I hear a recurring mantra from conventional operations management within relational service organisations. I’ve been hearing it for years.

That mantra is the (apparent) necessity for ‘consistency across the front line’.

It often starts with decrying that “we’ve got 1,000¹ [front line workers] and 1,000 ways of doing things. We can’t have that, we need consistency!”

So, to examine this presupposition, I’ve imagined a conversation between a senior operations person…and a coach:

Operations Manager: “We need consistency!”

Coach: “Can you give me more – what do you mean by ‘consistency’?”

Ops Mgr: “Well, er, everybody (ref. client) should get the same thing (ref. service)…to make it ‘fair’.”

Coach: “But, given that everyone needing help is different, won’t they need different things?”

Ops Mgr: Mmmm…..“Well, er, every worker at the front line (ref. helper) should be consistent with a given client!”

Coach: “Can you give me more – what do you mean by ‘consistent’?”

Ops Mgr: “Er, yes…it shouldn’t matter which helper a client interacts with – each helper should provide them with the same thing. Our clients don’t want a lottery that’s dependant on who they are talking to!”

[Notice that the (supposed) desire for consistency has been ‘passed across’ to the client…who never asked for it. They just want help!]

Coach: “So, you’re saying that each helper should provide a client with the same thing? No matter which helper the client interacts with? And how will you achieve that?”

Ops Mgr: “Well, by making clear, for all helpers, what they should provide for each potential client scenario. That way, we will get consistency across the helpers.”

Coach: “Oh, so a massive set of rules?”

Ops Mgr: “Er, yes. We could even automate them – hey, perhaps we could throw ‘AI’ at it!²”

Coach: “And how does your helper work out which (supposed) scenario to ‘look up’ and then ‘apply’? Wouldn’t they have to properly understand the client and their current reality? (#variety)”

Ops Mgr: “Well, we’d have to make that easy to work with.”

Coach: “Given the 100,000¹ unique clients ‘in our care’, and given that each of them has a gloriously complex and dynamic life, how big do you think your rule book would need to be to encapsulate all possibilities? I’m thinking – in mathematical terms – that it could be approaching the infinite…”

Ops Mgr: “Er, um, gosh, well obviously it couldn’t be infinite! We’d have to prioritise some aspects of it, generalise some of it, assume some of it…ignore some of it….”

Coach: “Mmm, it could look like ‘consistency’ had become the de facto purpose, replacing ‘help client’.

Can I make a suggestion? Would you be happy with me re-wording your highlighted words above to ‘each helper should provide the right help – you know, the help that the client actually needs, in that moment, for what’s going on for them?”

Ops Mgr: “Mmm, but where’s my [sacred] consistency gone though?

Coach: “Well, if each helper was consistent in applying the purpose of ‘help the client according to their needs’, and consistent in working within a set of core principles, they would all consistently take the care to:

• engage with the client (relate with them³);
• understand what’s going on for them; and
• co-create an appropriate way forward (that the helper enables the client to self-determine)

…and it should be relatively obvious that – if two different helpers consistently applied the client-related purpose and principles, they would likely end up doing very similar things (#consistency).

This imagined conversation has gone through two phase shifts:

From: consistency = every client ‘gets’ the same thing

Through: consistency = every helper ‘provides’ the same thing (to a given client)

To: consistency = every client gets/is provided with the right help.

A likely critique:

Now, to a critique that is thrown at the above.

Management fears that the front-line helpers will give clients anything and everything that they ask for! Then, word will get out, and the whole client population will be ‘queueing out the door’, all with their hands out.

This is clearly demonstrated when management chide the front line with the “Let’s not give away the farm!” phrase.

For those that have never come across this phrase⁴, looking it up in the Wiktionary, I get:

“Give away the farm: To pay more than one should have.”

Another phrase that sits in the same space is that ‘we shouldn’t be providing gold-plated⁵ taps’.

You get the point: If a client presents on a public service asking for assistance, Management only want – shall we say – ‘value for (their) money’.

Ironically, when a service design requires the front line to treat people as transactions and to standardise their response, the funders of that service (often the taxpayer) ends up giving away that proverbial farm in vast outflows of waste⁶:

• in spending time and effort on categorising (the wrong thing);
• in giving clients something that they didn’t need (and, often, didn’t want);
• in dealing with the fallout from this (the confusion, the chasing, the complaints,…);
• in waiting far too long to give clients the thing that they did need, but now it’s too late (things have got a lot worse), and they need something else/further;

• in going through this ‘categorise – delay – assess – delay – standardise – delay – review – delay – re-categorise’ loop again and again.

 Introducing, and defining, a term:

Nominal value⁷:” …whether something functions as required, performs satisfactorily, is acceptable.” [Thus, implying that the basics are being met, without any ‘bells and whistles’] (Dictionary)

Tying together the concepts of Quality⁸ and Variety, we (a service provider) need to understand what is required to meet a client’s actual need, and then achieve this…which will likely cost much less than NOT understanding this and doing (lots of) things anyway – thus wasting time and money.

There’s no need for ‘Gold Plated’ service, the client (just) wants our help in meeting their actual need. Each client sets their nominal value.

The question is: did we understand it? did we meet it? No more, no less.

 

A final note:

I could write so much more…

However, I hope that this does enough for a bite-size read. For those that want to explore this a bit further, I wrote a related post many years ago that I think is worth reading alongside this one: “You keep saying that…but what does it mean?!”

I’d also pull out the following words from this earlier post (Part 2: The problem of changing from ‘this’ (Control) to ‘that’ (Autonomy) | Squire to the Giants)

“Whilst we want each and every local team ‘thinking for itself’, we need them all to be going in the same direction. For this to occur, they need a simple, clear (client centred) purpose and principles, to use as their anchor for everything they do…and with this they can amaze us!

Which leads to one of my all-time favourite quotes:

“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behaviour.

[Complicated] rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behaviour.” (Dee Hock)

We also need the ‘centre’ (and most definitely senior management) to live and breathe the purpose and principles. Without this it’s just ‘happy talk’.” (SttG)

Footnotes:

1. Re. volumes in this post: I’ve made up the 1,000 workers and 100,000 clients. It’s frequently in this ‘ballpark’, and often much bigger!

2. Just in case you didn’t catch it…that’s me ‘throwing a grenade’ at what’s going on with the ‘AI thingy’ in organisations all around me.

3. Re. relationships: I should note that there is a far bigger issue behind this ‘conversation’ – that of an organisational design that causes clients to have to interact with multiple helpers…which – surprise, surprise – causes a ‘consistency’ concern. See this recent post that digs into this: Thoughts on: (True) Case Management vs. Tiered Service Models | Squire to the Giants

4. On ‘Giving away the farm’: I hadn’t heard this phrase until I worked in NZ.

5. Gold-plating: “the incorporation of costly and unnecessary features or refinements into a product or structure.” (Collins dictionary)

6. Vast outflows of waste: You’d have to ‘go to the Gemba’ and usefully study the system in operation to see this because it won’t easily show up in siloed, unit cost reporting.

7. Nominal value definition: as is the case for many words, the dictionary provides for various uses of the word. This is the Engineering (as opposed to the Economic or Legal) definition.

8. Quality refers to how well something satisfies a clients’ needs – it contains the notion of value to the client.

Note that quality is defined by the client (the person with the needs) and not imposed by the service provider. It is therefore the client that determines whether the need has been met. We can expect failure demand where it has not been.

Given that quality is defined by the client, and that each client is unique, it follows that the definition of quality will vary per client (variety). Quality will be about how well we are meeting a specific person’s needs, not an average or standard.

9. The opening image is of a straight jacket…which is what the ‘conventional management’ view of consistency can cause. The straight jacket can work both ways: of restrained workers and dependant clients.