process.
The take home message from this is that where there is no trust to begin with a recognition scheme that is not open and transparent will simply serve to increase distrust and cynicism.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Complicators and Simplifiers
Managers can change processes in one of two ways: they can simplify them or they can complicate them. And they can do each of these things in two ways as well: smart and dumb.
dumb simplifying: where something is simplified but the manager doesn't know why it was complicated in the first place. Remember:
If you don't know why something is complicated then you may need to study it more before deciding to simplify it.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.~Robert Frost
Example:
Suppose you have a set of offices where you employee a lawyer, a doctor and a dentist. Sometimes one has more work than they can deal with, while another may be twiddling their thumbs. Brilliant idea: why not combine their roles so that when a client comes in they can just see who is available. No waste time. Great. well, there would be increased time required for training, plus there would be a drop in the level of expertise and a greater likelihood that something important would slip through the cracks but hey look at the idle time that is no longer being wasted! So much simpler than having three separate kinds of jobs
...Yeah, I know this would never happen in real life, but managers who don't really understand what staff do may at times decide to combine functions into a single job type without realising the complexities of what their staff do.
dumb complicating: where something is made more complicated than it has to be.
In some cases this may be a matter of building a process that is designed to explicitly cope with every imaginable set of circumstances even the unlikeliest one, rather than a process that deals with what happens most of the time, while allowing for exception handling. In former case, the process is supposed to deal with everything without having to trust the judgement of employees, but as a result it is complex, rigid and hard to change and undermines employee initiative. Plus we pay the additional costs involved in a complex process for every case we process even the simplest one. In the latter case, the process may be easier to modify and trust is shown in employees' use of their own discretion. In some cases, dumb complicating loses sight of why a process exists in the first place and so the manager concerned may design it to conform to some abstract ideal rather than what reality demands.
Remember Murphy's Corollary: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
So rather than trying to design a foolproof process, trust the judgement of your employees.
smart simplifying - where the complexities don't serve any useful role in the process. To simplify something in a smart way you have to understand the purpose of the process and to see how each part of the process contributes (or not as the case may be) to that purpose. It is slicing through the Gordian knot of complexity rather than trying to unravel it one snarl at a time.
Example
a flowchart could be used to map every aspect of a given process, showing every decision point and running over several pages, looking like a big flat plate of spaghetti. Or it could be simplified to show the usual flow of the process with notes explaining what happens when there is an exception. The former is unusable and remains unused, so it was effectively a waste of time developing it. While the latter doesn't comprehensively describe the process, it does give an overview of each of the major steps required and makes it clear what the typical flow is. And once a person understands the typical flow they are better placed to understand deviations from that flow.However remember:
Things should be made as simple as possible but no simpler.
~ Albert Einstein
smart complicating: where a process is made more complicated because of differences that actually do make a difference.
Example:
The type and dosage of medication may depend on a number of different factors: age, bodyweight, other medications a person is taking, allergies and other conditions. Taking all these factors into account when prescribing is smart complicating since it could be a matter of life and death.The smart complicator recognises when differences matter enough to require specialised attention.
There is a sense in which these approaches group into pairs of opposites:
smart simplifying vs dumb complicating
smart complicating vs dumb simplifying
The hard thing is working out which you are doing and the only way to find that out is to study the process an understand its purpose and whether simplifying or complicating (in the right way) will better achieve its purpose.
If you don't properly understand it can mean that there may be no reason for the process at all, but it may also mean that you need to keep your hands off of it until you have a better handle on it.
This can be a hard lesson for some managers to learn: some always try and complicate things, others may always try to simplify them even when it causes problems. There may be a tendency to think that doing something is better than doing nothing, even if you're doing the wrong thing.
Don't give in to this tendency!
Careful thought is a form of action too, and it may save the need for remedial action later.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Why employee recognition schemes fail - Part 2: The nomination process
One of the reasons that Recognition Schemes fail is that there are many biases built in to the nominations process, even if the people doing the nominating are employees themselves.
Some of these biases include:
However, at least if the employees do the nominating rather than the managers, there is at least a perception that there is some equity in the process and an absence of favoritism.
Some of these biases include:
- quiet achievers (people who come to work, do their job and do it well without any fuss) are unlikely to be nominated simply because they don't even make it onto the radar.
- self-promoters - There are staff who actively self-promote, who draw attention to every good thing they do, while minimizing or draw attention away from the things they do less well or fail to do at all. This makes such staff more salient than other staff who may be bending all of their efforts to just doing a good job rather than to big noting themselves. Self-promoters may be more likely to be nominated because everyone is aware of what they've done, even though they may have done no more than anyone else. (On the other hand, blatant self-promotion may also result in a lower likelihood of nomination because no-one likes them.).
- friends nominating friends (self-explanatory)
- mutual nominations or circular nominations (with staff nominating each other)
- underperformers who have done one outstanding thing - People may perform well in a high visibility task, but have otherwise poor performance. In fact their neglect of their normal work may have contributed to their more public success. To reward them for this would send a poor message: that the day-to-day work is unimportant, that only high profile tasks matter.
- people working on high profile projects - Staff are sometimes recognized for doing a task or project that they were selected to perform, so it was the job they were being paid to do. There is no way of knowing how well any other person might have performed in the role had they been given the opportunity or whether the person’s performance is outstanding relative to what could have been achieved. So there is an opportunity bias in recognising anyone for project type work.
- workload bias - The people doing the nominating are the ones who have enough time on their hand to do such a nomination. So in general a smaller proportion of nominations would be expected from the busiest, highest volume work areas than from low volume work areas. To a degree, the proportion of nominations from an area could be more indicative of over-resourcing for that area than great performance and it may be that what that work area considers great performance would be considered mediocre in a higher volume area.
- recency bias - nominations may be made on the basis of things that have recently happened rather than on things that have happened throughout the period covered by the awards.
- cynicism - work areas that are cynical about the whole thing may submit less nominations
However, at least if the employees do the nominating rather than the managers, there is at least a perception that there is some equity in the process and an absence of favoritism.
Micro-Managers are overpaid!
Let's suppose we have a manager who spends a lot of time micro-managing the work of the people under them.
I claim that they are overpaid and here's why.
Effectively, they are trying to do the work of lower level employees rather than just letting those employees do the work they are getting paid to do. Suppose the manager is being paid $60 an hour and the lower level employee is being paid $30 an hour. Then for every hour the manager spends micro-managing, that manager is being overpaid by $30 an hour.
But it gets worse.
Every hour spent on micro-managing is an hour not spent on doing the work the manager should be doing. So effectively micro-management is a form of loafing.
And on top of this managers who micro-manage create bottlenecks when they want to approve work that should simply be allowed to be done and in the process they create waste and delays which are a cost to the company. These unnecessary costs should also be deducted from their salaries.
And finally micro-managers disempower those who work from them and the employees end up suffering from learned helplessness - they become afraid to make decisions and manage their teams because they are certain that they will be second-guessed and over-ruled by their manager.
The lesson here is that micro-managers don't just not earn their own salaries, they also make it hard for those who report to them to earn their salaries as well, so there is a domino effect that undercuts the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation.
I claim that they are overpaid and here's why.
Effectively, they are trying to do the work of lower level employees rather than just letting those employees do the work they are getting paid to do. Suppose the manager is being paid $60 an hour and the lower level employee is being paid $30 an hour. Then for every hour the manager spends micro-managing, that manager is being overpaid by $30 an hour.
But it gets worse.
Every hour spent on micro-managing is an hour not spent on doing the work the manager should be doing. So effectively micro-management is a form of loafing.
And on top of this managers who micro-manage create bottlenecks when they want to approve work that should simply be allowed to be done and in the process they create waste and delays which are a cost to the company. These unnecessary costs should also be deducted from their salaries.
And finally micro-managers disempower those who work from them and the employees end up suffering from learned helplessness - they become afraid to make decisions and manage their teams because they are certain that they will be second-guessed and over-ruled by their manager.
The lesson here is that micro-managers don't just not earn their own salaries, they also make it hard for those who report to them to earn their salaries as well, so there is a domino effect that undercuts the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Why employee recognition schemes fail - Part 1: the management motivation
In Simpsons episode Deep Space Homer Homer is the only employee who has never won the "Worker of the Week" Award; he is sure he will win but Mr.Burns gives the award to an 'inanimate carbon rod'.
What lesson does this hold for us?
Frequency and easy availability devalues awards
Well to begin with what value does an award have if everyone wins it at some time or another. Almost by definition recognition is about recognising performance which is superior or exceptional in some way. The frequency of recognition undermines any value in recognising at all. People tend to value what is rare and what is earned. They don't tend to value things that they know they will get sooner or later without exerting any effort.
A friend of mine told me about a practice in his organisation where the minutes of meetings of the top management always contain a section in which there are about 20 examples like the following:
And this raises the question of why management wants to recognise employees. What is its intent? What is it intended to achieve?
It isn't intended to make staff feel good. It might make the 'winners' feel good, but more likely than not the 'losers' feel bad or are indifferent to the whole process.
It may be intended to encourage other staff to aspire to similar levels of performance. However people also tend to devalue what they know they will never get regardless of how much effort they put forth.
The winners of awards may have had more resources to help them than other staff (resource bias). Or they might have been tapped on the shoulder to do a project that other people not chosen might have done as well as or better than that person (opportunity bias). Or they may be working in a job with a higher profile than other workers (profile bias). Or they may just be management lackeys (favoritism). None of these things provide anything that may be achievably aspired to.
And on occasion the motivation has nothing to do with the staff at all.
Another friend of mine told be a story about a manager who saw that in the strategic plan that the division of which their unit was a part was required to put in place a staff recognition scheme. So purely to be able to tick off that it had been done and more importantly that they had done it and other managers in their division hadn't, they went ahead to set up such a scheme. It had nothing to do with staff and everything to do with playing politics.
When staff become aware of such things, you can't really blame them for being cynical.
The takeaway from this is that an employee recognition scheme needs to have the right motivation.
And what is the right motivation?
It beats me. I have yet to see anyone justify any value in such a scheme, even 'successful' ones (successful in the sense that they had no adverse effects) don't seem to have any clear motivation.
If you think of something, let me know!
What lesson does this hold for us?
Frequency and easy availability devalues awards
Well to begin with what value does an award have if everyone wins it at some time or another. Almost by definition recognition is about recognising performance which is superior or exceptional in some way. The frequency of recognition undermines any value in recognising at all. People tend to value what is rare and what is earned. They don't tend to value things that they know they will get sooner or later without exerting any effort.
A friend of mine told me about a practice in his organisation where the minutes of meetings of the top management always contain a section in which there are about 20 examples like the following:
X thanked Y for their excellent work in doing Zi.e. where dozens of people are thanked for relatively trivial contributions. Where everyone is recognised, effectively no-one is genuinely recognised. And when staff read these minutes they roll their eyes and think to themselves how self-congratulary they are.
Everybody has won and all must have prizesCynical manipulation
~ the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
And this raises the question of why management wants to recognise employees. What is its intent? What is it intended to achieve?
It isn't intended to make staff feel good. It might make the 'winners' feel good, but more likely than not the 'losers' feel bad or are indifferent to the whole process.
It may be intended to encourage other staff to aspire to similar levels of performance. However people also tend to devalue what they know they will never get regardless of how much effort they put forth.
The winners of awards may have had more resources to help them than other staff (resource bias). Or they might have been tapped on the shoulder to do a project that other people not chosen might have done as well as or better than that person (opportunity bias). Or they may be working in a job with a higher profile than other workers (profile bias). Or they may just be management lackeys (favoritism). None of these things provide anything that may be achievably aspired to.
And on occasion the motivation has nothing to do with the staff at all.
Another friend of mine told be a story about a manager who saw that in the strategic plan that the division of which their unit was a part was required to put in place a staff recognition scheme. So purely to be able to tick off that it had been done and more importantly that they had done it and other managers in their division hadn't, they went ahead to set up such a scheme. It had nothing to do with staff and everything to do with playing politics.
When staff become aware of such things, you can't really blame them for being cynical.
The takeaway from this is that an employee recognition scheme needs to have the right motivation.
And what is the right motivation?
It beats me. I have yet to see anyone justify any value in such a scheme, even 'successful' ones (successful in the sense that they had no adverse effects) don't seem to have any clear motivation.
If you think of something, let me know!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Cross checking data - The Dangers of Single Sourcing
Here is an example of an error I made which provides an object lesson in why whenever possible data should be cross-checked and compared with other independent data sources.
A couple of weeks ago, I did some analysis of the workload received by one of my teams over the previous 2 years and what I found was alarming. The data suggested that there had been an 80% reduction in workload over that time but a much smaller drop in the number of people working in the team. I knew that there had been some reduction in workload but this was larger than expected. However, the timing of the reduction squared with a change in corporate policy, so on the face of it it appeared that the policy change had had a major effect.
So superficially at least the change was explicable. On this basis, we decided to reallocate some of the staff to other functions. So we had discovered surplus resources that we could utilise more fully.
Or had we?
When I looked at our weekly workload reports, they didn't seem to match the monthly reports which were drawn from a different source. In fact, where the monthly report suggested our workload had dropped to around 500 per month, the weekly reports suggested we were receiving 500 per week.
So I looked more carefully at the report that seemed to be showing the biggest change and once I looked at the SQL code for the report, I found the reason for the apparent drop.
About 18 months previously, we had made it possible for our customers to do some of their business on-line and when they did this a different workitem type was created. But the monthly report didn't include this new workitem type and as a result it significantly deviated from the actual work we were receiving. We hadn't realised this because the initial uptake of the web option had been quite low, however over time it had grown to 50% of our work, so as the uptake grew, our apparent workload dropped.
We had already started planning to move more staff to different functions, however once I noticed this I contacted our information analysts to have the report corrected. In the meantime, we had to re-think our strategy.
The most serious implication of this was that the incorrect report could have been used as a basis for our next year's budget and could have left us seriously understaffed.
The lesson I learned is that just because you get a report from an analyst, it doesn't mean it's right - you still need to identify what the report is based on and whether it includes everything you would expect it to include, including all information relevant to what you want to use the information for.
A couple of weeks ago, I did some analysis of the workload received by one of my teams over the previous 2 years and what I found was alarming. The data suggested that there had been an 80% reduction in workload over that time but a much smaller drop in the number of people working in the team. I knew that there had been some reduction in workload but this was larger than expected. However, the timing of the reduction squared with a change in corporate policy, so on the face of it it appeared that the policy change had had a major effect.
So superficially at least the change was explicable. On this basis, we decided to reallocate some of the staff to other functions. So we had discovered surplus resources that we could utilise more fully.
Or had we?
When I looked at our weekly workload reports, they didn't seem to match the monthly reports which were drawn from a different source. In fact, where the monthly report suggested our workload had dropped to around 500 per month, the weekly reports suggested we were receiving 500 per week.
So I looked more carefully at the report that seemed to be showing the biggest change and once I looked at the SQL code for the report, I found the reason for the apparent drop.
About 18 months previously, we had made it possible for our customers to do some of their business on-line and when they did this a different workitem type was created. But the monthly report didn't include this new workitem type and as a result it significantly deviated from the actual work we were receiving. We hadn't realised this because the initial uptake of the web option had been quite low, however over time it had grown to 50% of our work, so as the uptake grew, our apparent workload dropped.
We had already started planning to move more staff to different functions, however once I noticed this I contacted our information analysts to have the report corrected. In the meantime, we had to re-think our strategy.
The most serious implication of this was that the incorrect report could have been used as a basis for our next year's budget and could have left us seriously understaffed.
The lesson I learned is that just because you get a report from an analyst, it doesn't mean it's right - you still need to identify what the report is based on and whether it includes everything you would expect it to include, including all information relevant to what you want to use the information for.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
And those that don't... (A Cautionary Tale)
A friend of mine told me the following story:
In the strategic plan for a branch of a business, one of the goals was to set up a staff recognition scheme for the branch. About a month before the end of the financial year one of the managers in the branch decided to do something about achieving this goal. Their motivations for doing this weren't particularly laudable: basically they wanted to be able to dot the i's and cross the t's in the plan and to stick it to the other managers who had done nothing. In other words, it was more about self-promotion than genuinely wanting to recognise staff.
So the manager emailed the staff within their unit seeking nominations for awards and asking for volunteers for a committee. So far so good....
But then, as they say in The Bill [UK Police show] it all went 'pear-shaped'.
The committee got together to decide on who should get what awards but for one category they reached an impasse because they couldn't decide between two of the nominees for one category. Now, in that situation, I would simply have said 'Give them both awards', but the committee made the mistake of asking the manager for her opinion. Once the manager got involved it all fell to pieces.
Firstly, she questioned all of the other decisions they had made, and when she noticed that certain people she favored had not been nominated she told the committee 'I haven't made my nominations yet', even though the closing date for nominations had passed and even though her nominations carried no more weight than that of anyone else in the unit.
Secondly, she told the committee that they weren't making the decision; they were only making recommendations - she and the team leaders would be making the final decision.
Needless to say, by changing the rules she totally alienated the committee members and within minutes of the meeting ending, most of the staff in the unit were aware of what had happened. And as a result she undermined the integrity and credibility of the awards.
In the greater scheme of things, the awards weren't that big a deal. If she had stayed out of it, then whatever the outcome of the awards, she could have said "The nominations were made by staff and the decisions were made by a staff committee, neither I nor the team leaders had any influence or involvement". But once she became involved, she could no longer say that and the perception became that no matter who they nominated the winners would be the manager's favorites.
But there was also a further consequence. This manager was already not particularly trusted by staff and there was already a perception that they played favorites in making promotion decisions and also that some of the people that the manager thought were great were absolutely terrible. So by intervening, even though the final decisions were almost the same, she simply reinforced the existing negative perceptions of staff. And she also sent the message that she didn't trust staff to exercise good judgement. As a result, those who volunteered for the committee won't be volunteering again any time soon: it is one thing to be given responsibility for something and quite another to just be the manager's hand-puppet.
And remember, for the manager the point of the whole exercise wasn't even to recognise staff: it was purely self-promotion. But in the end she shot herself in the foot because not only did staff now have an even lower opinion of her but the same staff had friends in other units and so word spread beyond the unit about what had happened.
In the strategic plan for a branch of a business, one of the goals was to set up a staff recognition scheme for the branch. About a month before the end of the financial year one of the managers in the branch decided to do something about achieving this goal. Their motivations for doing this weren't particularly laudable: basically they wanted to be able to dot the i's and cross the t's in the plan and to stick it to the other managers who had done nothing. In other words, it was more about self-promotion than genuinely wanting to recognise staff.
So the manager emailed the staff within their unit seeking nominations for awards and asking for volunteers for a committee. So far so good....
But then, as they say in The Bill [UK Police show] it all went 'pear-shaped'.
The committee got together to decide on who should get what awards but for one category they reached an impasse because they couldn't decide between two of the nominees for one category. Now, in that situation, I would simply have said 'Give them both awards', but the committee made the mistake of asking the manager for her opinion. Once the manager got involved it all fell to pieces.
Firstly, she questioned all of the other decisions they had made, and when she noticed that certain people she favored had not been nominated she told the committee 'I haven't made my nominations yet', even though the closing date for nominations had passed and even though her nominations carried no more weight than that of anyone else in the unit.
Secondly, she told the committee that they weren't making the decision; they were only making recommendations - she and the team leaders would be making the final decision.
Needless to say, by changing the rules she totally alienated the committee members and within minutes of the meeting ending, most of the staff in the unit were aware of what had happened. And as a result she undermined the integrity and credibility of the awards.
In the greater scheme of things, the awards weren't that big a deal. If she had stayed out of it, then whatever the outcome of the awards, she could have said "The nominations were made by staff and the decisions were made by a staff committee, neither I nor the team leaders had any influence or involvement". But once she became involved, she could no longer say that and the perception became that no matter who they nominated the winners would be the manager's favorites.
But there was also a further consequence. This manager was already not particularly trusted by staff and there was already a perception that they played favorites in making promotion decisions and also that some of the people that the manager thought were great were absolutely terrible. So by intervening, even though the final decisions were almost the same, she simply reinforced the existing negative perceptions of staff. And she also sent the message that she didn't trust staff to exercise good judgement. As a result, those who volunteered for the committee won't be volunteering again any time soon: it is one thing to be given responsibility for something and quite another to just be the manager's hand-puppet.
And remember, for the manager the point of the whole exercise wasn't even to recognise staff: it was purely self-promotion. But in the end she shot herself in the foot because not only did staff now have an even lower opinion of her but the same staff had friends in other units and so word spread beyond the unit about what had happened.
Recognition schemes that work...
Staff recognition schemes are fraught with perils and some of those perils and pitfalls will be discussed in my next post. However, a staff recognition scheme can work in an environment where there is genuine trust and caring in the organisation and where staff are in control of the process, so that it doesn't become Big Brother manager patting the good little workers on the head.
But here is an example of a scheme that did work and as you read it perhaps you can guess why.
This scheme was implemented when I was working at a local University a few years back. At the time, I was employed at probably the second lowest pay level of administrative staff, a job which I basically took to support myself while I was working on my PhD research.
The University Registrar decided to implement a recognition scheme and asked for volunteers from our Division to be on the selection committee. I was one of the volunteers along with a half dozen other people from all levels of the division (but no managers) and I volunteered to chair the committee and this was accepted even though I was pretty low on the totem pole and ad only been working at the University for a few months. We were given a fairly small working budget (about $1000 as I recall) and then we asked all of the staff in our division to nominate individuals and teams who had displayed excellence in a number of categories. The decision of the Committee was final (i.e. it didn't require management signoff)
As a Committee, we decided that after reading all of the nominations and their supporting statements, we could have argued forever about who should be ranked where, so we decided that each person on the Committee would get 10 points for each category which they could distribute to nominees however they wanted - for example, they could give 10 points to one nominee or 6 points to one, three to another and one point to a third. The idea of this system was that each person on the Committee could show the strength of their preference but no person on the Committee would have any more influence than anyone else.
We also decided that with the individual awards, we would award a small trophy, a small monetary payment plus a further small monetary payment to their team to pay for a morning tea to celebrate the award. The point of this was to indicate that no individual can achieve much without the support of the people around them.
Finally, on the day of the awards, we organised it so that it was like the Academy Awards, so that we announced the nominees and then opened an envelope and announced "And the winner is...". This was done in conjunction with a barbecue.
Staff we amused, those who won were pleased, and we sent a clear message about teamwork. And because there was no management interference, the awards had credibility with the workers.
Formal recognition is good, but in managing staff my preference is to tell staff that they are doing a good job when they are doing it, not once a year. And even better is to tell a third party about the good job they have done and for it to get back to them. Recognition shouldn't be about reward but about appreciation, something that is sometimes overlooked by the sticks-and-carrots school of management - this is one reason by an awards should be small - they are a token of appreciation, not compensation for doing a good job.
But here is an example of a scheme that did work and as you read it perhaps you can guess why.
This scheme was implemented when I was working at a local University a few years back. At the time, I was employed at probably the second lowest pay level of administrative staff, a job which I basically took to support myself while I was working on my PhD research.
The University Registrar decided to implement a recognition scheme and asked for volunteers from our Division to be on the selection committee. I was one of the volunteers along with a half dozen other people from all levels of the division (but no managers) and I volunteered to chair the committee and this was accepted even though I was pretty low on the totem pole and ad only been working at the University for a few months. We were given a fairly small working budget (about $1000 as I recall) and then we asked all of the staff in our division to nominate individuals and teams who had displayed excellence in a number of categories. The decision of the Committee was final (i.e. it didn't require management signoff)
As a Committee, we decided that after reading all of the nominations and their supporting statements, we could have argued forever about who should be ranked where, so we decided that each person on the Committee would get 10 points for each category which they could distribute to nominees however they wanted - for example, they could give 10 points to one nominee or 6 points to one, three to another and one point to a third. The idea of this system was that each person on the Committee could show the strength of their preference but no person on the Committee would have any more influence than anyone else.
We also decided that with the individual awards, we would award a small trophy, a small monetary payment plus a further small monetary payment to their team to pay for a morning tea to celebrate the award. The point of this was to indicate that no individual can achieve much without the support of the people around them.
Finally, on the day of the awards, we organised it so that it was like the Academy Awards, so that we announced the nominees and then opened an envelope and announced "And the winner is...". This was done in conjunction with a barbecue.
Staff we amused, those who won were pleased, and we sent a clear message about teamwork. And because there was no management interference, the awards had credibility with the workers.
Formal recognition is good, but in managing staff my preference is to tell staff that they are doing a good job when they are doing it, not once a year. And even better is to tell a third party about the good job they have done and for it to get back to them. Recognition shouldn't be about reward but about appreciation, something that is sometimes overlooked by the sticks-and-carrots school of management - this is one reason by an awards should be small - they are a token of appreciation, not compensation for doing a good job.
Monday, June 20, 2011
How managers can derail continuous improvement
When a continuous improvement program is introduced into any organisation, it is introduced into a particular historically determined set of circumstances, the existing status quo. Even where current managers are trained in continuous improvement, they are likely to view it through the lens of their pre-existing biases and a day or so of training is unlikely to change this.
Problems with managers
Bureaucratizing the process
One threat that continuous improvement represents is loss of control.
If improvements are driven by grassroots recognition of problems by workers on the ground, the risk for some managers is that they will lose control of the process. So there may be a temptation to impose a whole set of rules which slow the process, a structure that subjects it to excessive approvals and controls so that it becomes bogged down. And in the process, the workers on whom the success of the process depends become disenchanted with trying to do anything.
Some managers may look on continuous improvement as a way to build their own profile by putting it into plans and trying to act as a clearinghouse for any ideas of the staff reporting to them and in the process act as a bottleneck (as well as bringing in the problems discussed above). I think most of us have known a manager who always manages to complicate things as soon as they get involved.
So what do you do?
The solution (which may not be possible for all organisations) is simple and brutal: replace or rotate managers, particularly ones who have been entrenched in the same workunit for an extended period of time.
By doing this, each workunit would gain a fresh perspective to look at their processes, plus they would be able to benefit from any improvement ideas that the new manager might have implemented in their previous unit, so that there is transfer of organisational learning.
The new manager would have no particular attachment to or investment in the status quo and would be more willing to consider ideas that the previous manager might have dismissed out of hand. Working in an unfamiliar area, they would have no choice but to become familiar with the existing processes and in doing so start to question things that don't make sense, but which have been taken for granted by the existing staff of the unit or which under the previous manager they had given up trying to change.
For continuous improvement there needs to be an openness to new ideas and new managers would lead to such an openness as well as a fresh rather than a stale eye being cast over any improvement ideas suggested by staff.
It may seem radical but sometimes a management reshuffle is the only way Continuous Improvement will work. Otherwise, you end up with the same old tired and ineffective ideas for improvement and a few months down the track it is looked back on as just another 'flavor of the month'.
Problems with managers
Where a manager has managed the same organisational unit a number of years it is almost certain that:
- they have exhausted any ideas for continuous improvement that they may have been prepared to implement
- they are now acting as a barrier to further improvement because they have fixed ideas about how things should be done (as well as blindspots and pet ideas) and are not open to any CI ideas that are inconsistent with their fixed ideas
- they are blocking those ideas and as a result staff are discouraged from making further suggestions
- they have a vested interest in the status quo as representing any improvements they may have made in the past, even if those improvements are now outdated or dysfunctional.
- they have entrenched non-valuing adding activities that they may be unwilling to even discuss giving up.
Bureaucratizing the process
One threat that continuous improvement represents is loss of control.
If improvements are driven by grassroots recognition of problems by workers on the ground, the risk for some managers is that they will lose control of the process. So there may be a temptation to impose a whole set of rules which slow the process, a structure that subjects it to excessive approvals and controls so that it becomes bogged down. And in the process, the workers on whom the success of the process depends become disenchanted with trying to do anything.
Some managers may look on continuous improvement as a way to build their own profile by putting it into plans and trying to act as a clearinghouse for any ideas of the staff reporting to them and in the process act as a bottleneck (as well as bringing in the problems discussed above). I think most of us have known a manager who always manages to complicate things as soon as they get involved.
So what do you do?
The solution (which may not be possible for all organisations) is simple and brutal: replace or rotate managers, particularly ones who have been entrenched in the same workunit for an extended period of time.
By doing this, each workunit would gain a fresh perspective to look at their processes, plus they would be able to benefit from any improvement ideas that the new manager might have implemented in their previous unit, so that there is transfer of organisational learning.
The new manager would have no particular attachment to or investment in the status quo and would be more willing to consider ideas that the previous manager might have dismissed out of hand. Working in an unfamiliar area, they would have no choice but to become familiar with the existing processes and in doing so start to question things that don't make sense, but which have been taken for granted by the existing staff of the unit or which under the previous manager they had given up trying to change.
For continuous improvement there needs to be an openness to new ideas and new managers would lead to such an openness as well as a fresh rather than a stale eye being cast over any improvement ideas suggested by staff.
It may seem radical but sometimes a management reshuffle is the only way Continuous Improvement will work. Otherwise, you end up with the same old tired and ineffective ideas for improvement and a few months down the track it is looked back on as just another 'flavor of the month'.
Planning with Intent - the Mindful, Reflective Approach
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong
~ H.L. Mencken
A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. Moreover, it seems to me that much of the advice and instruction related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.
~ James B. Quinn Strategies for Change
A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. Moreover, it seems to me that much of the advice and instruction related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.
~ James B. Quinn Strategies for Change
Sometimes when managers do strategic plans, what they end up with is a list of planned actions, categorised into areas such as Customer Services, Systems etc. However, very rarely to they state explicitly and in detail what is the Intent of the planned action - what is it expected to achieve. Unless we know why we are doing something we cannot tell whether or not it has achieved the desired objective since there isn't one. All we can say is that it was we intended to do X and we did X. But whether this was a good thing to do remains open to question. We need first to identify what it is we are trying to change.
For example, we may want to change some metric of staff satisfaction. We may want the average score to increase. However, this isn't really what we want. A metric is simply a measurement. What we want to change is what the measurement purports to measure. So let's suppose that we actually want to change staff satisfaction. Then we need to be sure what we understand by 'staff satisfaction' - are we looking for fewer complaints? greater engagement? less turnover? Are we trying to engender an emotional state that will see positive changes in such areas?
Whatever it is we are looking for, we may first need to understand what it is that causes the behavior we want to either increase or diminish. We need to have a 'theory of causality': that these causes result in these outcomes. Based on our 'theory of causality' we can then develop strategies that we think will cause the outcomes we want.
This is important for two reasons.
Firstly, by identifying the desired outcome rather than just an activity, we have a better chance of seeing whether or not that activity achieved anything of value.
And secondly, if the desired outcome isn't achieved but we did the planned activity then it may lead to us having to revise our theory-of-causality. Note that I say 'may'. It may be that the planned activity was implemented poorly, that it was transparently manipulative, that other factors intervened to derail it. But if none of these occurred and the planned activity went off, well, went off as planned, but the desired outcome wasn't achieved then we need seriously to look at whether we have truly understood the causal mechanisms involved.
Maybe our understanding of human nature doesn't match the reality of how people really behave, what they want and how they respond to various changes in the work environment. Maybe there is a delayed reaction: maybe the change that has been put in place will take longer to have an effect than we anticipated and we haven't failed so much as haven't succeeded as quickly as we thought we would.
The point of all this is that we can take a simple mindless approach:
- Let's do X.
- We did X.
- Good job!
versus a mindful, reflective approach:
- What do we want to achieve?
- Based on what we believe to be true (theory-of-causality) what would we have to do to achieve that?
- Did the desired outcome occur?
- If not, why not? Did we implement poorly? Was our time frame too optimistic? Was our theory-of-causality wrong?
- What do we do now?
The mindless approach may give us a false sense of achievement: "we did it!". But with the mindful, reflective approach we gain a more nuanced understanding of the situation, we gain a clearer understanding of what works and what doesn't and we make genuine changes that matter, rather than cosmetic changes that don't.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Cautionary Tales and War Stories - How stories impact organizational life
One of the most common tools used (and misused) by organizations is staff surveys, sometimes known as climate surveys.
The management sends out a survey for staff to complete, generally anonymously, with questions carefully tailored to ensure that no nasty surprises emerge. And the results of such surveys are almost always the same: hardly anyone has much confidence in management and the biggest problem is almost always 'communication' (which is almost always defined differently by management and staff).
( A friend of mine told me about a manager who carried out a non-anonymous survey and were then unhappy about the answers from one of their team leaders. When they aired their concerns, another manager said to them "If you didn't want to know the response, why did you ask the question?")
The problem with such surveys is that by narrowly constricting the range of questions and responses, they pretty much guarantee that no new learning will emerge from the data gathered. ( And if staff even remotely suspect that their answers aren't ruly anonymous then their responses are unlikely to be candid either.) I have never yet seen a survey where staff were asked to rate their managers competence, people skills, integrity or the extent to which the managers presence does more harm that good.
So maybe one alternative to such surveys might be to survey staff to find out what questions they would like to see asked in a staff survey. I don't see that this is ever likely to happen since management would lose control of the outcomes and whatever survey they came up with, certain questions would be conspicuous by their absence. And it is THESE questions that staff would know the management was afraid of hearing the answers to. (See my previous post on the subversive power of questions.)
There is another approach however that could also be taken involving collecting stories. But before I discuss this I first want to talk about what impact stories have.
Firstly, stories are part and parcel of organisational culture. Part of becoming integrated into any organisation is hearing the stories of what different people in the organisation have done in the past and the consequences:
Secondly, these stories continue to be passed on for years as a kind of oral tradition, long after the managers concerned have completely forgotten the triggeering events. In many cases, the managers involved may not be aware of the stories even circulating. All they may be aware of is a drop in productivity, or commitment or engagement of their staff without really knowing why it is happening. So they may implement solutions to this morale problem without ever knowing what their role was in causing it.
Thridly, they are stories and such stories are a form of gossip, they tend to be more vivid and believable than any amount of facts or figures or reassurances from senior managers. When we know the people involved, it is easier for us to put ourselves and, since they are just like us, to see ourselves suffering the same fate.
So surveys are useless while the stories circulating in the business may do a lot of harm to it.
So what can be done?
Simple. Surface the stories! Rather than carrying out a survey, ask staff to tell a story of something that has happened in the last year and what lesson they learned from it. Collecting scores of such stories would say a lot more about what is right and what is wrong with the organisation and quite possibly point to areas that seriously need to be improved. And management can plan how to counteract the perceptions and behavior that result from the story by dealing with the kinds of events which triggered such perceptions and behavior.
Would they do it? Somehow I doubt it!
Like questions, stories are powerful challenges to the status quo. While they will circulate regardless of what management may say, if they are surfaced then they might require action since they may well indicate areas of managerial incompetence, dishonesty, ignorance or stupidity. And since they wouldn't know what stories would emerge until they asked, they would lose control of the outcomes.
By not asking, they remain ignorant, and ignorance is a splendid excuse for inaction.
The management sends out a survey for staff to complete, generally anonymously, with questions carefully tailored to ensure that no nasty surprises emerge. And the results of such surveys are almost always the same: hardly anyone has much confidence in management and the biggest problem is almost always 'communication' (which is almost always defined differently by management and staff).
( A friend of mine told me about a manager who carried out a non-anonymous survey and were then unhappy about the answers from one of their team leaders. When they aired their concerns, another manager said to them "If you didn't want to know the response, why did you ask the question?")
The problem with such surveys is that by narrowly constricting the range of questions and responses, they pretty much guarantee that no new learning will emerge from the data gathered. ( And if staff even remotely suspect that their answers aren't ruly anonymous then their responses are unlikely to be candid either.) I have never yet seen a survey where staff were asked to rate their managers competence, people skills, integrity or the extent to which the managers presence does more harm that good.
So maybe one alternative to such surveys might be to survey staff to find out what questions they would like to see asked in a staff survey. I don't see that this is ever likely to happen since management would lose control of the outcomes and whatever survey they came up with, certain questions would be conspicuous by their absence. And it is THESE questions that staff would know the management was afraid of hearing the answers to. (See my previous post on the subversive power of questions.)
There is another approach however that could also be taken involving collecting stories. But before I discuss this I first want to talk about what impact stories have.
Firstly, stories are part and parcel of organisational culture. Part of becoming integrated into any organisation is hearing the stories of what different people in the organisation have done in the past and the consequences:
- Remember the last time we had to implement a change and how manager X bungled it?
- Remember when Y made a suggestion to improve process Z and what happened to her?
- Remember how the last time someone suggested that they were shot down in flames?
- Remember when W happened and management covered it up?
- < Add your own >
Secondly, these stories continue to be passed on for years as a kind of oral tradition, long after the managers concerned have completely forgotten the triggeering events. In many cases, the managers involved may not be aware of the stories even circulating. All they may be aware of is a drop in productivity, or commitment or engagement of their staff without really knowing why it is happening. So they may implement solutions to this morale problem without ever knowing what their role was in causing it.
Thridly, they are stories and such stories are a form of gossip, they tend to be more vivid and believable than any amount of facts or figures or reassurances from senior managers. When we know the people involved, it is easier for us to put ourselves and, since they are just like us, to see ourselves suffering the same fate.
So surveys are useless while the stories circulating in the business may do a lot of harm to it.
So what can be done?
Simple. Surface the stories! Rather than carrying out a survey, ask staff to tell a story of something that has happened in the last year and what lesson they learned from it. Collecting scores of such stories would say a lot more about what is right and what is wrong with the organisation and quite possibly point to areas that seriously need to be improved. And management can plan how to counteract the perceptions and behavior that result from the story by dealing with the kinds of events which triggered such perceptions and behavior.
Would they do it? Somehow I doubt it!
Like questions, stories are powerful challenges to the status quo. While they will circulate regardless of what management may say, if they are surfaced then they might require action since they may well indicate areas of managerial incompetence, dishonesty, ignorance or stupidity. And since they wouldn't know what stories would emerge until they asked, they would lose control of the outcomes.
By not asking, they remain ignorant, and ignorance is a splendid excuse for inaction.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Subversive Power of Questions
Since questions point to answers, we must learn to ask the right questions - that is, the ones that point to helpful answers.
~ Roger Schank The Creative Attitude: Learning to Ask and Answer the Right Questions
Questions reduce certainty - to question is to doubt the existing answer, to say "what if this isn't the case? What if there is a better answer?"
The best questions open up possibility rather than shut it down. They show how things can change for the better rather than staying the same, that maybe things don't have to stay the way they are.
And this is one of the reasons they are subversive and why the better the question is the more dangerous it is for those who hold positions in the status quo. Because a good question also raises further questions such as "Why didn't so-and-so think of that?" or "Why have we been doing this so inefficiently for so long under so-and-so as manager?" or "Why did so-and-so put that barrier to progress in place or maintain it when clearly it was unnecessary?"
And questions are more dangerous than answers. An answer can be attacked logically or factually or in any number of other ways.
But to attack a question is to reveal insecurity about what the question concerns and effectively to justify the asking of the question in the first place.
Strategic Questioning Manual (Fran Peavey)
at The Change Agency website
Resources
~ Roger Schank The Creative Attitude: Learning to Ask and Answer the Right Questions
Questioning is a basic tool for rebellion. It breaks open the stagnant hardened shells of the present, revealing ambiguity and opening up fresh options to be explored.
~ Fran Peavey "Strategic QuestioningManual" (see resources below)
There is no doubt that questions are dangerous.
The higher a person rises in an organisation, the more they have invested in the status quo. The organisation as it is (and as it has been in the past) values (and valued) that person enough to promote them.
However, to question the status quo may appear to the senior manager to question their contribution to the organisation or to raise doubts about the wisdom of their previous decisions.
The best questions open:
~ Fran Peavey "Strategic QuestioningManual" (see resources below)
There is no doubt that questions are dangerous.
The higher a person rises in an organisation, the more they have invested in the status quo. The organisation as it is (and as it has been in the past) values (and valued) that person enough to promote them.
However, to question the status quo may appear to the senior manager to question their contribution to the organisation or to raise doubts about the wisdom of their previous decisions.
The best questions open:
- closed doors or
- doors that no-one even knew existed or
- doors that people didn't know were doors or
- doors that people have ceased to see as doors or
- doors that people don't want to talk about (or some people anyway)
Questions reduce certainty - to question is to doubt the existing answer, to say "what if this isn't the case? What if there is a better answer?"
The best questions open up possibility rather than shut it down. They show how things can change for the better rather than staying the same, that maybe things don't have to stay the way they are.
And this is one of the reasons they are subversive and why the better the question is the more dangerous it is for those who hold positions in the status quo. Because a good question also raises further questions such as "Why didn't so-and-so think of that?" or "Why have we been doing this so inefficiently for so long under so-and-so as manager?" or "Why did so-and-so put that barrier to progress in place or maintain it when clearly it was unnecessary?"
And questions are more dangerous than answers. An answer can be attacked logically or factually or in any number of other ways.
But to attack a question is to reveal insecurity about what the question concerns and effectively to justify the asking of the question in the first place.
Strategic Questioning Manual (Fran Peavey)
at The Change Agency website
Resources
Monday, June 13, 2011
Schlimmbesserung - an all too useful word!
Schlimmbesserung is a handy word which means "An intended improvement that instead makes things worse". And it amazing how often the kinds of situations arise to which this word can be applied. Some that I have seen include:
Ultimately, if you don't understand what is causing a problem, it is hard to find a solution and sometimes the obvious (usually simplistic) solution makes things worse. Even worse is when a reinforcing cycle results where as the situation worsens, more of the same solution is applied, so the situation worsens further, so more of the same solution is applied and so on.
If what you are doing isn't working, maybe it's time to try something different. If an expected solution just increases the problem, maybe it is time to roll back the solution instead of putting more effort or resources into it.
And just maybe, we should find out why the solution made things worse:
- Someone comes up with an idea to save money, however it is implemented in such a complicated way that it ends up costing money - that's schlimmbesserung!
- A strategy is put in place to reduce sick leave or compensation claims, but instead leads to an increase - that's schlimmbesserung!
- Processes for selecting staff which in the interests of 'fairness' ignore information germane to an applicant's performance, and end up selecting someone who is less than optimal - that's schlimmbesserung!
- Holding a general meeting with staff to discuss increasing productivity, which comes up with no actual strategies, but the loss of time from the meeting itself reduces productivity - that's schlimmbesserung!
- Strategies for increasing staff morale are implemented but result in a further slide in morale - that's schlimmbesserung!
Ultimately, if you don't understand what is causing a problem, it is hard to find a solution and sometimes the obvious (usually simplistic) solution makes things worse. Even worse is when a reinforcing cycle results where as the situation worsens, more of the same solution is applied, so the situation worsens further, so more of the same solution is applied and so on.
If what you are doing isn't working, maybe it's time to try something different. If an expected solution just increases the problem, maybe it is time to roll back the solution instead of putting more effort or resources into it.
And just maybe, we should find out why the solution made things worse:
- what assumptions did we make about the problem,
- which of them were wrong,
- what assumptions did we make about our solution,
- which of them were wrong.
- what do we do now that we understand the situation better
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Average isn't necessarily typical - medians and histograms
A common but very simplistic management practice is the use of an average as a summary of a particular process.
For example, a manager may be concerned at an increase in the average number of sick days taken by staff.
However, a simple and somewhat humorous example shows the folly of this.
If we consider human beings, most people have two legs, a small proportion of people have one leg and an even smaller proportion have no legs. So if we were to calculate the average number of legs that a human being has then we would find that it is slightly less than 2. But wait a minute: this means that most human beings have an above average number of legs! Yet typically a human being has 2 legs...
The problem is that an average doesn't tell you much by itself, what is important is the distribution of the values. Now people with a little more statistical training may make a second error, they may assume that the values of interest have a normal (bell-shaped) distribution. But this is generally wrong too. For most variables of interest, there is an absolute lower bound on what is possible (i.e. zero) and probably an upper bound, and the variable is distributed with a long tail and isn't symmetrical. None of these things is true of a bell curve.
So what other measures to we have?
One useful measure is the median, the middle value of the data set. It is a value such that no more than 50% of values lie above it and no more than 50% of values lie below it The median gives a better feel for what is typical since it isn't affected by excessively large or excessively small values. It is a significant improvement on the average.
However, even better is to put the data into a histogram and to simply look at the pattern of the data.
Returning to the example of sick leave, you may find that the average number of days taken is 7 days, but the median may only be 4 days, and when the histogram is examined you will probably find that a small number of staff have taken much more than 7 days sick leave and so they have increased the average out of proportion to their actual numbers.
As a simple example, if you had 49 staff who averaged 4 days each and 1 person who took 154 days due to some serious illness, then the average across all of the staff would be 7 days, but the median would probably be less than 4. In such a situation, there is almost nothing that could be effectively done to reduce the average amount of sick leave since almost everyone is already taking less than the average.
However, publicizing the average could itself increase the amount of sick leave taken, since it could establish a norm of what staff in general are allegedly taking. So a person who is taking only 6 days may feel very proud of themselves for taking less than the average amount, and some staff who may not have taken much sick leave in the past may start taking more sick leave.
The lesson here is that statistics can be dangerous in the hands of those who don't understand their limitations. It may take a bit more effort to look at the distribution of the data but is only by doing so that you can identify if there is actually a problem or whether there is just the appearance of one, and also to be able to better target your efforts to where they may do the most good.
USEFUL RULE
In How to Measure Anything Douglas Hubbard provides the following useful rule for medians, which he calls the Rule of Five:
For example, a manager may be concerned at an increase in the average number of sick days taken by staff.
However, a simple and somewhat humorous example shows the folly of this.
If we consider human beings, most people have two legs, a small proportion of people have one leg and an even smaller proportion have no legs. So if we were to calculate the average number of legs that a human being has then we would find that it is slightly less than 2. But wait a minute: this means that most human beings have an above average number of legs! Yet typically a human being has 2 legs...
The problem is that an average doesn't tell you much by itself, what is important is the distribution of the values. Now people with a little more statistical training may make a second error, they may assume that the values of interest have a normal (bell-shaped) distribution. But this is generally wrong too. For most variables of interest, there is an absolute lower bound on what is possible (i.e. zero) and probably an upper bound, and the variable is distributed with a long tail and isn't symmetrical. None of these things is true of a bell curve.
So what other measures to we have?
One useful measure is the median, the middle value of the data set. It is a value such that no more than 50% of values lie above it and no more than 50% of values lie below it The median gives a better feel for what is typical since it isn't affected by excessively large or excessively small values. It is a significant improvement on the average.
However, even better is to put the data into a histogram and to simply look at the pattern of the data.
Returning to the example of sick leave, you may find that the average number of days taken is 7 days, but the median may only be 4 days, and when the histogram is examined you will probably find that a small number of staff have taken much more than 7 days sick leave and so they have increased the average out of proportion to their actual numbers.
As a simple example, if you had 49 staff who averaged 4 days each and 1 person who took 154 days due to some serious illness, then the average across all of the staff would be 7 days, but the median would probably be less than 4. In such a situation, there is almost nothing that could be effectively done to reduce the average amount of sick leave since almost everyone is already taking less than the average.
However, publicizing the average could itself increase the amount of sick leave taken, since it could establish a norm of what staff in general are allegedly taking. So a person who is taking only 6 days may feel very proud of themselves for taking less than the average amount, and some staff who may not have taken much sick leave in the past may start taking more sick leave.
The lesson here is that statistics can be dangerous in the hands of those who don't understand their limitations. It may take a bit more effort to look at the distribution of the data but is only by doing so that you can identify if there is actually a problem or whether there is just the appearance of one, and also to be able to better target your efforts to where they may do the most good.
USEFUL RULE
In How to Measure Anything Douglas Hubbard provides the following useful rule for medians, which he calls the Rule of Five:
There is a 93% chance that the median of a population is between the smallest and largest values in any random sample of five from that population.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Stop, Look & Think - Checking that a problem actually exists
By requiring keen observation before action, by demanding that one look beyond the obvious surface symptoms to better see the deeper causes, by never giving answers and only asking questions, Ohno taught people to stop and think.
~ Matthew E May In Pursuit of Elegance
Perhaps the problem, sometimes, is the notion that there's a problem
~ Oliver Burkman Help!
I had an interesting experience at work a few weeks ago which illustrates why continuous improvement has to start with a clear understanding of the facts, followed by a proper analysis. A knee jerk reaction might be OK if someone hits you on the knee with a little hammer, but otherwise it pays to stop, look and think.
My immediate manager had some concerns about a significant reduction in productivity within our unit. It appeared that we had dropped from processing around 4000 workitems one week to 2000 workitems the next.
Now, that does sound like a big drop doesn't it?
So we had a meeting about it with our team leaders and spent an hour discussing ways to improve productivity. I suggested that before doing this we should compare our productivity with other units to see if there had been a comparable drop, since this would indicate a common cause across units (such as a seasonal increase in sick leave) rather than something specific to ours, but this was dismissed by my manager out of hand. In the end we arrived at a "solution" which was pretty much a "solution" that we had used repeatedly over several years.
So problem solved, right?
WRONG!
There was no problem to begin with. As is my usual practice, I ignored what my manager said and went back to analyse the figures anyway.
The first thing I found was that the reporting cycle had been disrupted. Whereas previously we had received our productivity reports every seven days like clockwork, the last few reports had covered 9 days, then 5 days, then 9 days then 5 days. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that almost as twice as much work will get done in 9 days as in 5. The supposed drop in productivity was simply an artefact of the disrupted reporting cycle.
However, it was still possible that there had been some reduction in productivity so I compared the ratios of the number of workitems processed by my unit versus those of two other units. What I found was that the ratios had been fairly constant over the previous 3 months and that if anything our relative productivity had increased over the previous few weeks rather than decreased relative to other Units.
So there was no problem at all to be solved! We spent an hour trying to solve something that didn't exist at a cost that I estimate of over $300. The analysis that I did cost around $20, so if we had instead gone back to the actual data and done some analysis we would have saved the time equivalent of $280.
It has been said that one of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is to try to solve a problem at the same meeting at which it was raised.
This is a typical example of such a mistake.
~ Matthew E May In Pursuit of Elegance
Perhaps the problem, sometimes, is the notion that there's a problem
~ Oliver Burkman Help!
I had an interesting experience at work a few weeks ago which illustrates why continuous improvement has to start with a clear understanding of the facts, followed by a proper analysis. A knee jerk reaction might be OK if someone hits you on the knee with a little hammer, but otherwise it pays to stop, look and think.
My immediate manager had some concerns about a significant reduction in productivity within our unit. It appeared that we had dropped from processing around 4000 workitems one week to 2000 workitems the next.
Now, that does sound like a big drop doesn't it?
So we had a meeting about it with our team leaders and spent an hour discussing ways to improve productivity. I suggested that before doing this we should compare our productivity with other units to see if there had been a comparable drop, since this would indicate a common cause across units (such as a seasonal increase in sick leave) rather than something specific to ours, but this was dismissed by my manager out of hand. In the end we arrived at a "solution" which was pretty much a "solution" that we had used repeatedly over several years.
So problem solved, right?
WRONG!
There was no problem to begin with. As is my usual practice, I ignored what my manager said and went back to analyse the figures anyway.
The first thing I found was that the reporting cycle had been disrupted. Whereas previously we had received our productivity reports every seven days like clockwork, the last few reports had covered 9 days, then 5 days, then 9 days then 5 days. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that almost as twice as much work will get done in 9 days as in 5. The supposed drop in productivity was simply an artefact of the disrupted reporting cycle.
However, it was still possible that there had been some reduction in productivity so I compared the ratios of the number of workitems processed by my unit versus those of two other units. What I found was that the ratios had been fairly constant over the previous 3 months and that if anything our relative productivity had increased over the previous few weeks rather than decreased relative to other Units.
So there was no problem at all to be solved! We spent an hour trying to solve something that didn't exist at a cost that I estimate of over $300. The analysis that I did cost around $20, so if we had instead gone back to the actual data and done some analysis we would have saved the time equivalent of $280.
It has been said that one of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is to try to solve a problem at the same meeting at which it was raised.
This is a typical example of such a mistake.
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