The ‘Supermarket shelf’ analogy

December 7, 2022 giantknave Brain Farts Autonomy, Autonomy Support, Handelsbanken, John Seddon, Push vs Pull, Service, Taiichi Ohno

I’ve had many constructive conversations with people about a ‘way of thinking’ regarding the relationship between those helping people (value creating) and those enabling this to happen (value enabling).

I wrote this up in a two-part post, which is linked here:

In addition to these two posts, I often use an analogy¹ of a supermarket shelf to assist me in explaining the desirable inter-connectedness between those helping clients, and those (tasked with) enabling this.

Now, whilst every analogy is limited², humanity has derived great value in using them. So this post is my attempt at writing down my ‘supermarket shelf’ analogy for others to ponder and play with.

Here goes…

So, how does a physical supermarket shelf work?

A simple diagram to assist:

In pulling according to their needs, the customer determines:

whether what’s available is suitable for their needs (ref. autonomy);
whether to try a product;
what they think about the product once they’ve used it; and
what’s missing from the selection (ref. not engaging/ going elsewhere)

In observing the customer, the supplier uses this as feedback to determine:

which products are being selected, and therefore need restocking (ref. capacity);
what new products to develop and test (ref. experimentation); and
which products to improve or discontinue (ref. learning)

Note that the customer decides what combination of products goes in their basket (i.e. what selections work for their needs) …no matter how unexpected these may appear to the supplier.

The supplier’s role is to (safely) enable the selection, whilst providing knowledge to the customer as to what they are selecting and how to get the best out of it.

…and what doesn’t happen?!

The supplier DOES NOT decide what products to put into the customer’s basket.

The supplier DOES NOT decide whether the product worked out for the customer.

In short, the supplier DOES NOT control the customer. Rather, they aim to understand and enable them.

The analogy with People-centred services

If a social system wants to truly help people (its clients) then it will achieve this through autonomy support (rather than attempts at control).

The following diagram applies the supermarket analogy to a social system by using the roles defined within Part 1: Autonomy – Autonomy Support – Autonomy Enabling:

THE big point within this analogy is that ‘the centre’ (i.e. those removed from the client relationship) DOES NOT determine what services a given ‘client – helper working alliance’ is provided with/ can access.

Rather, their role is one of enablement: to ‘stock the shelves’ with a full range of useful tools that will assist, to ensure that it is clear and easy as to how to get the best out of these tools, and to constantly monitor and improve what’s available.

The ‘client – helper working alliance’ decides what combinations to pull and when to pull them as they progress on their relational journey to a better client life.

As set out within an earlier post on Vector Measurement, each client is unique, and their situation complex…so the journey will be about iteratively working alongside them according to what emerges.

This would be the opposite of putting people into a tiered model of services…and moving them up these tiers as things deteriorate (see below on this).

Clarification as to why the shelf is required

You might think “Yes! I agree…we need to get the (attempted) centralised control out of the equation!!” As such, you might be wondering why the helper (the ‘front line’ worker) even needs the centre.

Well, they do…but in a different way than has become the norm.

The helper needs to focus on the client – who they are, what’s going on for them, why this is so, what they need to move forwards.

The helper doesn’t have the time, capability, and resources to develop the host of necessary tools to help. Instead, they need to rely on others to enable them. NOT to dictate to them or refer onwards to…but to focus expertise where it is required.

Example: a client might want/need help in getting an appropriate job. Their helper would really like to be able to pull useful tools like:

- - careers advice with respect to a client’s strengths and experiences
  - knowledge as to what’s available to help develop a client in desirable directions (e.g. education courses, work experience opportunities…)
  - knowledge of the local recruitment agencies, their specialisations, and who/ how to contact
  - guidance on how to write a good CV, and some templates to get the client going
  - interview coaching/advice
  - financial assistance with logistics (e.g. transport, clothing…)
  - …

All of these things would be very useful for the client & helper to have available to them, to pick and choose. It would be mad for each helper to have to design their own.

Conversely, none of this is the ‘centre’ dictating specific responses when a client’s attributes fit certain criteria, such as ‘you need to attend this work seminar, take part in this course/ programme, apply for these available roles, reapply for this benefit, …move from service tier x to service tier y’.

We could find lots of other examples (e.g. in health, education, corrections…), and the point would be the same. The client and their helper are on a journey. The service design needs to enable them, not attempt to categorise and control them.

What has become the conventional norm?

i.e. why is it necessary for me to have to write this post?

The current norm in many large service organisations is to adopt a centrally designed tiered model of services. Such a design involves multiple tiers of escalating service support.

A customer typically starts at ‘tier 0’, where the aim (from the organisation’s point of view) is for the customer to self-solve their needs (#digital).

‘Tier 1’ usually involves the need to ‘talk to a person’ but these ‘generalist’ processors are only allowed and/or equipped to answer the very basic needs.

‘Tier 2’ involves escalation to ‘specialists’ (people who may be able to help absorb some aspects of a client’s instance of variety)

…and we may go up to ‘tier n’ according to how specialised we choose to design.

The thinking is that such a model is cost-efficient (ref. front office – back office).

What’s not seen, let alone appreciated, is that such a design causes huge waste (and therefore cost) and significant client distress:

of people steadily progressing up the tiers because the one before couldn’t meet their needs:
- particularly between tiers 0 and 1 (“I tried online but…)
- and again, between tiers 1 and 2 (“sorry, I can’t help with that. I’ll refer you onwards to…)

of the wasted time and effort involved in managing this transferring of people between tiers (including the recording, and then deciphering of the notes in the system)

of people not being able to access obvious and immediate help that could avert things getting worse (“sorry, your situation isn’t bad enough yet to access ‘tier 2’. Go away until you can show that ‘the wheels have really fallen off’ ”)

of people getting ‘stuck in the system’ (“I can’t help with your actual underlying needs…but I can put this ‘sticky plaster’ over it”)

of things getting worse for people as these transfers occur (“My initial problem was x…but now it’s morphed into 3x, y and z!”)

of the confusion between those working within the various tiers (e.g. tier 2 getting frustrated with tier 1: “why did you do that for/to them? They’re my client!”)

of the disengaged workforce who, confined to their allocated service tier, aren’t allowed to develop and use their capability to actually help the clients before them. They aren’t ‘helpers’ (as per the supermarket analogy). They are merely ‘processors’ (according to a centralised design).

If you operate such a system design, you could go and look (#studyyoursystem) …and see all of this. You probably won’t believe it until you do.

In summary

There’s a paradigm shift between attempting to efficiently handle volumes of events (transactional mindset), and effectively helping people move forwards (relational mindset).

The ‘tiered services’ model is focused on events and efficiency…causing yet more events to occur.

The ‘autonomy – autonomy support – autonomy enabling’ model is focused on journeys and effectiveness… leading to stability and independence.

The source of the analogy

I like to make clear how I got to my (current) thinking. Three stimuli for this post:

In the 1950s Taiichi Ohno (Toyota production system) saw photos of American self-service supermarkets showing products arranged on shelves, available to be selected by customers as and when they required them.

He marvelled at how customers chose exactly what they wanted and how much of it, and then at how the products were replenished (Japan didn’t have self-service supermarkets at that time).

This led to Ohno and his colleagues devising the pull system of production (the opposite of the conventional push), and tools such as Kanban cards to convey the necessary information.

In the 1970s Jan Wallander (Handelsbanken) set out a system whereby the bank’s central services worked to define useful banking products (to put on the shelf), and local branches decided (with their customers) which of these products to use (pull from the shelf), and in what combinations.

Wallander removed the ability of the centre to dictate the usage of their products. He turned them into suppliers to the branch. The branch ‘owned’ the customer relationship and determined if/how the available products helped.

Note that Buurtzorg, and its ‘onion model’ of care, is a modern example.

Over the last few decades John Seddon and his colleagues have repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of pulling interventions according to customer need in people-centred services (rather than pushing according to centralised, standardised, specialised design). He’s written several books that clearly set this work out.

A valid criticism of this post

I expect that John Seddon would quite rightly ask of me “why are you writing this down for others to rationally read and then merely apply to their current thinking?”…and thus achieve very little change.

I would like to prompt a level of curiosity: to open ‘managements’ eyes⁴ to the simple fact that the conventional ‘tiered model of services’ isn’t the only way (or even a good way!) …

…and I would then want them to (meaningfully) go to the Gemba, to see the evidence of the dysfunctional performance caused by the current system design, looking at this from the customer/ client’s point of view. #Normative

“The starting point for designing a better system is understanding what’s wrong with the current system.” (Seddon)

The most important part of doing such a thing would be to critically reflect on why things are as they are (which, if we ‘dig deep’ we will find to be ‘thinking things’).

If we don’t uncover this then we will likely just ‘rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.’ i.e. the same, but different.

Footnotes

1. “Analogy: a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation and clarification” (Oxford Dictionary)

2. Limitations of the analogy: All analogies are limited and, if you have the desire to do so, you could choose to kick giant-sized holes in this one. A few example holes that I see:

a) Psychology: those of you aware of the world of consumer products marketing may push back at me with something like “but the supplier IS controlling the customer with the psychology around placement of products on the shelves, packaging, advertising….”

The usage of this analogy is about the customer choosing whether to select, what to select and whether it works for them (ref. autonomy). I ‘get’ that the supplier will use whatever it can to influence the client.

This also applies in people-centred services. A supplier of help (enabler) may want people to, say, stop smoking. As such, it is reasonable for them to understand what interventions work and to use psychology to ‘nudge’ the customer in desirable directions. However, attempts at control will likely backfire (ref. disengagement, defiance)

b) The language of ‘products and services’: A big part of the problem within many service organisations is a ‘product/service’ focus rather than a ‘client need’ focus.

I’d note that service organisations will likely need to create services to help clients, but the analogy is suggesting that these services should be the slave to the client’s needs, not the master. Further, it is making clear that any services need to be able to flex to absorb the variety of the clients before them.

c) Instantly: In a physical supermarket we usually get our need met ‘there and then’. In a people-centred world, it can take time and perseverance for help to ‘take effect’. I’m not wishing to trivialise this.

If I butcher George Box’s ‘model’ quote then “All analogies are wrong, but some analogies are useful”. The question I would wish the reader to ask: ‘is this analogy of some use [to them and others around them]?’

4. Autonomy support: This analogy requires the ‘client – helper working alliance’ to be seen as the customer ‘at the shelf’. It’s not saying that a client can do whatever they want. The autonomy support aspect (the helper role) is critical.

5. On opening eyes: Some will be curious. Some need to be re-awakened from their ‘conventional’ slumber. Others require (what I refer to as) ‘professional provocation’.

Addendum to my recent ‘Venn diagram’ post

September 30, 2022 giantknave Brain Farts Dave Snowden, Intersections, John Seddon

After publishing My ‘Snowden – Seddon’ Venn diagram post on this blog, a reader decided to share it via LinkedIn (which I appreciate – many thanks Sam).

I (usually) choose not to ‘push’ my material onto social media – I’m not trying to sell something (I don’t derive income from it) or gain any ‘influencer’ status.

However, if someone ‘pulls’ it to themselves and for others (e.g. by reposting etc.) then this gives me useful feedback that they see some utility within (even if it is just to prompt a level of reflection).

The loading of the blog post link onto LinkedIn prompted one of the subjects, Dave Snowden, to provide a response. In the interests of transparency (i.e. if you have, or go on to, read the post) I think it’s useful for you to know what Dave wrote, and my thoughts on this:

Dave’s comment on LinkedIn (with me splitting it into – what I see as – the four distinct points within):

“[1] You only have 2 of the 5 (9 if you include liminal) Cynefin domains & [2] even then they do not equate to a split between manufacturing & service. [3] CAS of which Cynefin is a part would reject the whole idea of archetypes. [4] Your descriptions seem designed to support your thesis 🙂 “

My reply:

“Hello Dave, thanks for providing some thoughts on my recent blog post. Rather than attempting to add my thoughts within a small LinkedIn reply box, I’ve chosen to add an addendum to my post that a) makes your comment transparent to any readers and b) provides some thoughts in reply. Regards, Steve”

My thoughts on Dave’s four points:

1. Yes, I am aware that I am only referencing a small part of the Cynefin sense-making framework, hence me writing in the post (emphasis added): “it very usefully differentiates (amongst many other things) between ordered and complex domains”; and me providing a reference in the footnotes to where readers can find out more about Cynefin; and me noting that there is a Cynefin wiki…which I’m happy to link to here.

For the avoidance of doubt: I find the full (and regularly maturing) Cynefin framework interesting. However, it was a particular aspect of it that was the focus of my reflection in my post.

2. Yes, I realise that (emphasis added) “they [Complex vs. Ordered] do not equate to a split between manufacturing and service”, which is why I wrote what I did, how I did, under the subheading title of ‘Making sense of the problem space’ (i.e. the intersect). I am not attempting to argue that anything is ‘the same’ within the post. I am setting out ‘the bones’ of useful linkages (as I currently see them). My last sentence was deliberate in writing (emphasis added) “I see people-centred as being the closest intersection with Snowden’s complex problem space.”

Note: If anyone wanted to understand what I was meaning by the phrase ‘people-centred’ then I provided a link to go to within the post.

3. Archetypes: I’m not sure what Dave is saying is being rejected within CAS (by which I think CAS is short for Complex Adaptive Systems)

the basic definition of an archetype? (“a typical example of something, or the original model from which others are copied” – Cambridge Dictionary); or
how the word has been used in, say, the school of System Dynamics?

For clarity: Seddon’s use of the word ‘archetype’ within his writings (as I understand it) does not equate to its usage by the likes of, say, Peter Senge within System Dynamics.

For example: the archetype of what Seddon refers to as a ‘break – fix’ service may be seen in many different settings (ref. an IT support desk, a social housing repairs service, an insurance claims process…)

4. Yes, I agree that my thinking cannot help but be shaped by my experiences to date, and so (like all of us) is biased accordingly. I’m not attempting to put forward some new theory. I’m choosing to use the medium of ‘writing it down’ to cause me to think and of ‘sharing it’ (via a personal blog) to cause me to think more carefully.

Regarding my bias: I don’t consider myself to be a ‘Seddonista’ or a ‘Snowdenite’ (no disrespect meant by using these terms), although I enjoy exploring, and considering if/how I can usefully apply both of their bodies of work (amongst many others).

In addition:

I also noted a number of comments from others in the related LinkedIn thread(s) making essentially the same point: that I had chosen to use the phrase ‘systems theory’ (in my Venn diagram and in my point 9 intersect), when I should probably have written ‘systems theories’. I’m more than happy with this suggested improvement.

Anyone reading Mike Jackson’s book (as referenced in footnote 4 of the post) would appreciate why the point is a good one.

My ‘Snowden – Seddon’ Venn diagram

September 28, 2022September 30, 2022 giantknave Brain Farts Complex, Cynefin, Dave Snowden, Intersections, John Seddon, Systems Thinking, Vanguard Method

This post is a long, meaty one. So, if this interests you, make yourself a cup of tea and settle in. If it’s not for you, no worries, ‘as you were’…but still make yourself that cuppa 🙂

I first ‘got into’ systemsy stuff about 20 years ago¹. I began with W. Edwards Deming (a peripheral figure in the systems literature) and then went in a variety of directions.

These include:

A number of ‘systems theorists’, such as Forrester, Meadows, Beer, Ackoff & Checkland
John Seddon’s work (noting his down-to-earth writings²)
Dave Snowden’s work (noting his desire for precision³)

As an aside: I’m a big fan of Mike Jackson’s work⁴ to clearly lay out ‘who’s thought what’ in the systems space, and his aim of providing a balanced ‘value vs. critique’ review on each.

During my journey – and most recently via the wonders (or is that curse?) of social media – I’ve noted what I might describe as various ‘turf wars’ going on. If you’ve been following along (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn,…) then you could be forgiven for believing that the three groups noted above (or at least their thinking) are ‘poles apart’.

I’d agree that it’s very healthy for people to robustly test their thinking against others⁵ – it’s incredibly useful to understand a) boundaries of application and b) where there is more work to be done.

However, I feel that those trying to follow along could end up ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ because we fail to see (or acknowledge) the significant intersections between the groups.

This post is about me exploring (some of) what I see as useful intersections.

I love a diagram, so I’ll use the one below to anchor what follows. It’s the typical Venn diagram, highlighting three sets and the relationships between them. The overlaps are the intersections:

I’m mainly concerned with the ‘Snowden – Seddon’ intersection within this post (because this currently interests me the most). You’ll have to bear with me on this because the intersections may not be apparent to those reading their work or listening to them speak. Further, they themselves may not accept my (current) view about if, and how, they intersect.

As an aside: I’d note that it’s not uncommon for similar things to be discovered/ worked out by different people in different settings…and this (almost inevitably) means that they will talk about similar things but use different language (or notation) to each other.

A couple of celebrated examples that I’m aware of:

Newton and Leibniz re. the invention of calculus
Darwin and Wallace re. the theory of evolution

The trick (so to speak) would be to spot the intersections and then build upon them. Newton and Leibniz (and their supporters) had an argument. Darwin and Wallace entered a collaboration.

I’ve thought about the following ‘Snowden – Seddon’ intersections:

On making sense of the problem space
On working with complexity
On the importance of failure
On facilitating change within the complex domain
On scaling change within the complex domain
On measurement
Combining quantitative with qualitative
On the use of tools
On systems theory

Each explanation below will have two halves. I’ll start with a Snowden perspective, and then move to a Seddon viewpoint. Each half will deliberately begin with “as I understand it” (I’ll underline these so that you can clearly see me swapping over).

Here goes…

1. On making sense of the problem space

As I understand it, Snowden’s Cynefin framework⁶ aims to help decision makers make sense of their problem space…so that they respond appropriately. It very usefully differentiates (amongst many other things) between ordered and complex domains. In short:

An ordered system is predictable. There are known, or knowable cause-and-effect relationships and, because of this, there are right answers;

A complex system is unpredictable. The elements (for example people) influence and evolve with one another. The past makes sense in retrospect (i.e. it is explainable) BUT this doesn’t lead to foresight because the system, and its environment, are constantly changing. It’s not about having answers, it’s about what emerges from changing circumstances and how to respond.

As I understand it, Seddon realised that there is a seriously important difference between a manufacturing domain and a service domain and that this difference had huge implications as to how decision makers should act.

A widget being manufactured requires a level of consistency. Further, it is an inanimate object (ref: I’m just a spanner!);
A human being needing help from a service is unique. Further, they have (a degree of) agency;
As such, any system design needs to properly take this into account. An ordered response (e.g. pushing standardised ‘solutions’) to a complex problem space will not work out well (ref. failure demand⁷).

Of interest to me is that, whilst the widget production line may fit the ordered problem space, it usually involves human beings to run it. So, at a 2^nd order level, it is complex – those workers are unique and possess agency. It would be a good idea to design a system that engaged their brains and not just their motor skills.

From reading about the Toyota Production System (TPS) over the years, I believe that this is perhaps what Taiichi Ohno and his colleagues knew… and what those merely trying to copy them didn’t (ref: Depths of ‘Transformation’).

As I understand it, Seddon would suggest that there are a number of service archetypes⁸ (from transactional…through to people-centred). I see people-centred as being the closest intersection with Snowden’s complex problem space, which leads on to…

2. On working with complexity

As I understand it, Snowden would suggest that the appropriate way to work with complexity would be to:

encourage interactions
experiment with possible ways forward
monitor what emerges and adjust accordingly
be patient: allow time for outcomes to emerge, and for reflection

I understand that this may be summarised as probe – sense – respond.

As I understand it, Seddon would suggest that the appropriate way for people-centred services to work would be to:

provide ‘person – helper’ continuity, to build trusting relationships between them
take the time to understand the person, their situation, and their needs
provide ‘person – helper’ autonomy: to try things, to reflect, to adjust according, to go in useful directions according to what emerges

I understand that this may be summarised as designing a system that can absorb variety rather than trying to specify and control.

I see a very strong intersection between the two. I see Seddon as arguing against an ordered response within a people-centred domain.

I note that Snowden uses the metaphor of the resilient salt marsh as compared to the robust sea wall. The former can absorb the variety of what each ‘coming of the tide’ presents, whilst the latter predictably responds but can’t cope when its utility is breached. Seddon is arguing for a ‘salt marsh’ people-centred system design, rather than the conventional sea wall.

3. On the importance of failure

As I understand it, Snowden is clear that we humans learn the most from failure – because we are exposed to the unexpected, and have to wrestle with the consequences (ref. reflection).

We may learn little from supposed ‘success’, where everything turns out as expected. We risk complacency.

As I understand it, Seddon arrived at the definition of failure demand⁷ because he realised that:

those accountable for the performance of a system are often (usually) not aware of the types (and frequencies) of failure demands caused by its current design
the act of seeing, and pondering, failure demand exposes them to reality, and provides a powerful lever for reflection as to why it occurs…and to new ways of thinking about design.

I would link the idea of ‘inattentive blindness’ (as regularly explained by Snowden) – where we may not see what is in plain sight (ref. the case of the radiologists and a gorilla).

Seddon’s method of uncovering failure demand is to enable management to begin the journey of seeing their gorilla(s).

4. On facilitating change within the complex domain

As I understand it, Snowden and his colleagues have defined a set of principles to follow, a key tenet of which is to design the change process in such a way that participants ‘see the system’ and discover insights for themselves (as opposed to being given answers).

As such, the role of the facilitator [interventionist] is to provide an environment in which the participants’ learnings can emerge. Those facilitating do not (and should not) act as ‘experts’. Further, the responsibility for producing an outcome shifts from facilitator to the group of participants.

As I understand it, Seddon’s life work centres around intervention theory and that ‘true human change is normative’ – people changing their thinking, where this is achieved through experiential learning. This would be the opposite of rational attempts at change via ‘you talk, they listen’.

As such, the role of the interventionist is to provide a method whereby they act as a ‘mirror, not an expert’ (ref. ‘Smoke and mirrors’). Further, the responsibility for outcomes lays squarely with those who are accountable for the system in question (ref. ‘leader-led’). ‘Change’ cannot be outsourced to the interventionist⁹.

5. On scaling change within the complex domain

Given the intersection above, it follows that it matters how we go about scaling change.

As I understand it, Snowden lays out the principle that:

“you don’t scale a complex system by aggregation and imitation. You scale it by decomposition and recombination.”

This area of thinking is currently a stub within the Cynefin wiki, which suggests that it is yet to be clearly set out. However, (to me) it is stating that you can’t just ‘copy and paste’ what apparently worked with one group of humans onto another. Well, you could try…. but you can expect some highly undesirable outcomes if you do (ref. disengagement, disenfranchisement, defiance…)

It also says to me that you can expect different ‘solutions’ to come from different groups, and this is completely fine if they are each ‘going in a useful direction’. Further, they can then learn from each other (ref. parallel experiments and cross pollination of ideas).

As I understand it, Seddon makes clear the problem with ‘rolling out’ (attempting to implement) change onto people. Instead, he defined the concept of ‘roll in’:

“Roll in: a method to scale up change to the whole organisation that was successful in one unit. Change is not imposed. Instead, each area needs to learn how to do the analysis for themselves and devise their own solutions. This approach engages the workforce and produces better, more sustainable results.”

It’s not about finding an answer, it’s about moving to a new way of working whereby it is the norm for those in the work to be experimenting, collaborating, learning, and constantly moving to better places (ref. Rolling, rolling, rolling)

6. On measurement

As I understand it, Snowden holds that the appropriate way to measure change within a complex system is with a vector – i.e. speed and direction, from where we were to where we are now. This is instead of acting in an ordered way of setting a goal and defining actions to achieve it (which incorrectly presumes predictability).

As I understand it, Seddon’s colleague, the late Richard Davis, set out measurement of people-centred help in a similar ‘speed and direction’ manner (ref. On Vector Measurement for a more detailed discussion).

“But what about ‘Purpose’?”: You may know that Seddon is laser-focused on the purpose of a service system, from the point of view of those that it is there to help (e.g. the customer). This purpose acts as an anchor for everyone involved.

You might think that Seddon’s ‘purpose’ view clashes with Snowden’s ‘don’t set a goal within a complex system’ view.

I don’t see ‘purpose’ (as Seddon uses it) to be the setting of an (ordered) goal. I see it more as setting out the desirable emergent property if the system in question was ‘working’.

I probably need to set that out a bit more clearly. Here goes my attempt:

Definition: Emergent system behaviours are a consequence of the interactions between the parts.

Example: The individual parts of a bird (its bones, muscles, feather etc) do not have the ability to overcome gravity. However, when these parts usefully inter-relate, they create the emergent property of ‘flight’…and yet ‘flight’ is not a part that we can point at. It is something ‘extra/ more than’ the parts.

…and so to Purpose: The definition of the desirable emergent property (i.e. what we would ideally want ‘the system’ to be achieving) allows a directional focus. It’s not an ordered goal, with a set of specified actions to achieve. It’s a constant sense-check against “are we (metaphorically) flying?”

In a people-centred service, it would be “are we actually helping people [with whatever their needs are]?”

7. Combining quantitative with qualitative

As I understand it, Snowden would say that there is a need to combine stories and measurement.

“Numbers are objective but not persuasive. Stories are persuasive but not objective. Put them together.” (Captured from Snowden workshop Aug. ‘22)

The power in stories is that they are authentic – they possess many useful qualities such as:

an actuality (evidence rather than opinion)
showing variation (noting that ‘the average’ doesn’t exist)
revealing ambiguity (causing us to think deeply about)
…etc.

However, given this, those wanting to understand at a ‘system level’ need to combine the micro into a macro picture – to see the patterns within (ref. Vector Measurement as per above).

As I understand it, Seddon tells us to study ‘in the work’ (get knowledge) and that this can be done by observing demands placed on the system in focus, and in following the flow of those demands – from need through to (hopefully) its satisfaction, and everything that happens (or doesn’t) in-between.

A case study can be a powerful story, providing an authentic understanding (from the customer’s point of view) of:

why this particular scenario arose
what happened¹⁰ and the associated ‘lived experience’, and
(with the appropriate reflection) why it occurred in this manner (ref. system conditions)

However, whilst such case studies can be eye-opening, they may be dismissed as ‘not representative’ if used on their own – the risk of ‘just dealing in anecdotal stories’.

They need to be combined with macro measures that show the predictability of what the stories evidence (ref. demand types and frequencies, measures of flow,…[measures against that desirable emergent purpose])

In short, the micro and the macro are complimentary. Both are likely to be necessary.

8. On the use of tools

As I understand it, Snowden and his collaborators are clear that there may be ‘lots of tools out there’ but its very important to ‘know enough’ before applying a tool (ref: ‘bounded applicability’):

“If we work with tools without context, in other words we don’t know enough to know the tool doesn’t fit the situation, the intervention will suffer, as will the overall outcome.” (Viv Read, Cynefin: weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world)

As I understand it, Seddon sets out the dangers of attempting to produce change via merely applying tools (ref. Seddon’s ‘Watch out for the Toolheads’ admonition) and the risk of using the wrong ‘tool’ on the wrong problems:

“The danger with codifying method as tools is that, by ignoring the all-important context, it obviates the first requirement to understand the problem” (Seddon)

I believe that Snowden and Seddon would concur that the start is to understand the problem space, and then (and only then) pick up, or design, applicable tools to assist. Conversely, I believe that they would rebuke anyone carrying around a codified method (‘tool’), looking for any place to use it.

9. On ‘Systems Theory’

As I understand it, both Snowden and Seddon are critical of aspects of systems theory.

Snowden argues against the (so called) hard forms of systems theory (ref. Cybernetics, System Dynamics)
Seddon argues for a practical approach that starts with studying ‘in the work’, to get knowledge.

Whilst their critiques may differ, the fact that they think differently to others re. systems theory is an intersect 🙂

I think that they would align with the following quote:

“[Theory] without [method] is a daydream. [Method] without [theory] is a nightmare”

“What a load of rubbish!”

To those ‘Seddonistas’¹¹ or ‘Snowdenites’ out there who may baulk at the intersections above, I’m not suggesting that John Seddon and Dave Snowden think the same. I’m also not suggesting any superiority (of ideas) between them. Far from it. I believe that they’ve been on very different journeys (haven’t we all?).

“So, it’s nirvana then?”

Nope – I’m not proposing that I’ve solved anything/ moved things to new places. I just find (what I see as) intersections to be interesting and potentially useful to ponder/work with/ build on.

I don’t expect that Snowden and Seddon are fully aligned – I’m (almost) sure that there’s plenty in the Venn diagram that doesn’t overlap.

As an aside, I think that Snowden and Seddon have both developed a reputation for ‘saying what they think’. I really like their desire, and ability, to provide solid critique – that ‘cuts through the crap’.

I do hope, though, that those geniuses amongst us ninnies (e.g. Snowden, Seddon) focus on education, rather than guru status.

Further work: On the other intersections

I expect that there are lots of ‘thinking things’ that fit into the other intersections:

Where Snowden overlaps with the systems theorists
Where Seddon overlaps with the systems theorists
Where all three overlap

You may also be able to point to yet more ‘Snowden – Seddon’ intersections.

You are welcome to take this on as ‘homework’ 🙂

Addendum: Please see this link to an addendum referring to a response from Dave Snowden.

Footnotes

1. I’m not claiming expertise. I am but an amateur with a great deal more to learn.

2. An enjoyable read: John has written a number of books to date. I’ve found them a joy to read. This contrasts with other books, which can be torture.

3. Precision and words: If you know of Snowden’s work, you’ll probably be aware that it’s littered with (what I see as) ‘new words’, or at least new uses for them.

4. Mike Jackson’s book is called ‘Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity’.

5. Robust testing: personally, I’d like such testing to be carried out in a highly respectful (mana enhancing) way.

6. The Cynefin framework is set out (amongst other places) in Snowden and Boone’s ‘A Leader’s framework for decision making’, HBR Nov. 2007.

7. Failure demand was defined by Seddon as “Demand caused by a failure to do something, or to do something right for the customer”. It might also be called/ thought of as ‘preventable demand’. Its opposite is Value demand.

8. Service archetypes: See ‘Autonomy – autonomy support – autonomy enabling’ for an explanation from my perspective.

9. Attempts at outsourcing change: This is why all those outsourced improvement projects, carried out by specialist improvement roles don’t result in transformational change (ref. all those typical Lean Six Sigma ‘Green belt’ projects etc.).

10. What happened: the scope of a case study could range from a journey:

- over a couple of days (likely relevant to a transactional archetype)
- over weeks/ months (likely relevant to a process archetype)
- to many years (a people-centred archetype)

11. ‘Seddonistas’ is a playful term I read in Mike Jackson’s book (ref. the chapter on the Vanguard Method). It refers to those that passionately ‘support’ John Seddon. I’ve made up the ‘Snowdenites’ word to provide a pairing (I think it’s fair to do so as I believe that I have noted a similar ‘supporters club’ phenomenon for Dave Snowden).

12. Image credits: Climber scaling cliff image by ‘studio4rt on Freepik’

Yin and Yang

May 1, 2020May 1, 2020 giantknave Brain Farts environment, Friedrich Nietzsche, Individual, John Seddon, Kurt Lewin, Philip Zimbardo, Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, Victor Frankl, W Edwards Deming

You’ll probably be familiar with the ‘Yin – Yang’ symbol – a circle that is half black and half white, with a black and a white dot in each of the opposing ‘tear drop shaped’ halves.

So, where does it come from and what does it mean?¹

As I understand it, the symbol can be traced back to ancient China and its meaning is utilised in the Eastern Philosophies of Taoism and Confucianism.

The symbol represents the idea that the universe, and what lies within, is governed by duality – sets of two opposing and yet complimentary forces.

These forces are not total opposites – they are relative to each other, two sides of the same coin. They don’t, and can’t, exist on their own. They are inter-related parts of a bigger whole.

Some examples:

Light and dark
Alive, and not²
Masculine and feminine
Good and bad
Asleep and awake
Hot and cold
Rest and movement
Front and back
…and we could keep on going!

Further, the two dots ‘within’ each half represent the idea that everything contains the seed of its opposite.

Given this duality, we are best to learn from both the Yin and the Yang, and their inter-relatedness³.

Context

Why am I writing this post? Well, I feel the need to point out – and open up – what I see as a duality.

Over the years I’ve been very aware of how many (most?) organisations, and their management systems, have dwelt on ‘the individual’:

‘Here’s your target’ and ‘Here’s your score’
‘Well done, here’s a pat on the back’ or ‘Must try harder’
‘Here are your values…and the attitude you must adopt’
‘It’s your personal responsibility to succeed and progress’
‘Do the right thing!’
…and on and on

Further, much of the work of Deming, Seddon and other giants of mine has been to help organisations move away from focusing on (and usually ‘judging’) the individual and, instead, to work on the system that the individual is working within.

Some classic quotes fit here:

“95% of the reasons for failure to meet customer expectations are related to the deficiencies in the system rather than the employee…the role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.” (Deming)

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

“A bad system beats a good person every time.” (Deming)

It’s the system, stupid!” (Seddon)

I strongly agree with the messages within the above quotes (and the accompanying bodies of work). However, I consider that we need to retain a focus on the individual, as well as massively working on the environment in which ’we’ work. But such a focus would be to help the individual rather than judge them.

This isn’t a criticism of Deming, Seddon etc. I expect that they would agree.

Two ‘angles’ interest me in this regard:

‘Individual A’ that comes to believe that, if it’s about ‘the system’, then it’s not really ‘their’ problem…so they’ll sit back and wait for ‘others’ (usually up the hierarchy) to ‘solve’ the system; and conversely

‘Individual B’ that really grasps that it’s about the system; takes a huge responsibility (burden) on their shoulders to ‘move’ the system; and then experiences great stress (and potentially depression) from limited successes.

So I’d like to bring it all back to a duality – the individual and the environment they are in.

The Yin – Our environment:

I run a 2-day course based around Deming’s theory of profound knowledge. The psychology part includes some powerful considerations in respect of social psychology.

We discuss three of the classic experiments regarding the power of ‘being in a world of others’ (i.e. our environments):

Solomon Asch’s 1951 ‘peer pressure’ experiment on an individual’s strong urge to conform (fit in) with those around them, where this power can be stronger than their personal values or basic perceptions.
Stanley Milgram’s 1963 behavioural study on Obedience to Authority, where people do what they are told to, even where this conflicts with their personal values.
Philip Zimbardo’s 1972 ‘Stanford Prison’ experiment, where the existence (or not) of power led people to adopt abusive (or submissive) behaviours.

The reason for discussing these (in)famous experiments is to open people’s eyes to the huge power of the environment that people are working (and living) within, and that, if we work on getting our environment(s)⁴ ‘right’ then great things can happen⁵….and conversely, if we get it wrong, we end up fighting each other for survival.

However, the environment is only part of the picture. It is made up of individuals within, capable of making choices…

It must be, else why would the system be ‘as it is’…and how could it be changed?

The Yang – Us as individuals:

A (social) environment is made up of individuals.

Some of the nature of that environment is because of how individuals behave within it. Some of it comes from outside forces.

I think that it’s worth constantly thinking about, and working on, the things that ‘I’ (i.e. the individual) can control…and calmly coping with the things that I cannot.

I know that there are some huge system constraints as to why the current system(s) work as they do.
I know that they won’t change overnight, just because I ‘pointed them out’ or even because I (and others) tried to do something about them.

In terms of my role within:

I can choose to think about and (try to) modify my actions and behaviours
I can choose to ponder how to go about this
I can choose to persevere, or to pivot – to try different strategies and tactics as I learn what doesn’t seem to work.
I can choose my attitude about what is before me, and what to do about it.

Attempting to do this is not easy (it takes much thought and constant practice) but it is worthwhile (with meaning).

As an aside: If you want to know more about achieving meaningful change of a system, then you might want to read about normative change.

On Meaning

One of the most renowned books written which considers, in part, the subject of attitude is Victor Frankl’s ‘Man’s search for meaning’.

The first half of the book describes his terrible experiences as a prisoner spanning three years across four Nazi concentration camps. To put it mildly, it’s not pleasant BUT it is a hugely important piece of work. At his liberation in 1945 all but one of his close family members had died/ been killed.

He pondered much on what could be learned from his experiences. Who had survived? Who had not? And perhaps why? And, in his writings, he provided us with much to contemplate:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

But why would we choose one way over another?

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails…gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life.

It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.

Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities …that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.”

What about trying to ignore our circumstances? Frankl reflects on many who took this approach:

“A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts…

…but in robing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger…instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength…they preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past.

Life for such people became meaningless.”

And, sadly, Frankl’s experience was that those who came to a point without meaning gave up living soon after.

Thankfully, our lives don’t come even close to that of Frankl’s. This fact makes his reflections even more powerful. If lessons on meaning and attitude apply even in a ‘hell on earth’ then they most certainly apply to our ‘ordinary lives’.

Frankl quotes the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his summing up:

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” and

“That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

In short:

be clear on meaning (what is your longer-term, valuable-to-society, purpose?)
work through the constant challenges that you most certainly will encounter on the way
If you move onwards ‘knowing why’, then you can use this to ‘keep yourself grounded’ on the bumpy journey ahead.

Note: This line of thinking opens a related topic, which I hope to write about in a follow-up post in respect of resilience. It’s all very well ‘telling ourselves’ to be resilient, but some help in being so might be useful.

Back to that duality:

Going back to one of the early social psychologists, Kurt Lewin, we find that he clearly saw the duality. He expressed it as a simple equation:

‘Behaviour is a function of the person in their environment.’

The equation has two variables: you, and your environment. One doesn’t exist without the other.

Yes, the environment can have a HUGE influence on you and I…but there is a capability within us (the individual) to choose (to a degree) what we think, and do, about it.

Further, within every individual is the seed of their environment influencing them and within every (social) environment there is the seed of the individual able to influence it right back!

Footnotes:

1. Yin and Yang explanation: Here’s a nice short 4 min. animated video that explains at a deeper level: Yin & Yang TED Ed video by John Bellaimey

2. Alive, and not: I’ve deliberately not written ‘life and death’ because the duality is much more than this. There was also a HUGE period of time (circa. 4 billion years) that I wasn’t alive before I was born.

3. Reductionism vs. Synthesis: The underlying message within the Yin and Yang sits very well with Systems Thinking and the truth that reducing a system into its parts will give a limited and limiting view.

4. Environments: We live within multiple, often overlapping, social environments. Our home life, our work life, our communities and our wider society.

5. Deming’s ’14 Points for Management’ are all about creating the right environment for an organisation to thrive.

The source of an idea: Front Office – Back Office

October 29, 2018 giantknave Brain Farts Effectiveness, Front Office Back Office, John Seddon, Richard B. Chase, Service, variety

I’ve read a number of John Seddon’s books over the years and they are ‘sprinkled’ with critiques of a range of conventional management ‘fads and fashions’. One of his key critiques is of a particular 1978 HBR article written by a Richard B. Chase, titled ‘Where does the customer fit in a service operation?’

The article title sounds relatively innocuous, but Seddon puts it forward as having been a catalyst for the splitting up of service systems into ‘front office – back office’ functions…because it will (according to Chase) make them much more efficient.

Now, whilst (I believe that) I’ve understood Seddon’s critique of the splitting up of service systems into a myriad of (supposedly) specialised components…and the hugely damaging sub-optimisation that this has caused¹, I was never quite sure as to the level of ‘blame’² that could be levelled at Chase’s article – mainly because I hadn’t read it.

…so, as chance would have it, I’ve just managed to get hold of it. And, wow, yep, it was quite illuminating. I thought that I’d write this post to ‘get behind’ the HBR article title and pull out the bones of what Chase was saying. Here goes:

In the first paragraph…

So I read the following in the very first paragraph of the article:

“…the less direct contact the customer has with the service system, the greater the potential of the system to operate at peak efficiency…”

On its own this quote reads very badly. My hackles are raised instantly, but I hold my nerve and carry on – perhaps I need to read it in context…so I take a deep breath and carry on…

Chase goes on to offer a ‘classification of service systems’ according to the extent of required ‘customer contact’ in ‘creation of the service’.

Chase defines:

‘customer contact’ as the “physical presence of the customer in the system”; and
‘creation of the service’ as “the work process that is entailed in providing the service itself”

He puts forward a table showing high contact services at the top (health care, public transportation, restaurants, schools….), low contact at the bottom (manufacturing) and mixed services in-between (banks, post offices,…). So far, so what.

He states that service systems with high customer contact are more difficult to control. Why? Because the customer can affect the demand – e.g. the time it takes, the exact nature of what’s being required, and their particular view on what defines quality.

I think that Seddon would wholeheartedly agree with these points regarding variety within customer demand (Seddon would say that “the customer comes in customer shaped”³). The difference between Chase and Seddon is in their polar opposite thinking of what this lack of control should lead on to.

Where did Chase’s article take it?

Chase went on to state what he considered were the ‘implications for management’:

“…a distinction should be made between high-contact and low-contact elements of a service system. This can be done by a separation of functions: all high-contact activities should be performed by one group of people, all low-contact activities by another. Such an adjustment minimises the influence of the customer on the production process and provides opportunities to achieve efficiency…”

In short, Chase is about breaking up the system (de-coupling the supposed ‘front’ and ‘back’) to make its components more efficient!

Mmmm, any systems thinking giant (or apprentice), even without knowing the details, might conclude that this isn’t going to end well.

Developing the idea…

Chase then develops his proposed treatment by asking a set of questions and providing answers.

Chase asks about ‘gearing your operating procedures to your system’:

“Obviously, paying service workers according to the number of customers served tends to speed up service in the high-contact system. However…if the customer feels rushed…he is likely to be dissatisfied with the organisation.

Further, it makes little sense for a seller of any service that can be at all customised to measure system effectiveness in terms of total number of customer served when in fact one should be giving more leisurely attention to a small number of ‘big spenders’.”

Wow, there’s a lot to unpack within this lot!

The idea of ‘speeding up’ service by the use of incentives completely ignores the dysfunctional behaviour that this may cause, the failure demand likely to arise and the re-work to be performed. It is clear component-level logic at the expense of the system;
I have always hated the idea that a service organisation should smooch with the ‘big spenders’ (and thereby demote the rest as 2^nd…and even 3^rd class customers) so as to milk them of their cash!

The mind-set of the above is completely ‘inside-out’: the customer is merely a host to bleed money from. The attitude being portrayed is ‘what can we (the organisation) do to you?’ rather than ‘what do you need?’

Chase asks ‘can you realign your operations to reduce unnecessary direct customer service?’

“Managers have long recognised the desirability of having ‘attractive’ personnel greet the public…while being more concerned with technical skills on the part of those individuals removed from customer contact…”

I’ve got visions of the ‘ugly people’ being hidden in the back office!

I guess that we should make allowances for the fact that he wrote this back in 1978 (a different world?) but, again, he’s trying to optimise components rather than improve (and remove) inter-dependencies between them.

Chase asks ‘can you take advantage of the efficiencies offered by low-contact operations?’

“Can you apply the production management concepts of batch scheduling, forecasting, inventory control, work measurement and simplification to back-office operations?…”

His suggestions seem laughable now.

Essentially, he is proposing the techniques that manufacturing used ‘back then’ to be applied to service ‘back offices’….and yet just about all of these manufacturing methods would now be seen as poor practise!

Just go into a well-run factory today⁴ and see the pulling (not pushed by forecasting) of units of work (not batches) through flow (not requiring inventory) on a production line able to handle variety (not simple), using measures against purpose (not narrow activity measurement)

…and you’ll also see those same manufacturing workers trying to get as close as possible to their customers so as to understand them and what they need.

Chase asks ‘can you enhance the customer contact you do provide?’

“If the low-contact portion of a worker’s job can be shifted to a different work force [i.e. a back office], then the opportunity exists to focus that worker’s efforts on critical interpersonal relations aspects.”

Boom! This gets to the nub of the problem – Chase misses the monumentally important point that interpersonal relationships are (worse than) useless if the ‘front of house’ worker can’t actually help the customer with their need.

In short: ‘I can smile sweetly, look good and even say nice things to you…but, sorry, I can’t help you with your need…I’ll just have to pass that on to someone else and hope for the best…but I’ll do so with a really great smile 🙂 ’

Not much customer satisfaction in that!

Chase asks ‘can you relocate parts of your service operations to lower your facility costs?’

“Can you shift back-room operations to lower rent districts…or get out of the contact facilities business entirely?”

And so we get to the eventual end game of this logic – outsourcing of the back office…because it’s (ahem) got no connection whatsoever with the customer anymore. Wonderful!

Not content with creating the unnecessary ‘front-office back-office’ interdependencies, the final nail in the coffin is to make these relationships even harder to handle by splitting up the location and ownership structure.

As Donella Meadows wrote: “Changing interconnections in a system can change it dramatically.”

To conclude:

Yep, I see why Seddon has such a downer on this 1978 HBR article…and, sadly, I can also see that many (most?) service organisations bought it ‘hook, line and sinker’.

Rather than leaving it on this depressing note, I should take us back to a Seddon quote:

“Service differs from Manufacturing. There is, inherently, more variety in customer demand…

…in service organisations, the problem is how to design the system to absorb variety [rather than frustrate it]” (Seddon)

If you want to understand what is meant by absorbing variety…then here’s a post I wrote earlier: “You keep saying that…but what does it mean?!”

…and I’ll write another post (to follow this one) that delves further into ‘Front Office/ Back Office’ and what a healthy alternative could look like.

Footnotes:

1. Seddon is standing on Deming’s shoulders in this respect.

“If the various components of an organisation are all optimised, the organisation will not be…” (Deming)

2. Regarding ‘Blame’: I’m referring to the article, not Richard B. Chase. I don’t know the man. 1978 was a long time ago – I suppose that he may think quite differently now.

3. Customer shaped: Seddon credits Taguchi with observing that we must first understand exactly what a customer wants (their nominal value) and only then can we aim at perfection.

4. A well run factory: You know what I’m going to write next don’t you….yep, the ‘T’ word: You could understand what Toyota does 🙂

Lights, camera…and ACTION!

April 10, 2018July 24, 2019 giantknave Brain Farts Action Research, Chris Argyris, Donald Schon, John Seddon, Kurt Lewin, learning, Peter Checkland

My last post explained the thinking behind the softening of systems thinking – to include the reality of human beings into the mix.

I ended by noting that this naturally leads on to the hugely important question of how interventions into social systems (i.e. attempts at improving them) should be approached…

What’s the difference between…?

The word ‘Science’ is a big one! It breaks down into several major branches, which are often set out as the:

Natural sciences – the study of natural phenomena;
Formal sciences – the study of Mathematics and Logic; and
Social sciences – the study of human behaviour, and social patterns.

Natural science can be further broken down into the familiar fields of the Physical sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science and Astronomy) and the Life sciences (a.k.a Biology).

The aim of scientists working in the natural science domain is to uncover and explain the rules that govern the Universe, and this is done by applying the scientific method (using experimentation¹) to their research.

The key to any and every advancement in the Natural sciences is that an experiment that has supposedly added to our ‘body of knowledge’ (i.e. found out something new) must be:

Repeatable – you could do it again (and again and again) and get the same result; and
Reproduceable – someone else could carry out your method and arrive at the same findings.

This explains why all ‘good science’ must have been subjected to peer review – i.e. robust review by several independent and objective experts in the field in question.

“Erm, okay…thanks for the ‘lecture’…but so what?!”

Well, Social science is different. It involves humans and, as such, is complex.

The Natural science approach to learning (e.g. to set up a hypothesis and then test it experimentally) doesn’t transfer well to the immensely rich and varied reality of humanity.

“In [social science] research you accept the great difficulty of ‘scientific’ experimental work in human situations, since each human situation is not only unique, but changes through time and exhibits multiple conflicting worldviews.” (Checkland)

I’ll try to explain the enormity of this distinction between natural and social scientific learning with some examples, and these will necessarily return to those repeatability and reproducibility tests:

Unique: I’ll start with Chemistry. If you were to line up two beakers of water and (carefully) drop a small piece of sodium into each then you would observe the same explosive reaction…and, even though you could predict what would happen if you did it a third time, you’d still like to do it again 🙂

I was looking for a ‘social’ comparison and, following a comedy coffee conversation with a fellow Dad, the following observation arose: If you are a parent of two or more children, then you’ll know that consistency along the lines of ‘sodium into water’ is a pipe dream. I’ve got two teenage sons (currently 17 and 15 years old) and whenever I think I’ve learned something from bringing up the first one, it usually (and rather quickly) turns out to be mostly the opposite for the second! They are certainly unique.

The same goes for group dynamics – two different groups of people will act and react in different ways…which you won’t be able to fully determine up-front – it will emerge.

Changing over time: Now, over to Physics. If you were to select a battery, light bulb and resistor combination and then connect them together with cables in a defined pattern (e.g. in series) then you could work out (using good old Ohm’s law) what will happen within the circuit that you’ve just created. Then, you could take it all apart and put it away, safe in the knowledge that it would work in the same predictable way when you got it all out the next time.

However, in our ‘social’ comparison, you can’t expect to do the same with people…because each time you (attempt to) do something to/with them, they change. They attain new interactions, experiences, knowledge and opinions. This means that it is far too simplistic to suggest that “we can always just undo it if we want to” when we are referring to social situations.

Just about every sci-fi movie recognises this fact and comes up with some ingenious device to ‘wipe people’s minds’ such that they conveniently forget what just happened to them – their memories are rewound to a defined point earlier in time. The ‘Men in Black’ use a wand with a bright red light on the end (hence their protective sunglasses…or is that also fashion?).

In reality, because such devices don’t exist (that I’m aware of), people in most organisations suffer from (what I refer to as) ‘Change fatigue’ – they’ve become wary of (what they’ve come to think of as) the current corporate ‘silver bullet’, and act accordingly. This understandably frustrates ‘management’ who often don’t want to see/ understand the fatigue² and respond with speeches along the lines of “Now, just wipe the past from your mind – pretend none of it happened – and this time around, I want you to act like it’s really worth throwing yourself into 110%!”.

Mmmm, if only they could!

Conflicting worldviews: Finally, a Biology example. Let’s suppose that you’ve done a couple of lung dissections – one’s pink and spongy, the other is a black oogy mess³. Everyone agrees which one belonged to the 40-a-day-for-life smoker.

However, for our ‘social’ comparison, get a bunch of people into a room and ask them for their opinions on other people and their actions, and you will get wildly differing points of view – just ask a split jury!

The social phenomena of the ‘facts’ are subject to multiple, and changing, interpretations.

After reading the above you might be thinking…

“….so how on earth can we learn when people are involved?”

This is where I bring in the foundational work of the psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947).

Lewin realised the important difference between natural and social science and came up with a prototype for social research, which he labelled as ‘Action research’.

“The method that [Lewin] evolved was of involving his subjects as active, inquiring participants in the conduct of social experiments about themselves.” (Argyris & Schon)

His reasoning was that:

“People are more likely to accept and act on research findings if they helped to design the research and participate in the gathering and analysis of data.” (Lewin & Grabbe)

Yep, as a fellow human being, I’d wholeheartedly agree with that!

Who’s doing the research?

I hope that you can see that the (potentially grand) title of ‘social research’ doesn’t presume a group of people in white lab coats attached to a University or such like. Rather, applied social research can (and should) be happening every minute of every day within your organisation – it does at Toyota!

Argyris and Schon wrote about two (divergent) methods of attempting to intervene in an organisation. They labelled these as:

‘Spectator – Manipulator’: a distant observer who keeps themselves at arms lengths from the worker, yet frequently disturbs the work with ‘experiments’ to manipulate the environment and observe the response;

and

‘Agent – Experient’: an actor who locates themselves within the problematic situation (with the people), to appreciate and be guided by it, to facilitate change (in actions and thinking) by better understanding of the situation.

You can see that the first fits well with natural science whilst the second fits with social.

‘The ‘spectator – manipulator’ method also describes rather well the reality of commanding and controlling, through attempting to implement (supposed) ‘best practise’ on people, and then rolling out ever wider.

The nice thing about action research is that the researcher (the agent) and the practitioner (the people doing the work) participate together, meaning that:

“The divide between practitioner and researcher is thus closed down. The two roles become one. All involved are co-workers, co-researchers and co-authors…of the output.” (Flood)

Proper⁴ action research dissolves the barrier between researcher and participant.

And, as such, ‘Action research’ is often re-labelled using the related term ‘Action learning’…. because that is exactly what the participants are doing.

A note on intervention

Any intervention into a social system causes change⁵. Further, the interventionist cannot be ‘separated from the system’ – they will change too!

Argyris and Schon wrote that:

“An inquiry into an actor’s reasons for acting in a certain way is itself an intervention…[which] can and do have powerful effects on the ways in which both inquirer and informant construe the meaning of their interaction, interpret each other’s messages, act towards each other, and perceive each other’s actions. These effects can complicate and often subvert the inquirer’s quest for valid information.

Organisational inquiry is almost inevitably a political process…the attempt to uncover the causes of a systems failure is inevitably a perceived test of loyalty to one’s subgroup and an opportunity to allocate blame or credit…

[We thus focus on] the problem of creating conditions for collaborative inquiry in which people in organisations function as co-researchers rather than as merely subjects.”

You might think that taking a ‘spectator – manipulator’ approach (i.e. remaining distant) removes the problem of unintended consequences from intervening…but this would be the opposite. The more remote you keep yourself then the more concerned the workers will likely be about your motives and intentions….and the less open and expansive their assistance is likely to be.

So, as Argyris and Schon wrote, the best thing for meaningful learning to occur would be to create an appropriate environment – and that would mean gaining people’s trust….and we are back at action learning.

The stages of action research within an organisation

Action research might be described as having three stages⁶, which are repeated indefinitely. These are:

Discovery;
Measurable action; and
Reflection

Discovery means to study your system, to find out what is really happening, and to drive down to root cause – from events, through patterns of behaviour, to the actual structure of the system (i.e. what fundamentally makes it operate as it does) …and at this point you are likely to be dealing with people’s beliefs.

…and to be crystal clear: the people doing the discovery are not some central corporate function or consultants ‘coming in’ – it’s the people (and perhaps a skilled facilitator) who are working in the system.

Measurable action means to use what you have discovered and, together, take some deliberate experimental action that you (through consensus) believe will move you towards your purpose.

But we aren’t talking about conventional measurement. We’re referring to ‘the right measures, measured right’!

Reflection means to consider what happened, looking from all points of view, and consider the learning within…. leading on to the next loop – starting again with discovery.

This requires an environment that ensures that open and honest reflection will occur. That’s an easy sentence to write, but a much harder thing to achieve – it requires the dismantling of many conventional management instruments. I’m not going to list them – you would need to find them for yourselves…which will only happen once you start your discovery journey.

What it isn’t

Action research isn’t ‘a project’; something to be implemented; best practise; something to be ‘standardised’…(carry on with a list of conventional thinking).

If you want individuals, and the organisation itself, to meaningfully learn then ‘commanding and controlling’ won’t deliver what you desire.

…and finally: A big caveat

Peter Checkland adopted action research as the method within his Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and yet he was highly critical of “the now extensive and rapidly growing literature” on the approach, calling it “poverty stricken”. Here’s why:

“The great issue with action research is obvious: what is its truth criterion? It cannot be the repeatability of natural science, for no human (social) situation ever exactly duplicates another such situation.” (Checkland)

The risk of simply saying “we’re doing action research” is that any account of what you achieved becomes nothing more than plausible story telling. Whilst social research can never be as solid as the repeatable and reproduceable natural science equivalent, there must be an ‘is it reasonable?’ test on the outcomes for it to be meaningful.

There’s already plenty of ‘narrative fallacy’ story telling done within organisations – where virtually every outcome is explained away in a “didn’t we do well” style.

To be able to judge outcomes from action research, Checkland argues that an advanced declaration is required of “what constitutes knowledge about the situation. This helps to draw the distinction between research and novel writing.”

This makes the action research recoverable by anyone interested in subjecting the work to critical scrutiny.

So what does that mean? Well, taking John Seddon’s Vanguard Method⁷ as an example, the Check stage specifically starts up front with:

Defining the purpose of the system (from the customer’s perspective – ‘outside in’);
Understanding the demands being placed on the system (and so appreciating value from a wide variety of customer points of view); and
Setting out a set of capability measures that would objectively determine whether any subsequent interventions have moved the system towards its purpose.

…and (in meeting Checkland’s point) this is done BEFORE anyone runs off to map any processes etc.

In summary:

We need to appreciate “the role of surprise as a stimulus to new ways of thinking and acting.” (Argyris & Schon).

People should be discovering, doing and seeing for themselves, which will create a learning system.

Footnotes:

1. Experiments: If you’d like a clearer understanding of experiments, and some comment on their validity then I wrote about this in a very early post called Shonky Experiments

2. Not wanting to see the change fatigue: This would happen if a manager is feverishly working towards a ‘SMART’ KPI, where this would be exacerbated if there is a bonus attached.

3. Lung dissection: I was searching around for an image of a healthy and then a smoker’s lungs…but thought that not everyone would like to see it for real…so I’ve put up an image with a collection of surgical scalpels – you can imagine for yourself 🙂

4. Proper: see the ‘big caveat’ at the end of the post.

5. Such changes may or may not be intended, and may be considered as positive, negative or benign.

6. Three stages of action research: If I look at the likes of Toyota’s Improvement/Coaching Katas or John Seddon’s Vanguard Method then these three stages can be seen as existing within.

7. The Vanguard Method is based on the foundation of action research.

Not Particularly Surprising

February 9, 2018February 13, 2018 giantknave Brain Farts John Seddon, Lean Startup, Management system, Measurement, Net Promoter Score, W Edwards Deming

Have you heard people telling you their NPS number? (perhaps with their chests puffed out…or maybe somewhat quietly – depending on the score). Further, have they been telling you that they must do all they can to retain or increase it?¹

NPS – what’s one of those?

‘Net Promoter Score’, or NPS, is a customer loyalty metric that has become much loved by the management of many (most?) large corporations. It was introduced to the management world by Fred Reichheld² in his 2003 HBR article titled ‘One number you need to grow’.

So far, so what.

But as most things in ‘modern management‘ medicine, once introduced, NPS took on a life of its own.

Reichheld designed NPS to be rather simple. You just ask a sample of subjects (usually customers³) one question and give them an 11-point scale of 0 to 10 to answer it. And that question?

‘How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/ service to a friend or a colleague?’

You then take all your responses (which, incidentally, may be rather low) and boil them down into one number. Marvellous…that will be easy to (ab)use!

But, before you grab your calculators, this number isn’t just an arithmetic average of the responses. Oh no, there’s some magic to take you from your survey results to your rather exciting score…and here’s how:

A respondent scoring a 9 or 10 is labelled as a ‘Promoter’;
A scorer of 0 to 6 is labelled as a ‘Detractor’; and
A 7 or 8 is labelled as being ‘Passive’⁴.

where the sum of all Promoters, Detractors and Passives = the total number of respondents.

You then work out the % of your total respondents that are Promoters and Detractors, and subtract one from the other.

You’ll get a number between -100 (they are all Detractors) and +100 (all Promoters), with a zero meaning Detractors and Promoters exactly balance each other out.

And, guess what…a positive score is desirable…and, over the long term, a likely necessity if you want to stay in business.

Okay, so I’ve done the up-front explanatory bit and regular readers of this blog are probably now ready for me to go on and attempt to tear ‘NPS’ apart.

I’m not particularly bothered by the score – it might be of some interest…though exceedingly limited in its usefulness.

Rather, I’m bothered by:

what use it is said to be; and
what use it is put to.

I’ve split my thoughts into two posts. This post deals with the second ‘bother’, and my next one will go back to consider the first.

Qualitative from Quantitative – trying to ‘make a wrong thing righter’

The sane manager, when faced with an NPS score and a ‘strategic objective’ to improve it, wants to move on from the purely quantitative score and ‘get behind it’ – they want to know why a score of x was given.

Reichheld’s NPS method covers this obvious craving by encouraging a second open-ended question requesting the respondent’s reasoning behind the rating just given – a ‘please explain’ comments box of sorts. The logic being that this additional qualitative data can then be provided to operational management for analysis and follow up action(s).

Reichheld’s research might suggest that NPS provides an indicator of ‘customer loyalty’, but…and here’s the key bit…don’t believe it to be a particularly good tool to help you improve your system’s performance.

There are many limitations with attempting to study the reasons for your system’s performance through such a delayed, incomplete and second-hand ‘the horse has bolted’ method such as NPS.

Which subjects (e.g. customers) were surveyed?
What caused you to survey them?
Which subjects chose to respond…and which didn’t?
What effort from the respondent is likely to go into explaining their scoring?
Does the respondent even know their ‘why’?
Can they put their (potentially hidden) feelings into words?…and do they even want to?

If you truly want to understand how your system works and why, so that you can meaningfully and sustainably improve it, wouldn’t it just be soooo much better (and simpler) to jump straight to (properly⁵) studying the system in operation?!

A lagging indicator vs. Operational measures

One of my very early posts on this blog covered the mad, yet conventional, idea of ‘management by results’ and subsequent posts have delved into ‘cause and effect’ in more detail (e.g. ‘Chain beats Triangle’).

My ‘cause and effect’ post ends with the key point that:

“Customer Purpose (which, by definition, means quality) comes first…which then delivers growth and profitability, and NOT the other way around!”

Now, if you read up on what Reichheld has to say about NPS, he will tell you that it is a leading measure, whereas I argue that it is a lagging one. The difference is because we are coming from opposite ends of the chain:

Reichheld appears to be concerned with growth and profitability, and argues that NPS predicts what is going to happen to these two financial measures (I would say in the short term);
I am concerned with customer purpose, and an organisation’s capability at delivering against its customers’ needs. This means that I want to know what IS happening, here and now so that I can understand and improve it …which will deliver (for our customers, for the organisation, for its stakeholders) now, and over the long term.

You might read the above and think I am playing with semantics. I think not.

I want operational measures on the actual demands coming in the door, and how my processes are actually working. I want first hand operational knowledge, rather than attempting to reverse engineer this from partial and likely misleading secondary NPS survey evidence.

“Managers learn to examine results, outcomes. This is wrong. The manager’s concern should be with processes….the concentration of a manager should be to make his processes better and better. To do so, he needs information about the performance of the process – the ‘voice of the process’. “ [‘Four Days with Dr Deming’]

Deming’s clear message was ‘focus on the process and the result will come’ and, conversely, you can look at results all you like but you’d be looking in the wrong place!

NPS thinking fits into the ‘remote control’ school of management. Don’t survey and interrogate. ‘Go to the gemba’ (the place where the work occurs).

“But what about the Lean Start-up Steve?”

Some readers familiar with Eric Ries’ Lean Start-up movement might respond “but Eric advocates the use of customer data!” and yes, he does.

But he isn’t trying to get a score from them, he is trying to deeply engage with a small number of them, understand how they think and behave when experiencing a product or service, and learn from this…and repeat this loop again and again.

This fits with studying demand, where it comes in, and as it flows.

The Lean Startup movement is about observing and reflecting upon what is actually happening at the point of customer interaction, and not about surveying them afterwards.

To close – some wise words

After writing this post I remembered that John Seddon had written something about NPS…so I searched through my book collection to recover what he had to say…and he didn’t disappoint:

“Even though NPS is completely useless in helping service organisations improve, on our first assignment [e.g. as system improvement interventionists] we say nothing about it, because we know the result of redesigning the system will be an immediate jump in the NPS score…and because when this is reported to the board our work gets the directors’ attention.

It makes it easy to see why NPS is a waste of time and money. First, it is what we call a ‘lagging measure’ – as with all customer satisfaction measures, it assesses the result of something done in the past. Since it doesn’t help anyone understand or improve performance in the present, it fails the test of a good measure⁵ – it can’t help to understand or improve performance.” [Seddon, ‘The Whitehall Effect’]

Seddon goes on to illuminate a clear and pernicious ‘red herring’ triggered by the use of NPS: the simple question of ‘would you recommend this service to a friend’ mutates to a hunt for the person who delivered the particular instance of service currently under the microscope. Management become “concerned with the behaviour of people delivering the service” as opposed to the system that makes such behaviour highly likely to occur!

I have experience of this exact management behaviour in full flow, with senior management contacting specified members of staff directly (i.e. those who handled the random transaction in question) to congratulate or interrogate/berate them, following the receipt of particularly outstanding⁶ NPS responses.

This is to focus on the 5% (the people) and ignore the 95% (the system that they are required to operate within). NPS “becomes an attractive device for controlling them”.

Indeed.

The title of this post follows from Seddon’s point that if you focus on studying, understanding and improving the system then, guess what, the NPS will improve – usually markedly. Not Particularly Surprising.

My next post called ‘How good is that one number’ contains the second part of my NPS critique.

Footnotes

1. This post, as usual, comes from having a most excellent conversation with a friend (and ex-colleague) …and she bought me lunch!

I should add that the title image (the pH scale) is a light-hearted satire of the various NPS images I found i.e. smiley, neutral and angry faces arranged on a coloured and numbered scale.

2. Reichheld has written a number of books on customer loyalty, with one of his more recent ones trying to relabel ‘NPS’ from Net Promoter Score to Net Promoter System (of management) …which, to put it mildly, I am not a fan of.

It reminds me of the earlier ‘Balanced Scorecard’ attempting to morph into a system of management. See ‘Slaughtering the Sacred Cow’.

Yet another ‘management idea’ expanding beyond its initial semblance of relevance, in the hands of book sellers and consultants.

Sorry, but that’s how I feel about it.

NPS is linked to the ‘Balanced Scorecard’ in that it provides a metric for the customer ‘quadrant’ of the scorecard …but, as with financial measures, it is still an ‘outcome’ (lagging) measure of an organisation’s people and processes.

3. The original NPS focused on customers, but this has subsequently been expanded to consider other subjects, particularly employees.

4. Being British (i.e. somewhat subdued), I find the labelling of a 7 or 8 score as ‘Passive’ to be hilarious. A score of 7 from me would be positively gushing in praise! What a great example of the variety inherent within customers…and which NPS cannot reveal.

5. For the ‘tests of a good measure, please see an earlier post titled ‘Capability what?’

6. Where ‘outstanding’ means particularly low, as well as high.

“Citizens face many front doors…”

June 7, 2017 giantknave Brain Farts Demand, failure demand, Integrated teams, Jeremy Cox, John Seddon, Joined up government, Purpose, System, Systems Thinking

Governments all over the world want to get the most out of the money they spend on public services – for the benefit of the citizens requiring the services, and the taxpayers footing the bill.

Government officials regularly devise initiatives, and even new departments, aimed at getting their myriad of agencies to work better together.

However, looking at this from the outside, the media regularly uncover seemingly daft (and sometimes tragic) instances where government agencies have failed to effectively act, connect and co-operate with each other. In such instances, each agency appears to ‘the person on the street’ to have been wearing blinkers with their ‘common sense’ radars turned to ‘exceedingly low’.

But is it right to lay blame on the agencies or, worse, the people acting within them? In the majority of cases, I’d suggest that the answer would clearly be ‘no’. We should be looking at the bigger ‘whole of public service’ system that they are designed to operate within.

A new phrase was termed some years back called ‘Joined up government’. The Oxford dictionary defines it as:

“A method of government characterized by effective communication between different departments and co-ordination of policies.”

When a dictionary defines a word, it usually provides the reader with an example sentence showing its proper usage. In this instance, the first example sentence given is a negative one, as in:

“There is an obvious lack of joined-up government here” (Oxford Dictionary)

i.e. Governments openly recognise that there is a big problem (a lack of togetherness)…and that they would love to ‘solve’ it…but it’s regularly in the ‘too hard basket’!

The purpose of this post is to share (what is to me) an important (and very well presented) 30 min. video by Jeremy Cox¹: Budget Management and People Centred Services that nicely explains, by way of reference to a real case study, the ‘multi agency’ problem and how to go about changing it.

If you are interested (particularly if you work within the public sector) then I’d expect that watching it should be a worthwhile (and thought provoking) use of your time.

Right…if you’ve got to here then I’ll assume that you’ve watched the video…the rest of this post pulls out (what I believe to be) key things said by Jeremy Cox in his presentation (blue italics below) and my ‘wrap-around’ narrative.

Note: What follows is incomplete and not a substitute for watching the video. It’s just an aide-memoire so that I (and you) don’t have to watch the video every time to pull out the key points or discuss it with our colleagues.

Jeremy Cox starts at a summary level by walking us through “four critical steps”:

1. The first thing to do is to study your system…and, just to be crystal clear, YOU (those responsible for the system) have to study it, and do so WITH those who operate it. A consultant cannot do this for (i.e. to) you².

“You have to go and study because if you see it with your own eyes, you can’t deny it. If someone ‘tells you’, then you can ‘rationalise’ it away quite easily.”

2. From studying your system, you can then see and understand the effects of (supposed) ‘controls’ on its performance.

3. Only when we understand (at a root cause) WHY the system operates as it does, should we redesign…because then, and only then, is such a redesign based on meaningful evidence…as opposed to the usual ‘conventional wisdom’ or ‘current in-vogue ideology’;

and finally:

4. Devise new measures, and move to a new model of leadership.

Cox then goes into each step in some detail.

Going back to Step 1: Cox talks about studying demand.

He takes us through a case study of a real person in need, and their interactions with multiple organisations (many ‘front doors’) and how the traditional way of thinking seriously fails them and, as an aside, costs the full system a fortune.

“Understand demand in context….don’t understand people from the point of view of your organisation, understand the person and what matters to them about living a better life.”

The case study is sad…and yet not really a surprise – we all kind of know that it’s true. It shows the huge power of following some cases around the full system.

In explaining Step 2, Cox opens up the madness within silo’d (i.e. single department) thinking, which is driven by their ‘budgetary controls’.

He identifies three survival principles in play, and the resulting anti-systemic controls that result:

a) “We must prioritise [our] services for the most in need” which leads to attempts to stop entry into the service, and then the requirement to break through escalating thresholds of eligibility.

Such ‘screening out’ logic creates the following madness: “Your case isn’t serious enough yet…go away until things get worse!”

b) “We must stick to what we do” which leads to “I can see that you need A and B for you to get better…but, here, we only do A.”

Cox gives a real example of an alcoholic with depression being turned away by mental health practitioners because “we don’t work on alcoholism – you need to solve that first and then come back with your depression”. We can predict that such unhelpfulness will lead the needy citizen towards a rather large drink!

c) “We must limit service delivery” which leads to attempts at closing cases, doing things on the cheap, and setting time limits…all of which are about pushing things through at the expense of the needy citizen…which will lead to failure demand (probably popping up unexpectedly in another department…and therefore not seen as linked).

The redesign at Step 3 requires different principles.

Cox makes the obvious point that the actual redesign can’t be explained up-front because, well…how can it be -you haven’t studied your system yet!

…but, generally, it is likely that “genuinely integrated, local-by-default problem solving teams will emerge from [following the steps]”.

A clarification: ‘Genuinely integrated’ doesn’t mean a multi-disciplined shared building where people regularly come together for, say, case review meetings…and then go back to their ‘corners’ and work to their existing (i.e. competing) policies and procedures.

A nice test from Cox:

“How do you know a team is genuinely integrated rather than co-located?…All you have to do is look in the fridge – nobody’s written their department’s name on the milk!”

And so to Step 4: New measures and new leadership

[Once you’ve successfully redesigned the system] “The primary focus is on having really good citizen-focused measure: ’are you improving’, ‘are you getting better’, ‘is the demand that you’re placing reducing over time’.”

Notice that these measures are about the purpose of the system (i.e. for the citizen), and NOT about the activities performed within the system. It’s not about the volumes of calls taken or visits performed or payments made or cases closed or…[carry on naming activities].

“You have to shift leaders from managing the budget top-down to adding value to the process of studying, and improving outcomes for individuals.”

The point here is that you are never done. The outcomes from a redesign can radically shift performance, but you’ll quickly be ‘back at square one’ if you haven’t grasped the WHY and don’t ‘kick on’ to yet more learning, and yet more improvement – becoming better every day – for the good of citizens, and (importantly) for the pride of your employees.

To close

What’s most interesting to me from the video is the graphic explanation of one unit of demand, a needy citizen in a really shitty situation, being bounced around – presenting at public service ‘front doors’ in multiple and seemingly unrelated ‘cases’, with each agency doing what they can but not what is required….and the needy slip ever further into their personal quagmire.

“We limit what we do to ‘what we do’, not to what the person needs.”

Cox makes the hugely important point that, once you open your mind, then the study and redesign of the work is relatively easy. The hard bit is re-conceiving the ‘system of management’. This takes real leadership and (perhaps most importantly) self-development.

Cox closes with the following comment:

“Some of the most rewarding work that I have ever done is just working with these integrated teams who are out…on the ground, with good leadership, learning how to solve problems for citizens. You actually see people’s lives turned around and people who otherwise would have been dead who are now still alive.”

This is powerful stuff! There can’t be much more meaning to anyone’s working life than that.

Footnotes:

1. The video covers one session within a ‘Beyond Budgeting’ event run by Vanguard Consulting over in the UK. The first 3 mins. is an introduction from John Seddon, and then Jeremy Cox (a Vanguard consultant) presents the rest.

Note: Cox refers to names of UK government departments (e.g. The DWP). If you live elsewhere in the world then you are likely to have similar agencies, just with different names.

2. A consultant cannot do it for you: I should clarify that an experienced ‘systems thinking’ coach CAN facilitate you through studying your system and its redesign….BUT they aren’t ‘doing it’ – you are!

I have a post with the ink half dry that explains and expands this point called ‘Smoke and Mirrors’. I guess I should get on and finish it now.

3. The NZ government is setting up a Social Investment Agency. Its “focus is fundamentally about changing the lives of the most vulnerable New Zealanders by focusing on individuals and families, understanding their needs better, and doing more of what is most likely to give the best results”. I like the intent. I hope that those involved watch (or have already watched) the Jeremy Cox video, and consider the messages within.

Inspector Clouseau

March 1, 2017March 8, 2017 giantknave Brain Farts Improvement, Inspection, John Seddon, Measures, Specifications

So, a bloody good mate of mine manages a team that delivers an important public service – let’s call him Charlie. We have a weekly coffee after a challenging MAMIL ¹ bike ride….and we thoroughly explore our (comedic) working lives.

And so to our most recent conversation – Charlie told me that his department is due an inspection (a public sector reality)…and how much he, ahem, ‘loves’ such things! 🙂

“Oh, and why’s that?” I say.

His response² went something like this: “Well, they come in with a standardised checklist of stuff, perform interviews and site visits to tick off against a set of targets, and then issue a report with our score, and recommendations as to what we should be doing….it’s not exactly motivational!”

“Mmm” I say…”but presumably their intent – to understand how well things are going – is good?”

Here’s the essence of Charlie’s reply: “Yep, I ‘get’ the intent behind many of the items on their checklist, and I accept that knowing how we are doing is really important…but, rather than act like robotic examiners, I want them to:

understand us, and our reality (what we are having to deal with³)…and I want them to focus on what really matters in respect of our service, not hide behind narrow ‘currently trendy’ targets and initiatives set from above;

give us the chance to demonstrate:
- how we are doing;
- where we know we have room for improvement; and
- what we are doing to get better; and finally

assist us, by adding value (perhaps with useful references to what they’ve seen working elsewhere) rather than be seen as ‘taking up our time’. “

“Righto”, I said ”…that sounds excellent! I’ll write a post on that lot”…so here goes:

A ‘short but sharp’ generic critique of inspections:

Inspection requires someone looking for something (whether positive or negative)…and this comes from a specification as to what they believe you should be doing and/or how you should be doing it.

The ‘compliance’ word fits here.

…and, as such, the inputs, behaviours and outcomes from inspections are rather predictable. You can expect some or all of the following:

people, often (usually?) from outside your service, spend time writing (often inflexible) specifications as to what you should (and should not) be doing;
people are employed, and trained, as inspectors of those specifications;
you and your team spend precious time preparing before each imminent inspection:
- running preparatory meetings to guess what might happen;
- window-dressing solely for the benefit of ‘the inspector’ e.g. making your work space look temporarily good, filling in (and perhaps even back dating) ‘paperwork’;
- even performing ‘dummy runs’ (rehearsals!);
you and your team serenade the inspector around during their visit, with everyone on their best behaviour;
questions are asked, careful (guarded) answers are given, and an inspection report is issued;
your post-inspection time is then consumed rebutting (what you consider to be) poorly drawn recommendations and/or drafting action plans, stating what is going to be implemented to comply.

…and after it’s all over, a big sigh is let out, and you go back to how you were.

Wouldn’t it be great if, rather than playing the ‘inspection game show’, you truly welcomed someone (anyone) coming in to see what you actually do and, when they arrive, you carried on as normal because you are confident that:

you are operating in the way that you currently believe to be the best; and
you want them to see and understand this, and yet provide you with feedback that you can ponder, experiment with, and get even better at delivering against your purpose⁴.

…so how might you get to this wonderland?

A better way:

I’m a huge fan of a (deceptively) simple yet (potentially) revolutionary idea put forward by John Seddon:

“Instead of being measured on compliance, people should be assessed on whether they are able to show that they are working to understand and improve the work they do.

It is to shift from ‘extrinsic’ motivation (carrot and stick) to intrinsic motivation (pride), which is a far more powerful source of motivation.”

…and to the crux of what Seddon is suggesting:

“Inspection of performance should be concerned with asking only one question of managers:

‘What measures are you using to help you understand and improve the work?’ “

This, to me, is superb – the inspector doesn’t arrive with a detailed checklist and ‘cookie cutter’ answers to be complied with; and the manager (and his/her team) has to really think about that question!

To answer it, the team must become clear on:

the (true) purpose of the service that they provide;
what measures⁵ would tell them how they are doing against this purpose (i.e. their capability);
how they are doing against purpose (i.e. as well as knowing what to measure, they must be actively, and appropriately, measuring it for themselves);
what they are working on to improve, and how these are affecting the performance of their system; and
…what fresh ideas have arisen to experiment with.

You can see that this isn’t something that is simply ‘prepared in advance’ for a point-in-time inspection. It is an ongoing, and ever maturing, endeavour – a way of working.

It means that any inspector (or interested party) can arrive at any time and explore the above in use (as opposed to it being beautifully presented in ‘this years’ audit file ring-binder)

“Are you saying that ‘specifications’ are wrong then?”

Before ending this post, I’d like to clarify that:

No, I’m not saying that specifications are (necessarily) wrong; and
I’m also not saying that scientific know-how, generated from a great deal of experience over time should be ridiculed or ignored ‘just because it comes from somewhere else’.

Taking each in turn,

Specifications (e.g. the current best known way to perform a task) should be owned by the team that have to perform them…and these should be:
- of adequate depth and breadth to enable anyone and everyone to professionally perform their roles;
- suitably flexible to cater for the variety of demands placed upon them (requiring principled guidelines rather than concrete rules); and
- ‘living’ i.e. continuously improved as new learning occurs⁶

If there is a central function, then their role should be to:
- understand what is working ‘out there’; and
- effectively share that information with everyone else (thus being of great value to managers)

…without dictating that a specific method should be ‘complied with’.

The point being that we should not think in terms of ‘best practise’…we should be continuously looking for, and experimenting with, better practise, suited to each scenario. This is to remove the (attempted) authority from the centre, and place it as the (necessary) responsibility where the actual work is performed, by the service (manager, and team) on the front line.

In this way, ‘the centre’ can shift itself from being seen as an interfering, bureaucratic and distant police force, to a much valued support service.

To Ponder:

If you are ‘being inspected’ then, yes, I ‘get’ that you currently need to ‘tick those boxes’…but how about thinking a little bit differently:

…how would you show those ‘inspecting you’ that you truly understand, and are improving, your system against its purpose?

You could seriously surprise them!

If you can really answer that one question, then you are likely to be operating a stable, yet continually improving service within a healthy environment, both for your team and those they serve.

Who knows – ‘the inspector’ might want to share what you are doing with everyone else 🙂

And, going back to the top – i.e. Charlie’s reply as to what he really wanted out of an inspection – I reckon he was ‘right on the money’!

A final comment…for all you private sector organisations out there:

Don’t think that this post doesn’t apply to you!

If you have centralised ‘Audit’, ‘Quality Assurance’ and/or ‘Business Performance’ teams (i.e. that are separate from the actual work), then virtually everything written above applies to your organisation.

Footnotes:

1. MAMIL: Middle aged men in lycra

2. To ‘Charlie’ – Please excuse the poetic licence that I have taken in writing the above…and I hope it may be of some use (woof woof 🙂 ).

3. What we are really dealing with: I picked the ‘Inspector Clouseau’ picture to allude to the possibility (probability?) that many an inspector, stuck with their heads in their audit checklist, hasn’t a clue about what is really going on within, and/or what really matters for, the service before them….and for some, this is still true AFTER the inspection has been completed 😦

I’m not trying to ‘shoot at’ inspectors – this is a role that you have (currently) been given. You might also like to ponder the above and thereby look to re-imagine your purpose. Doing so could dramatically improve your work satisfaction…and help improve the services that you support.

4. Purpose: not to be confused with the lottery of attempting to meet a numeric target.

5. A set of Measures that uncover how the system is performing, NOT one supposedly ‘all seeing’ KPI and an associated target.

6. Living: Years of (regularly futile) experience have proven to me that ‘learning aids’ (whether they be documents, diagrams, charts, pictures….) will only ‘live’ (i.e. improve) if they are regularly (i.e. necessarily) used by the workers to do the work. An earlier post (Déjà vu) fits here.

7. I think that a couple of previous posts are foundational and/or complimentary to this one:

The Principle of Mission: That clarification of intent, and allowing flexibility in how it is achieved, is far more important than waiting for, and slavishly carrying out ‘instructions’ from above.

Rolling, rolling, rolling: The huge, and game-changing difference between rolling out and rolling in change. One is static, the other is dynamic and purpose-seeking.

“You keep saying that…but what does it mean?!”

December 13, 2016December 13, 2016 giantknave Brain Farts customer, John Seddon, Service, variety

So I recently had a most excellent conversation with a comrade.

I’d written some guff in the usual way and he wanted to push back on it…great! I need to be challenged on my thinking, particularly the more I verbalise (and therefore risk believing) it.

His push back:

I’d used the ‘absorb variety’ [in customer demand] phrase yet again…and he (quite rightly) said “but what does it mean?”

He went on to say that, whilst he understands and agrees with a great deal of what I write about, he doesn’t fully agree with this bit. He has reservations.

So we got into a discussion about his critique, which goes something like this:

“I agree that we should be customer focused, but…‘absorb their variety’???

You can’t do anything for everybody….they’d start asking for the world…you’d go out of business! There have to be rules as to what we will or won’t do.”

He gave an example:

“If a customer asked you to fax them their documents [e.g. invoice, contract, policy…], surely you’d say no because this is such old technology and it doesn’t make sense for people to use it anymore.”

Yep, a very fair view point to hold…and an example to play with.

So, in discussing his critique, I expanded on what I mean when using the ‘absorb variety’ phrase. Here’s the gist of that conversation:

First, be clear as to what business you are in

Taking the “you can’t do anything for everybody” concern: I agree…which is why any business (and value stream within) should be clear up-front on its (true) purpose.

However, such a purpose should be written in terms of the customer and their need. This is important – it liberates the system from the ‘how’, rather than dictating method. It allows flexibility and experimentation.

Clarification: ‘liberating’ doesn’t mean allowing anything – it means a clear and unconstrained focus on the purpose (the ‘why’ for the system in question). If you don’t have a clear aim then you don’t have a system!

Understanding the customer: who they are, what they need.

Okay, so the purpose is set, but each customer that comes before us is different (whether we like this or not). The generic purpose may be the same, but what works best for each unique customer and their specific situation will have nuances.

On ‘unique’: A service organisation (or value stream within) may serve many customers, but a customer only buys one service – their need. We need to see the world through their eyes.

“The customer comes in customer-shaped” (John Seddon)

Let’s take the scenario of an insurer handling a house burglary, with some contents stolen and property damage from the break-in.

The customer purpose of ‘help me recover from my loss’ is generic yet focused…it clearly narrows down what the value stream is about.

But, at the risk of stereotyping, here’s some potential customer nuances:

Fred¹ is an old person that lives at home alone. He’s very upset and concerned about his security going forward;
Hilary is a really busy person and just wants the repair work done to a high quality, with little involvement required from her;
Manuel² doesn’t speak English very well;
Theresa is currently away from the country (a neighbour notified the police);

….and the variety goes on and on and on³

Each of these customers needs to recover from their loss…but the specifics of what matters differ and these can be VERY important to them.

If we (are ‘allowed’ by our management system⁴ to) make the effort up-front to (genuinely) understand the customer and their specific unit of demand, and then work out how best to meet their needs then they are going to be very happy…and so are we…AND we will handle their need efficiently.

If we don’t understand them and, instead, try to force them into a transaction orientated strait-jacket, we can expect:

recurring failure demand;
time-consuming rework; and
customer frustration (even anger)

…adding significant and un-necessary costs and damaging our reputation. Not a great place to work either!

Do what is ‘reasonable’ for them

Right, so you may agree that we should understand a customer and their reality…but I still hear the critique that we can’t do anything and everything for them, even if it could be argued as fitting within the purpose of the value stream in question.

So let’s consider the ‘what’s reasonable?’ question. ‘Reasonable’ is judged by society, NOT by your current constraints. Just because your current system conditions⁵ mean that you can’t do it doesn’t make it unreasonable!

A test: if you (were allowed to actually) listen to the customer, understand the sense in their situation and the reasonableness of their need…but respond with “computer says no” (or such like) then your value stream isn’t designed to absorb variety.

And so we get to what it means to design a system that can absorb variety.

It doesn’t mean that we design a hugely complicated system that tries to predict every eventuality and respond to it. This would be impossible and a huge waste.

It means to design a system that is flexible and focuses on flow, not scale. This will be achieved by putting the power in the hands of the front-line worker, whilst providing them with, and allowing them to pull, what they need to satisfy each customer and their nominal value. This is the opposite of front-line ‘order takers’ coupled to back-office specialised transaction-oriented sweat shops.

How does that ‘fax request’ example sit with the above? Well, on its own, I don’t know…and that’s the point! I’d like to know why the customer wants it by fax.

perhaps they aren’t in their normal environment (e.g. they are on holiday in the middle of nowhere) and the only thing available to them is some old fax machine;
perhaps they didn’t know that we can now email them something;
perhaps they don’t (currently) trust other forms of communication…and we’d do well to understand why this is so;
perhaps, perhaps perhaps…

Each scenario is worthy of us understanding them, and trying to be reasonably flexible.

Forget all that!

Of course the above means virtually nothing.

You’d need to see the variety in your system for yourself to believe, and understand, it…and the way to do that would be to listen and see how your current system DOESN’T absorb variety.

How would you do that? Well, from listening to the customer:

in every unit of failure demand;
within each formal complaint made to you;
…and from every informal criticism made ‘about you’ (such as on social media)

I’ve got absolutely no idea what you would find! But do you?

The funny thing is…

…if we allow front-line/ value-creating workers to truly care about, and serve each customer – as individuals – in the absence of ‘management controls’ that constrain this intent (e.g. activity targets) then:

the ‘work’ becomes truly inspiring for the workers, ‘we’ (the workers) gain a clear purpose with which we can personally agree with and passionately get behind;
we become engaged in wanting to work together to improve how we satisfy demand, for the good of current and future customers; and
the ‘management controls’ aren’t needed!

If I asked you, as a human being:

do you primarily care about, say, a ‘7 day turn-around target’? (other than to please management/ get a bonus)

vs.

do you really want to help Fred (or Hilary, Manuel, Theresa…) resolve their specific needs and get back on with their lives?

…how would you answer?

We need to move away from what makes sense to the attempted industrial production of service delivery to what makes sense in the real worlds of the likes of Fred.

Footnotes

1. Fred: The picture of Fred comes from a most excellent blog post written by Think Purpose some time ago. This post really nicely explains about the importance of understanding customer variety in a health care setting.

2. Manuel: A tribute to the late Andrew Sach (a.k.a Manuel from Fawlty Towers) who died recently. He wasn’t very good at English…

3. Variety in service demand: I’ve previously written about Professor Frances Frei’s classification of five types of variety in service demand and, taken together, they highlight the lottery within the units of demand that a service agent is asked to handle.

4. Allowed to: This is not a criticism of front-line workers. Most (if not all) start by wanting to truly help their customers. It is the design of the system that they work within that frustrates (and even prevents) them from doing so.

You show me a bunch of employees and I’ll show you the same bunch that could do awesome things. Whether they do so depends!

5. System Conditions may include structures, policies, procedures, measures, technology, competencies…

6. Bespoke vs. Commoditisation: It has been put to me that there are two types of service offerings. Implied within this is that there are two distinct customer segments: One that wants little or no involvement for a low cost and another that wants, and is willing and able to pay for, a bespoke service.

This is, for me, far too simplistic and misunderstands customer variety. Staying with the world of insurance…

A single customer might want low involvement when managing their risk (taking out a policy and paying for it, say, ‘online’) but to deal with a human if they need help recovering from a loss (i.e. at claim time).

That same customer may switch between wanting low involvement and the human touch even within a value stream – e.g. happy with low involvement car insurance but wants a human when it comes to their house insurance.

…and even within a given unit of demand, a customer may be happy with low involvement (say registering a claim)…but want the option of a human conversation if certain (unpredictable) scenarios develop.

The point is that we shouldn’t attempt to pigeon-hole customers. We should aim to provide what they need, when they need it…and they will love us for it!

7. Automation: On reading the above, some of you may retort with “Nice ideas…but you’re behind the times ‘Granddad’ – the world has moved to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics”. I wrote about that a bit back: Dilbert says… lets automate everything!