Brain Farts

An Exercise in Futility

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , ,

Dalmatian-chasing-tail-006Now this post is a bit longer than normal, but I hope that the 1st quote grabs you and sucks you in…I reckon that once you start you won’t stop 

“Performance evaluation is an exercise in futility” (Scholtes)

Every organisation operating a ‘command and control’ management system uses the performance appraisal as a key tool in its arsenal.

The contention in this post is that one of the key steps in providing an environment that fosters a highly motivated and capable workforce is to scrap the performance appraisal system and replace it with something far better.

Problems with performance appraisals

Let’s first consider just some of the problems with actually carrying out what might be considered a valid performance appraisal of an individual – that’s you and me:

  • Appraiser Bias: Performance assessments tell us as much about the appraiser as the appraisee. It tells us how harsh a critic the manager is, how good a job he/she expects the employee to do, how well the two of them get along, what basic values they share and even whether their backgrounds are similar; 
  • Management performance: The quality of management has a huge influence. “any individual’s performance is, to a considerable extent, a function of how they are managed…so the manager is in part evaluating him/herself without appearing to do so.” (McGregor) 
  • Interdependence: None of us act alone. “Almost nothing is accomplished by an individual operating alone. Most work is obviously a collective effort. Yet even workers who seem quite independent depend on others for ideas, stimulation, feedback, moral support and administrative services.

When an individual makes some heroic effort and accomplishes an extraordinary task, often he or she can take the time to do that work only because others have filled in on the less heroic parts of the job. When someone is credited with a success, he or she is individually honoured [e.g. by money, award, public acclaim] for what was most likely the work of many.” (Scholtes)

  • The effects of the system: Deming used his famous red bead experiment to illustrate this point simply yet brilliantly. He explains that the performance of the employee is 95% governed by the system that they work within. The ranking of people is actually merely ranking the effect of the system on the people. 

“It is simply unfair to the extent that employees are held responsible for what are, in reality, systemic factors that are beyond their control.” (Kohn)  

  • A straight jacket: Appraisals ‘compare’ everyone against a uniform expectation (albeit per manager – see 1. above) rather than understand and embrace the reality that everyone is unique, with very different (often subtle) contributions to make.

Deming wrote the wonderful words that “a [true] manager of people understands that people are different from each other. He [or she] tries to create for everybody interest and challenge and joy in work. He tries to optimise the family background, education, skills, hopes and abilities of everyone. This is not ranking of people. It is, instead, recognition of differences between people, and an attempt to put everybody in position for development.”  

  • Ignoring variation: The work of each individual is characterised by variability…it will naturally fluctuate! You cannot be the same every minute of every day….if you were, you would be a machine! Further, the major causes of such variation are beyond the attributes of the individual. So should you be criticised or praised because of ups and downs in your supposed ‘performance’ outside of your control?

I could go on…but I fear that I would write a book!

The performance appraisal creates the illusion that management have indeed isolated and determined the performance of an individual. Worse still, it allows management to abdicate their responsibilities – they will simply meet the person each period, get the person to justify themselves (with evidence!) and then judge them….no need to actually get to understand who they are, what their dreams and aspirations are, and therefore discuss how they can help them become reality.

The effects of performance appraisals

Most organisations running performance appraisal systems will answer back in denial: “yes, we know all about the above and we have ‘continuously improved’ our process through much iteration so there’s no such problems here!”

I would contend that they may have succeeded in creating a (laborious, bureaucratic and wasteful) process that masks (i.e. disregards) the above, but they cannot remove them.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s just suppose they have….what about the effects of the performance appraisal:

[the system by which merit is appraised and rewarded is] “the most powerful inhibitor to quality and productivity in the Western world….it nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork, nourishes rivalry…and leaves people bitter.” (Deming)

“Even if performance appraisals were adequate to gauge how well people were doing their effects are usually so destructive that they shouldn’t be used anyway. Not only is the fact of interdependence in the workplace ignored, but people are discouraged from cooperating in the future.” (Kohn)

“Appraisals leave people bitter, bruised, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some severely depressed.” (Seddon)

What do people running performance appraisals say they are for?

Rather than simply looking for a new technique to continue with the old flawed logic, let’s consider why people are being evaluated.

Kohn notes four ‘defences’ as being used by those that contend performance appraisals are required. They say they are needed to:

  1. Determine how much each employee should be paid and/or who should receive various awards and incentives;
  2. Make employees perform better for fear of receiving a negative evaluation or in the hope of getting a positive one;
  3. Sort employees on the basis of how good a job they are doing so we know who to promote; and
  4. Provide feedback, discuss problems, and identify needs in order to help each employee do a better job.

Taking each of these in turn, and using some of my previous posts so that you and I can finish this post today!!…

Regarding 1: Please read the following posts already on the blog that debunk the use of contingent rewards: The Chasm and Money as pay

Regarding 2: Please read Oh no, not that old theory and Making a wrong thing righter that explain why ‘carrot and stick’ approaches to motivation are counter-productive.

Regarding 3: Please read Anointing heroes. Further, there is a whole post to be written on promotion (I’ll add it to my list!). It’s not a good reason to carry out performance appraisals.

Defences 1 – 3 are about doing things to people…which leaves 4 as the only one which could be about working with people….mmm, if we got rid of 1 -3 then this is sounding promising! Read on.

So what should we replace performance appraisals with?

Kohn suggests that, if the over-riding purpose is to foster improvement (for the individual, and for the organisation) then the following principles take shape:

  • A two-way conversation:
    • An opportunity to trade ideas and ask questions;
    • NOT a series of judgements about one person pronounced by another;
  • A continuous process, rather than a time bound event (e.g. annual, quarterly);
  • It never involves any sort of relative ranking or competition (no scoring!);
  • It is utterly divorced from decisions about compensation
    • “Providing feedback that employees can use to do a better job ought never to be confused or combined with controlling them by offering (or withholding) rewards.” (Kohn)
    • It is “foolish to have a manager serving in the self-conflicting role as a counsellor (helping someone improve performance) when, at the same time, he or she is presiding as judge over the same employee’s salary” (Meyer)

Essentially, Kohn is arguing for good old fashioned regular and meaningful conversations between employee and manager within an environment of openness and mutual trust. I’ll have some of that!

Scholtes takes this further: Performance appraisals focus on the wrong target! The true opportunities for improvement are in an organisation’s systems and processes, rather than individuals or groups. Instead of focusing on individuals, managers should be working with individuals to focus on the problems with the system.

It’s worth noting that an organisation taking the above seriously won’t be able to move to this highly desirable state overnight: Once the scoring, ranking, rating and rewarding has been stripped out, it will take a bit of time for managers to establish the trust of their employees.

On the plus side, the vast majority of managers will relish the removal of the hugely wasteful processes and painful conversations of the old way…and will really enjoy spending the newly created time actually helping their team.

What about the advice from all those expensive consultants?

You will find queues of expensive consultants who will tell you otherwise.

Scholtes notes that most ‘research’ on performance appraisals consists of opinion polls asking “which kind of performance appraisal do you prefer?” They are usually:

  • conducted by consulting companies selling their ‘Human Capital’ services;
  • filled out by HR managers who, as a group, are predisposed in favour of performance appraisal…no disrespect meant but it is, after all, a major part of their (current) job; and then
  • sent back out to the same group of HR managers in glossy consultancy report format along with a nicely worded proposal as to how the consultancy can help implement what they now claim to be ‘best practise’ and move them up some supposed ‘maturity curve’!

Scholtes notes “when biased people ask the opinions of biased people, the results cannot be described as research.” This quote is so relevant to many a ‘big consultancy’ report purporting to be ‘research’.

…and finally: what do the Japanese do?

A really nice story from John Seddon:

“I was asked to write an article exposing the problems with performance appraisals for a Sunday newspaper. I submitted my 1st draft.

  • The editor suggested I should provide balance by talking about what to do instead.
  • My response was that you don’t need to find an alternative to doing a bad thing – you should just stop doing it!
  • The editor said ‘ring your friends in Japan and find out what they do’.
  • …so I did.
  • I asked ‘what do you do about performance appraisal?’
  • The reply was ‘what is that?’
  • …I explained.
  • Japanese people tend to be too polite to laugh.”

…so you got an award!

giantknave Brain Farts

gold-trophy-cup1So your organisation has just found out that it has ‘won’ an award, put forward by an external party. Before I offer my congratulations…

Why did you get this award?

  • Did you go searching for it; OR
  • Did it come to you?

Why do ‘they’ want to give out an award?

  • As much for their benefit as yours (e.g. to drive your and others behaviours); OR
  • For the furtherance of an honourable cause?

Did you WANT the award and why?

  • “Too right – are you mad?!”; OR
  • “We just wanted to get some feedback as to what we are doing and see if we could learn anything from articulating this to others.”

What did you tell them in order to get the award?

  • A beautifully crafted and selective ‘case study’; OR
  • The warts and all reality

How did you tell them?

  • A slick ‘look at me’ boast; OR
  • A humble ‘matter of fact, if you are interested’ way

Who ‘made the pitch’/ ‘did the explaining’? (as appropriate from your answers above!)

  • The commander-and-controller; OR
  • A representative team of the doers?

How do you feel about the award?

  • “Yes, get in. This will make me us look really good!!”; OR
  • “That’s great…but let’s not let it distract us from what we are actually trying to achieve. We’ll move on now to the next challenge!”

And the most important question (I should be able to predict the answer from your responses to the above):

What is the award going to do for you?

  • Make you crow, and sit back on your laurels praising your own brilliance because “wow, we clearly know how to do stuff round here!”; OR
  • A renewed drive to keep on towards your true purpose, taking on board the learning gained from the experience…but clear that the award changes nothing in this regard.

And finally:

What are you going to do with the physical trophy that you likely received?

  • Put it on display for all your customers to see, so that they are being force-fed how great you are despite what service their unit of demand is actually receiving; OR
  • Allow the doers to decide where they’d like to keep it…which will probably be in something like the tea room along with other mementos that embody their team work…but you don’t ‘rub’ your customers’ face in it because it has no bearing on helping them with their specific units of demand.

Your answers to the above will reflect which management environment you work within.

The chasm

giantknave Brain Farts , , , ,

dollar-trap…between what science knows & what business does!

In my 3 day ‘Lean/Systems Thinking’ course, I ‘mess with the heads’ of the participants about incentives and motivation. I use material from a fabulous book called ‘Punished by Rewards’ written by Alfie Kohn (1993/1999).

Now, a number of course attendees comment back to me that “isn’t what you are saying the same as that Dan Pink guy?” * and, yes, basically it is. Pink is what I might call the modern day Kohn, the ‘in vogue’ management guru on this stuff…not that Alfie has gone anywhere!

[* Dan Pink wrote a 2009 book on the same subject area as Alfie Kohn’s earlier book. Pink’s book is called ‘Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us’. I’ve noticed a Dan Pink RSAnimate informally making its way round]

This post is about a Dan Pink TED talk passed to me by a participant on one of my courses (thanks for sharing), in which Pink eloquently and passionately puts across his points. It is 18 mins. long and well worth watching.

The key message in the TED talk is that:

There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

‘Carrot and stick’ (as in contingent rewards) is an ideology, not a proven method to get the desired results. In fact, worse than being ineffective, it can do much harm.

Now, once you’ve watched the TED talk, you will know what the key message is about and that Dan Pink puts forward some scientific research as evidence. You might think “yeah, anyone can put forward an experiment or two, but I bet there are other experiments that ‘prove’ the opposite!”

To answer this: If you read Kohn’s book (which is a detailed and brilliantly written review of the body of research around incentives) you will find that:

  • experiments have been done on this stuff since the 1950’s, each and every decade, right up to today;
  • the results of these experiments have been replicated again and again and again; and
  • there isn’t any credible scientific evidence that contradicts the findings.

So what about service organisations?

Cast your mind back to the candle problem that Pink refers to, and whether the tacks are provided inside or outside of the box.

In service, the necessary actions are rarely a simple and obvious ‘cookie cutter’ response. Rather, the tacks might be scattered under the table, the box still a flat pack and the candle missing a wick!

Every customer service person should be thinking about the unique customer they are dealing with, their unique reality and then providing excellent service that satisfies (and hopefully exceeds) their specific needs.

You might come back at me and say “but if we standardise everything then our people don’t need to think. They just need to ‘turn the handle’ and THEN incentives work…don’t they?”

Two comments on this:

  • do you think the customer wants to be standardised?
  • do you think our people simply want to ‘turn a handle’?

I think not!

Be careful of gimmicky management fads:

Pink talks about a number of innovative techniques to get people thinking autonomously. He refers to Atlasian’s FEDEX day, Google’s 20% time and ROWE. Each makes some sense.

However, if a company simply picks up one of these ideas and ‘implements it’ BUT doesn’t change the underlying thinking, it won’t work.

It’s not about the gimmick (and you don’t need to copy theirs), it’s about the underlying thinking!

Kohn sets out a 3-step approach:

  1. abolish extrinsic motivators (incentives, competitive awards….);

(“pay people well and fairly…then put [incentives] out of their minds.”)

  1. then re-evaluate ‘evaluations’: move from formal time-batched judgement events to continual 2-way conversations divorced from the issue of compensation;
  2. then create the conditions for authentic motivation:
    • Collaboration: across the horizontal value stream
    • Work content: make it interesting
    • Choice: allow people to experiment and learn

And a reminder of that great John Seddon quote:

“with every pair of hands you get a free brain – but whether the brain is engaged depends on the design of the work.”

…but why?

giantknave Brain Farts , ,

downloadProject Steering Group Meeting starts:

Project Manager: “We’ve had a major setback and we can’t ‘go live’ next week as per the original target date set. We’ve worked some long hours to think about this and what we need to do and have re-planned. We have worked out that, if we work really smart and hard and everything goes to plan, we believe we could be back on track in 8 weeks time.”

Big tough Leader: “I want it in 4 weeks.”

Project Manager: “I know it’s disappointing and you would like it as quickly as possible. That’s why when we did the re-planning we cut out all the fat AND used really stretching estimates…and it is this that gives us the 8 weeks….it could easily have come out at 12 weeks or more.”

Big tough Leader: “You’ve got 4 weeks.”

Project Manager: “I’ve spoken with everyone. We got together as a team to work out what is possible. They all rolled their sleeves up, did some good honest talking and they tell me that they will move heaven and earth to hit 8 weeks.”

Big tough Leader: “Look at my fingers [holds up four fingers]. I’m not going to discuss it anymore.”

…and so the meeting ends, with the Big Tough Leader walking off pleased with him/herself and the Project Manager having the unenviable task of trying to explain to the troops and keep them motivated…all of which will take further time (which could have been spent delivering value).

It’s at this point that I would want to press the ‘stop’ button in the conversation, wind back and at the point that the Big Tough Leader says “you’ve got 4 weeks”, I would want the Project manager to say “…but why?”

Now, there appear to be two logical answers to this question:

  1. The leader knows something that the Project Manager doesn’t, like there’s an important constraint that means that 8 weeks is no good….in which case the Project Manager (and the team) needs to know the full facts and can enter a proper dialogue about the options available…with some likely innovative ideas coming out; or
  2. The leader is attempting to ‘manage by fear’ and thinks that their clever ‘stretch-target’ will motivate (!) the workers. Further, it shows that the leader doesn’t trust his/her people and thinks they are lazy, that they are holding effort back and need a carrot/ stick management approach.

So, what actually happens when unrealistic target dates are set?

  • disbelief by those who actually know the reality of the situation…de-motivation…and therefore a major disconnect between worker and leader…leading to an understandable lack of respect in the leader;
  • de-scoping of value from the work so as to hit an arbitrary target date (“we delivered something!”), as opposed to achieving a target condition;
  • the customer (the people receiving the outcomes) never believing the dates that you give them along the lines of ‘the boy that cries wolf’ fable. This is because big tough target dates are published (“because, then, that’ll make ’em work harder!“) and then have to be continually re-published as reality bites and dates are re-set;
  • much effort is wasted ‘analysing’ variances between what was dictated vs. what eventuated…none of which comes as much of a surprise to the workers who knew anyway;
  • much wasted effort is spent after ‘go-live’ coping with the semi-complete outcome and the customer fallout.

Okay, so you hit a published target deadline…big deal!

What matters is what was actually achieved in respect of the purpose of the value stream being affected. Is the value stream more or less capable in the eyes of the customer?

Now, obviously any roll out needs to know a date to be able to plan its implementation, BUT we should be trying to delay the setting of this date as long as possible in the work so that we have the most certainty as to what it will actually be – a ‘just in time’ mentality rather than a ‘hook to hang people on’.

Let’s try to move:

  • away from thinking setting target dates as a management tool is a good thing;
  • to thinking that setting target conditions* is the right thing to do, and then providing an environment in which everyone works to achieve this as effectively as possible.

* A reminder: a target condition is a description of the desired future state (how a process should operate, the intended normal pattern of operation). It is NOT a numerical activity target or deadline.

“First determine where you want to go, then consider how to get there within financial and other constraints.” (Mike Rother)

Do you use target dates as a ‘management by fear’ tool to ‘make people comply’?!

A Gulf in Thinking

giantknave Brain Farts , , , ,

keep-calm-and-pull-andon-cord-4The Toyota Production System famously uses the andon system: the provision of a cord hanging from the ceiling* at every worker’s station that, once pulled, indicates that the worker has identified a problem and that no more work should pass through their section of the line until this problem has been resolved.

(* it doesn’t have to be a cord, it can be a button or other such device.)

The problem could be anything. If the worker isn’t happy about something, then the cord gets pulled!

Once pulled, a light and/or buzzer will be triggered. The worker’s supervisor will come to their station and, together, they will consider the problem and how to resolve it. Depending on the problem, it may be resolved fully or temporarily whilst a better countermeasure is worked on in parallel (i.e. the temporary doesn’t become permanent!)

This ‘stop the line’ mentality means that:

  • No more units of work can go through the line whilst the problem exists, meaning that the customers are protected from receiving a defective product/ service;
  • The problem is solved as soon as it occurs. It’s not a case of “yeah, we’ve known about it for ages but no one’s done anything about it (yet!)…”; and
  • The process is continually improving naturally, as it operates. I love this bit – the workers are the source of this improvement rather than specialist improvement teams being sent in to monitor them and their work.

And to be clear, this andon system is equally applicable to a service organisation and its processes as it is to a manufacturing line. If you are performing a service but experience a problem…stop…don’t keep processing yet more units through the problem…work to remove the problem. This ‘stop’ doesn’t mean stop answering customer demand (such as picking up the phone) but it does mean stop doing things that you know aren’t going to be good for that, and future, units of work.

Now, obviously, a process performer is constrained by the system and can’t resolve problems by themselves. The andon system is far more than a cord! It is workers, supervisors and managers all working together with the same ‘stop the line and fix it’ mentality.

H. Thomas Johnson, in his highly regarded book ‘Profit beyond measure’ explains a conversation he had with a training executive from one of the American ‘Big Three’ auto companies who were trying to emulate Toyota by copying their tools and techniques.

This is what the executive said when Johnson asked how her company presents the andon system in employee training:

“Employees are told that the andon system is very important to achieving high quality, but they are told that they must use the cord responsibly. That means don’t pull it unless it is absolutely necessary, because pulling the cord and stopping the line is very costly.”

…and so this executive exposes the absolute gulf in thinking between her organisation and (System Thinking organisations such as) Toyota!

THE point of the andon system is that the employee is able to stop their work at will.

How the hell does the worker know if it’s ‘absolutely necessary’? What does that even mean? Toyota want the worker to ‘pull the cord’ even if they are simply uncertain about something…so that this uncertainty can be identified, understood and removed – it’s not the workers fault if they aren’t sure about something! It’s the system.

They also want the worker to pull the cord if they can’t keep pace with the line. Again, this is the worker telling them something that they need to know…not an opportunity to blame the worker as a ‘slacker’. They can then look at why the worker can’t keep pace. This could be for a myriad of reasons.

You can see why a Toyota line will continue to get better and better every day and their workers more expert, feeling more respected and as a result more engaged in wanting to improve.

You can also see that their American competitor is playing a ‘command and control’ mind game on their workers. The worker is thinking “should I pull the cord? Not sure…best not to since I don’t want to be blamed for the cost.”

Paradoxically, it will be Toyota’s costs that will be going down!!!

Now, Toyota does monitor the number of times the cords are pulled in a given period (i.e. they do care about who is pulling it and how often) but not as you might think…

…they are most concerned when the number of ‘stop the line’ signals goes down…because this indicates that they are not improving as much as they were…and this concerns them: more andon cord pulls please!!!

Oh, and one last (yet important) thing: targets, and contingent rewards , are the sworn enemy of stopping the line to resolve a problem!

Educator, not Guru

giantknave Brain Farts , ,

theloveguruFollowing the theme of my earlier post on education, I’d like to share a great Russell Ackoff quote which he wrote as part of the forward to Peter Scholte’s superb book ‘The leaders handbook’:

“A guru is one who develops a doctrine and seeks disciples who accept and transmit it without modification. No deviation is acceptable. Any modification is a sign of disloyalty, in fact, heresy. Its consequence is excommunication.

Educators, on the other hand, encourage and even try to inspire progressive deviations from what they have said. Their objective is not to remove the need for further learning, as is the guru’s, but to initiate it – to provide a springboard from which their students can dive into their own minds, discover what is there, and develop it.

The number of management gurus is increasing at an alarming rate. We do not yet have one guru per manager but we are rapidly approaching that number. The ultimate success of a guru is to produce the fad of the week, becoming number one on the managerial hit parade. Successful or not, gurus preach panaceas the validity of which they pretend to have received directly from the Great Manager in the Sky, who actually resides in the mind of the gurus.

What educators teach comes from experience, their own and that of others, not from revelation.”

Be wary of the management cults of… [please insert the name of today’s panacea].

One at a time please

giantknave Brain Farts ,

knivesI had an interesting conversation with my youngest son yesterday after dinner. Mum had cooked (a wonderful meal I should add…if she ever reads this), so it was up to me and my boys to wash and dry the carnage left behind.

I washed. I always do the sharp knives first – a touch of OCD according to my wife. There were a number of knives to wash.

No. 2 son picks up the first knife from the draining board, dries it and puts it on the side waiting for the second knife.

  • Dad:“why haven’t you put that away in the knife block?”; 
  • Son: “because I’m waiting for the other knives first”;
  • Dad: “why are you doing that?”
  • Son: “because it will be quicker!” (said in a tone of amazement at the apparent stupidity of my question)
  • Dad: “why will it be quicker?” 
  • Son: “because I will only have to walk over to the knife block once – duh!”

I let it pass, and carried on to see what happened. Here’s what I observed:

  • He put the dry knife down on a dirty surface whilst it was waiting ‘in process’ – grrrr, needs washing again!;
  • He waited (doing nothing) whilst I was washing the next knife. He and his older brother usually have a tussle about the next object, it’s desirability for drying and therefore who’s picking it up…I’m sure there’s a situational comedy sketch in there for the likes of Eddie Izzard!;
  • He had created a pile (batch) of dried knives and then, somewhat dangerously, picked them all up and walked across the kitchen (bare foot), past his brother and I, and then tried to juggle them in his arms whilst attempting to slot them into the knife block;
  • He nearly killed his brother in the process….though I can’t be sure as to whether that was his intent.

The funny thing is that we all seem to think, instinctively, that doing things in batches is more efficient. We don’t seem to see all the problems that it can create.

Whenever we deal in batches, we have to:

  • create the batch;
  • handle the batch; and then
  • un-create the batch

…and, whilst this happens:

  • items ‘wait’ in the batch whilst its assembly and disassembly is completed;
  • defective items are masked until later in the process…at which point it is probably a problem for many, if not all, items in that batch;
  • the whole batch suffers (is held up) whilst the item problem(s) are resolved.

I read a similar example on the ‘Leanthinker’ blog recently. It is another nice, short illustrative demonstration of the point.

I also highly recommend the wonderful 1980’s HP video that does much to show the sense of reducing batch sizes. It’s in two circa. 15 min. parts: part 1, part 2 (for info: there is a short ‘part 3’ as well)

Toyota’s phenomenal success (and other Lean Enterprises) lies to a large part down to its focus on the flow of each individual item, rather than the (supposed) efficiency of each activity within the flow.

A reminder that batches take a number of forms: they might be quantitative (e.g. when a load is full) or, more commonly in service value streams, temporal (i.e. at a point in time, such as monthly, weekly or daily)

Let’s see if we can re-programme our brains from seeing batches as a good thing to seeing flow as the ultimate prize.

I’m sorry to say that, after my ‘knife-juggling son’ observations, I attempted to explain the above to him and was accused (as usual) of “giving him a lecture”. I saw his eyes roll back in his head, I can’t win! I think mum was happy though: she was oblivious to the major life lesson being attempted.

I’m right behind you…

giantknave Brain Farts ,

man-309490_640How many times have you heard your hierarchical ‘superiors’* say “I’m right behind you” when you explain what you want to do/ are doing and ask for their support?

Is this where you want them?!

How many times have you said it to your ‘subordinates’*?

The following quote from Deming relates to management’s (obvious) stated desires to improve ‘their’ organisation:

It is not enough that top management commit themselves to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to – that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough: action is required…

…A quality program for an [organisation], launched by ceremonies with a speech by the [sponsor], raising of flags, beating of drums, badges, all with heavy applause, is a delusion and a snare.”

It’s not about support. In fact, as Deming’s last words above allude to, such support is often worse than none at all. It can create false expectations, cause misreporting and distortion, eventual disillusionment and witch hunts for ‘blame’…causing immeasurable damage.

I don’t want my ‘leader(s)’ behind me. In fact, I don’t want them in front of me, (heroically) telling me what to do. I want them with me, where we are working in partnership towards the purpose of the system.

But what about if ‘the leader’ is busy?

Well then, it can’t be that important then can it.

I love the words of William E Conway on this “…and if you can’t come, send nobody.”

Deming expanded on this by saying “In other words, if you don’t have time to do your job, there is not much that I can do for you.”

* …just in case you hadn’t worked it out: I hate the words ‘superiors’ and ‘subordinates’. I also hate the concept of a ‘boss’ and what it implies….I see all of us simply as people with roles to play within a system, for the overall good of our customers in respect of the purpose of the system. One of THE traits of a great leader is humility, such that people never feel like the leader thinks that they are anything more than them.

Benchmarking – worse than cheating

giantknave Brain Farts , , , , , , ,

CheatingDo you remember back to your school days, and the scandalous crime of cheating by copying someone else’s work?

Why was school-boy (& girl) copying seen as such a sin?

  1. The most obvious reason in traditional education is that you are cheating the ‘grading’ system such that people will think you are ‘better’ than you (currently) are;
  2. But, what’s far worse is that you haven’t actually gone through the learning and development process, for yourself…which is what education should be about.

So why am I comparing and contrasting ‘benchmarking’ with school-boy copying? Let’s first look at a definition:

“Benchmarking: Managers compare the performance of their products or processes externally with those of competitors and best-in-class companies and internally with other operations within their own firms that perform similar activities.

The objective of Benchmarking is to find examples of superior performance and to understand the processes and practices driving that performance.

Companies then improve their performance by tailoring and incorporating these best practices into their own operations.” (from Bain & Co. website – a well regarded Management Consulting organisation selling its benchmarking services)

So, essentially Benchmarking is akin to deliberately (and usually openly) finding out who the best kids in the class are and then trying to copy them…with this being seen as a logical and acceptable thing to do. Business is clearly different to Education (right?)

A number of things strike me about this ‘benchmarking’ definition:

  • It assumes that, if I find someone with excellent ‘result metrics’ (in respect of what I chose to look for) then:
    • the metrics I see are true (undistorted) and tell the whole picture (e.g. cope with differing purposes, explain variation,…); and consequently that
    • I should be doing what they are doing…which implies that I can easily, correctly and completely unpick how they arrived at these results;
  • It is about managers looking for answers externally and, essentially, telling the workers which areas will change, and to what degree (commanding and controlling);
  • It is looking at what other organisations are doing rather than what the customer requires (wrong focus)…and likely constrains true innovation;
  • It focuses on component parts of the system, rather than the system as a whole (which will likely destroy value in the system);
  • It incorporates the related, and equally flawed, idea of ‘best practise’ (rather than understanding that, setting aside the above criticisms, there may be better practises but no such thing as perfection);

Sure, we should be aware of what other organisations, including our competitors, are doing for the good of their customers but attempting to copy them is far too simplistic (see my very first post re. ‘perspective’ ).

It is interesting to read what Jim Womack (et al at MIT) had to say about benchmarking after they spent many years studying the global car industry.

“…we now feel that benchmarking is a waste of time for managers that understand lean thinking. Benchmarkers who discover their ‘performance’ is superior to their competitors have a natural tendency to relax, whilst [those] discovering that their ‘performance’ is inferior often have a hard time understanding exactly why. They tend to get distracted by easy-to-measure or impossible-to-emulate differences in costs, scale or ‘culture’…

…our earnest advice…is simple: To hell with your competitors; compete against perfection…this is an absolute rather than a relative standard which can provide the essential North Star for any organisation. In its most spectacular application, it has kept the Toyota organisation in the lead for forty years.”

And to compete against perfection, you must first truly understand your own system:

“Comparing your organisation with anything is not the right place to start change. It will lead to unreliable conclusions and inappropriate or irrelevant actions. The right place to start change, if you want to improve, is to understand the ‘what and why’ of your current performance as a system.” (John Seddon)

Each organisation should have its own purpose, which attracts its own set of customers, who have their specific needs (which we need to constantly listen to)…, which then determine the absolute perfection we need to be continually aiming for.

You can see that, if we use benchmark metrics, we usually end up back with the Target/ Incentive game. We can expect distorted results and ‘wrong’ behaviours.

The real point – Experimentation and learning: Now you might respond “okay, so we won’t benchmark on result metrics…but surely we should be benchmarking on the methods being used by others?”

The trouble with this goes back to the 2nd, and most consequential, ‘sin’ of school boy copying – if you copy another’s method, you won’t learn and you won’t develop.

“We should not spend too much time benchmarking what others – including Toyota – are doing. You yourself are the benchmark:

  • Where are you now?
  • Where do you want to be next?
  • What obstacles are preventing you from getting there?

…the ability of your company to be competitive and survive lies not so much in solutions themselves, but in the capability of the people in your organisation to understand a situation and develop solutions. (Mike Rother)

When you ‘benchmark’ against another organisation’s methods you see their results and you (perhaps) can adequately describe what you see, but:

  • you don’t understand how they got to where they are currently at, nor where they will be able to get to next;
  • you are not utilising the brains and passion of your workers, to take you where they undeniably can if you provide the environment to allow them to do so.

…and, as a result, you will remain relatively static (and stale) despite what changes in method you copy.

“When you give an employee an answer, you rob them of the opportunity to figure it out themselves and the opportunity to grow and develop.” (John Shook)

Obsessed!

giantknave Brain Farts , , , ,

ObsessionThere’s a word that seems to be overly used within many organisations, almost an obsession.

That word is ‘Culture‘. Indeed, they seem to have a culture of ‘being obsessed by the word culture’.

We hear the following phrases (or variants of):

  • We are measuring our culture
  • We need to change our culture
  • We have a culture committee
  • We are performing a culture-changing programme of work
  • …

So, here’s the thing – an organisation’s culture is a result, an outcome, just like its financial situation. As I wrote in one of my first posts, we shouldn’t be attempting to ‘manage by results’ (as in “let’s change our culture”), we need to manage the causes of the results…and the results will then look after themselves.

The culture of an organisation is the sum of the way people behave. The main cause of the culture is the management system in place. That management system reflects the beliefs and behaviours of the leaders of the organisation.

A reminder of a hugely important quote from John Seddon:

“People’s behaviour is a product of their system. It is only by changing [the system] that we can expect a change in behaviour.”

i.e. we can do all sorts to ‘require’ people to change how they behave (in an attempt to change the culture), but if we continue to apply the command and control management instruments ‘on’ them, such as:

  • management by hierarchical opinion rather than facts at the Gemba;
  • cascaded personal objectives;
  • setting of arbitrary numeric targets;
  • dictating methodologies and tools to use;
  • contingent rewards; and
  • the rating and ranking of people

…then we can’t expect much to really change.

No end of people ‘attitude’ targets, incentives, evidence gathering and rewards will change the system. Instead, we can expect such a system to derive distorted ‘attitude’ metrics – “I will likely tell you what you want to hear if it benefits me to do so.”

Interestingly, whenever I’ve worked in an organisation with a really good environment, the ‘culture’ (outcome) word was seldom mentioned – it didn’t need to be.

So, whilst we’re considering the ‘Culture’ word, what about the ‘Transformation’ word?

Here’s a definition to ponder:

“Transformation: In an organisational context, a process of profound and radical change that orients an organisation in a new direction and takes it to an entirely different level of effectiveness….transformation implies a basic change of character and little or no resemblance with the past configuration or structure.”

Many organisation’s use the word ‘transformation’ a lot, and perform major organisational change a lot…but unless that change has succeeded in delivering an entirely different level of effectiveness, then they’ve only really been ‘rearranging the deck chairs’.

Conversely, if an organisation changes its management system (which would be truly transformational!) then culture change is free.

If an organisation truly operates a ‘systems thinking’ management system then it should result in a powerful culture capable of continuously improving, through the people who work there…with no need for endless attempts at ‘transformation’.