System

Scrap the ‘100 day plan’

giantknave Brain Farts , , , ,

Blank desktop calendarI’m sick of leaders coming into new roles with the ink already dry on their ‘100 day plans’. I’m sick of the conventional view that such an up-front and detailed plan is “critical for success”…success of what?

Throw that plan in the bin!

  • Who are you to know what the hell actually needs doing, by whom, and by when?
  • Even if some of your plan is vaguely logical (for the system and its purpose), how is your ‘commanding and controlling’ going to help the people accept your proposed changes and, even more importantly, learn for themselves so that an environment of improvement is sustained?

Instead, go to the Gemba, study the system with a truly open mind (and open eyes and ears) and get knowledge.

In this way you will get to understand:

  • The true purpose of the system, from the customer’s point of view;
  • The nature and frequencies of demands being placed upon it (including failure demands);
  • The current capability of the system (including the variation within) against its purpose;
  • How the work flows (or not!);
  • The system conditions that cause the above to be so; and most importantly…the underlying cause…
  • The current management thinking that makes the above the way it is.

Now, you can properly appreciate how the current management system constrains the system from achieving its purpose.

Now, you are in a position to help the people see, accept and make the necessary changes themselves that will truly and sustainably improve the system against its purpose….and meaningfully measure the effects.

Now, you can help the people experiment and learn, to make ongoing long term sustainable improvements rather than carry out knee-jerk ‘activities’ on a plan.

I can hear management’s riposte now: “We can’t take the time to do that! We’ve got to get results now!”

A reminder of the quote:

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”

Taking actions does not equate to transformation. Your 100 day plans become ongoing nightmares!

A true but comedy illustration: I met a guy who had just come into a role. He had his 100 day plan (that he had presented at his interview and which had secured him the job). I asked him whether he had met his team yet. His reply? “Oh no, not yet, that’s not until day 21 on the plan.” 

People are people so why should it be?

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6508-mouse…so we are stood around the visual management board, considering a problem:

There’s been lots of talking, but an impasse has been reached.

  • After a while a ‘quiet mouse’ of a person (almost imperceptibly) whispers something that is actually quite profound….but no one seems to have heard it;
  • The ‘fog horn’ person doesn’t realise that he did in fact subconsciously overhear this whisper and blurts out similar words, thinking that he’s just had an original thought;
  • “Wow”, everyone thinks, “that’s a great idea!”
  • ‘Quiet mouse’ shifts back a little and thinks “that’s basically what I just said”…but is too polite to point this out;
  • Then the ‘really awkward’ person says something which annoyingly (for ‘fog horn’), yet totally justifiably, questions the great idea;
  • The ‘comedian’ says something funny that removes the tension in the air between ‘fog horn’ and ‘really awkward’;
  • Which causes the ‘deep thought’ person to ponder ‘really awkward’s challenge and carefully suggest a logical revision to the idea;
  • To which ‘fog horn’ adds his support, ‘comedian’ makes a joke out of this …and the group unite on fleshing out what experiment they are going to run to test out the idea and then conclude.

So, who did well in this discussion? Who did ‘best’? Who deserves praise? And, assuming that the subsequent experiment shows that the great idea has legs, which one deserves an award! Hang on…why are we trying to create a competition out of this?!

In reality, the good idea needed each and every one of ‘quiet mouse’, ‘fog horn’, ‘really awkward’, ‘comedian’ and ‘deep thought’ and the combined skills and personalities that they bring to the table. Remove any of these from the mix and we might not have got anywhere.

Those of you with even a mild eye for detail may protest that I have well and truly butchered Dr Meredith Belbin’s ‘Team Roles’ (I don’t think his list includes ‘quiet mouse’)…this was semi-intentional. Whilst Belbin’s research is hugely important (and very interesting), we shouldn’t really need the actual list of researched people characteristics to conclude that everyone’s different!

If you were to study a group of people working together over a period of time, you would see how dynamic (and necessary) the interplays are….but you know this!

However, a ‘command and control’ organisation looks to:

  • single out people to praise for their ‘individual brilliance’; and
  • rate and rank people against a supposedly desirable personality type.

An organisation is a highly complex living (as opposed to mechanistic) system. We should be celebrating the differences within our people. We should want to encourage each of them to develop their own innate skills AND the ability to collaborate.

A reminder of Deming’s wonderful quote about people:

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

So what’s the point?

The success of an organisation will be best achieved through respecting each and every person and who they are….and helping them become who they can be. It will be damaged most by competition and pushing people to be who they are not.

This needs a rethink of the ‘command and control’ management system that creates the environment that many (most) of us work within.

End note: Does the title of this post mean anything to you? A 1980s song lyric? (…or perhaps it’s just my youth)

A Gulf in Thinking

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

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

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

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

This ‘stop the line’ mentality means that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obsessed!

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

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

We hear the following phrases (or variants of):

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

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

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

A reminder of a hugely important quote from John Seddon:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s a definition to ponder:

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

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

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

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

DUMB

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smartWe are all taught at an early age in our careers (i.e. ‘Management for dummies’) that we should cascade down S.M.A.R.T objectives. You will come across it as an idea that is so deeply rooted that it has been co-opted as ‘common sense’.

Sounds so good, it must be right, right?

Let’s just remind ourselves what SMART stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time bound

Let’s then also remind ourselves about the definition of a system (taken from my earlier ‘Harmony or cacophony’ post):

“A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim [purpose] of the system.” (W. Edwards Deming)

The cascaded objectives technique (known as Management by Objectives, or M.B.O) is used by ‘Command-and-control’ organisations in the mistaken belief that, if we all achieve our cascaded personal objectives, these will then all roll up to achieve the overall goal (whatever that actually is).

This misunderstands:

  • the over-riding need for all the parts (components) of a system to fit together; and
  • the damage caused by attempting to optimise the components…because this will harm the whole system.

A simple illustrative example (taken from Peter Scholtes’ superb book called ‘The Leaders Handbook’):

Let’s say that we run a delivery company – our system. Fred, Amy and Dave are our drivers – our people components. If we provide them each with SMART personal objectives cascaded down (and offer performance-based pay), we might assume that they will all be ‘motivated’ to achieve them and therefore, taken together, the purpose of the whole will be achieved. Sounds great – I’ll have some of that!

…but what should we expect?

  • Each driver might compete with the others to get the best, most reliable, largest-capacity truck;
  • Each driver might compete for the easiest delivery assignments;
  • Drivers might engage in ‘creative accounting’: such as trying to get one delivery counted as two; or unloading a delivery somewhere nearby where it can be made after hours so that they can go back to the warehouse to get more jobs;
  • If we have created a competition out of it (say, the getting of a desirable award) then we can expect to see little driver co-operation, more resentment and perhaps even subtle sabotage.

The above shows that the sum of the outcomes will not add up to what we intended for the whole system…and, in fact, will have caused much unmeasured (and likely immeasurable) damage!

This is a good point to bring out Eli Goldratt’s classic quote:

“Tell me how you will measure me and I will tell [show*] you how I will behave.”

* I prefer to use the word ‘show’ since most people won’t tell you! They know their actions aren’t good for the overall system (they aren’t stupid) and so don’t like telling you what daft practices the management system has ended up creating.

A critique of S.M.A.R.T:

“SMART doesn’t tell us how to determine what to measure, and it assumes knowledge – otherwise how do we know what is ‘achievable’ and ‘realistic’? It is only likely to promote the use of arbitrary measures that will sub-optimise the system.” (John Seddon)

If an individual (or ‘team’) is given a truly SMART objective then, by definition, it would have to have been set so that they could achieve it on their own….otherwise it would be unrealistic.

Therefore any interdependencies it has with the rest of the organisational system would have to have been removed…which, clearly, given the definition of a system means one of the following:

  • if all interdependencies had been successfully removed…then meeting the resultant SMART objective will be:
    • a very insignificant (and very possibly meaningless) achievement for the system; and/or
    • sub-optimal to the system (i.e. work against the good of the whole)

OR

  • if (most likely) it was in fact not possible to truly remove the interdependencies…despite what delicate and time consuming ‘word smith-ing’ was arrived at…then:
    • it will be a lottery (not really under the person’s control) as to whether it can be achieved; and/or
    • it will ‘clash’ with other components (and their supposedly SMART objectives) within the system

So where did the post title ‘D.U.M.B’ come from? Here’s a thought provoking quote from John Seddon:

“We should not allow a plausible acronym to fool us into believing that there is, within it, a reliable method.”

Consider     

  • SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound

With

  • DUMB: Distorting, Undermining, Management-inspired, Blocking improvement

Does the fact that the acronym and its components ‘match’ make it any more worthy?

Cascaded personal objectives will either be ineffective, detrimental to the whole system or a lottery (outside of the person’s control) as to whether they can be achieved.

We need to move away from cascaded personal objectives and, instead:

  • see each horizontal value stream as a system, with customers and a related purpose;
  • provide those working within these systems with visible measures of the capability of the system as against its purpose; and
  • desist from attempting to judge individuals ‘performance’ and thereby allow and foster collaboration and a group desire to improve the system as a whole.

Harmony or cacophony

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One more time…what is a system?

In the wonderful YouTube clip called ‘If Russ Ackoff had given a TED talk’ (from way back in 1994), we get a really clear explanation about what a system is and, more importantly, why this matters!

A recap from W. Edwards Deming:

“A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim [purpose] of the system.”

“If the various components of an organisation are all optimised, the organisation will not be. If the whole is optimised, the components will not be.”

Dr Deming used to use the example of an orchestra to illustrate this point.

DSC_1637

  • A fine orchestra (the system) is highly interdependent;
  • The musicians (the components) are not there to stand out to the listener in a ‘look at me and what I can do’ manner…can you imagine the outcome of performance incentives – each musician being rewarded for playing faster and louder than the others! Such incentives are the source of cacophony that destroys value;
  • The musicians are there to support each other, to achieve the harmony that comes from the interaction of their specialised instruments adhering to the same fundamental rhythm, towards the same aim;
  • They are usually not ‘the best’ players in the country. They work as a team under the leadership of the conductor.

Another way of looking at this is that someone focused on the ‘efficiency’ of the orchestra would find them very inefficient – some of them are just sitting there waiting, tapping their feet! If the efficiency specialist would have their way, all the musicians would be playing all their instruments all the time!

Note that Deming considered a business to be even more interdependent than an orchestra and that, without real teamwork across the components, chaos is rampant.

It has been said that command-and-control companies get ordinary results after extensively searching, and fighting, for the limited supply of extra-ordinary people (what was coined as ‘the war for talent’ by McKinsey) whilst the likes of Toyota (and other ‘Systems thinking’ organisations) consistently obtain extraordinary results from ordinary people.

The point is that it is about optimising the system, not its components…and, to do this, we need to understand the obstacles that our current management system puts in the way and replace them with something better!

Anointing heroes

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super-heroDr Deming’s red bead experiment simply yet brilliantly shows that, when we rate and rank people, we are mostly rating and ranking the effect of the system on the people.

“Apparent performance is actually attributable mostly to the system that the individual works in, not to the individual…the so-called merit system introduces conflict between people and destroys co-operation. Emphasis goes to achievement of rank, merit, not on the work…judging a person, putting them into slots, does not help them to do a better job.” (Deming)

To illustrate this point – compare two people performing two different roles:

  • If you give me a job (let’s say focused 100% on ‘improvement’) in which I can look good and am enabled to help people then, guess what, I’ll be their hero;
  • If you give me a job in which I have to ‘shovel the proverbial sh1t’ (let’s say as an over stretched ‘worker’ being asked to achieve the impossible) then, guess what, I will hardly be noticed….unless I’m not making my arbitrarily-set numerical activity targets…in which case I will be dealing with even more pain.

…who’s the real hero?!

I think anointing certain people as heroes because of what the system enabled them to achieve is a very unhealthy practise (for the supposed heroes’ and for the rest).

After explaining to a colleague how ‘the system’ has a huge influence over what someone can achieve, she made a really great ‘aha’ comment back to me:

It goes something like this:

“…that explains why I couldn’t work out whether that project manager working for me was any good!    

  • on one project he was superb: great communications, fantastic results on time/ within budget etc.
  • on another project he seemed terrible: nothing was going right, completely off track and seemingly no ability to do anything about it.

I now understand that I was judging him when, in fact, I should have been considering what the system was allowing him to achieve – the first project had a clear sponsor and much backing, the second project was an organisational orphan with difficult people and many historic issues, a virtual hospital pass!”

I am a mathematician at heart and Dr Deming used a wonderful formula to explain the above…bear with me:

  • Let x be the contribution of an individual
  • Let y(x) be the effect of the system on his/ her performance
  • Finally, let’s suppose we could measure the complete result of a person’s performance – a dubious idea in itself….but for the sake of this post, let’s suppose we have a number for his/ her apparent performance, such as 8 mistakes in the year or sales of $800,000.

Then we have the equation        x + y(x) = 8

(i.e. the individual’s contribution combined with what the system enabled him/ her to accomplish will determine the outcome s/he can achieve)

Deming goes on to explain

“To rate the individual we need to know x. Unfortunately, there are two unknowns and only one equation. Johnny in the sixth grade knows that no one can solve this equation for x.

Yet people that use the merit system think that they are solving it for x. They ignore the other term y(x), which is predominant.”

Now, a standard response to the above from people working in a command-and-control system is as follows:

“…but some people really are rubbish and/or lazy… and the above allows them to use the ‘it’s the system’ thing as an excuse!”

A couple of thoughts back:

  • If someone isn’t capable of performing the role they are being asked to perform, then:
    • are we failing to develop them into this role? or, if we’ve (truly) done what we can here;
    • have we incorrectly put them into this role?
  •  If someone hasn’t got any interest in their role, then:
    • has this been ‘beaten out of them’ by the system? (a very common reality) or, if not;
    • have we misunderstood or, worse, not (properly) considered what motivates this person?

Rating and ranking them ignores and hides the above. It tries to make it their problem….but who is responsible for the environment in which they work?

Everybody’s talking about it…

giantknave Brain Farts ,

5366I am amazed (amused?) about how often ‘Purpose’ (or other such words) is being put forward at the moment as THE thing, and from just about every management thinker/ business article I am coming across.

Examples are:

  • John Seddon’s ‘Purpose, from the customer’s point of view’
  • Simon Sinek’s ‘Start with why’ to inspire others
  • Clayton Christensen’s ‘Job to be done’… the higher purpose – the human need you are trying to fulfil
  • Aaron Dignan’s ‘Purpose as the no. 1 element’ of an organisation’s operating model, with everything else (process, product, people) nested within

 …and on and on

I am absolutely sold that it should be all about purpose…and I would expect that you are as well…but why does this obvious point need to be said?

Note that the aim of the system (which, to be clear, “should always relate to a better life for everyone”) was THE starting point for W. Edwards Deming i.e. there is nothing really new in this…and the fact that it is being constantly re-stated and re-framed suggests that we don’t properly understand the underlying point!

Are we stating the obvious (again) and then just paying it lip service? What does it actually mean to be focused on purpose?

I went looking for the purpose statement of the company I work for when I was writing a course recently and was really pleased to come across a crisp, clear and (to me) totally relevant purpose statement on our intranet.

It set out the purpose of our two primary value streams. It’s worth reflecting that it doesn’t talk about the method or the results…just why we are here:

  • it’s not about selling things or retaining business;
  • it’s not about market share or size;
  • it’s not about leakage, efficiency ratios or returns on investment
  • it’s not about awards, bonuses and other carrot dangling;
  • it’s not about the rating and ranking of our people;
  • it’s not actually about customer advocacy scores…though some valid (and undistorted) capability measures of satisfaction levels would provide an indication as to how we are doing against our purpose in the eyes of the customer.

If an organisation has a purpose, but is struggling to move towards it, then we might question why this is so. Note that a command-and-control management system replaces the actual purpose of ‘serve customer’ (as generically written) with the de facto purpose of ‘make targets’…which end ups clashing with/ defeating the actual purpose.

I believe that I would struggle to find the well-written purpose statement being actively/ obviously used within the business: to manage our two primary value streams, to guide and challenge our decisions, to measure our capability against.

Instead, I see a lot that is used to command-and-control the method within. We shouldn’t have to re-state our purpose, we shouldn’t have to chase new ways of saying the same thing….our purpose should be within our DNA!

We need our management system to enable our people to be motivated by this purpose, not frustrate them.

Command-and control constrains. Being truly focused on purpose liberates method!

As a final thought, you might ask ‘so what if a business is clear on its purpose and has a management system that allows people to continuously work towards it…what about me?!’

To tie organisational purpose back to us as human beings, note that Victor Frankl wrote in his classic book ‘Man’s search for meaning’:

“The greatest need of the human being is for a sense of meaning and purpose in life”

If an organisation states its purpose clearly (a good start) but then pays it lip service, it is missing out on the phenomenal potential of providing its people with meaning in their work….imagine what could be achieved if all your people (and you) wanted to come to work, not for the money, but for themselves!

The trouble with targets

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1136281264582304The front page article on the Press for Friday 7th November 2014 says “Patients ‘forgotten’ in wait for surgery”.

It goes on to say that research published in the NZ medical journal suggests that:

“One in three people requiring elective surgery are being turned away from waiting lists to meet Government targets.”

It should be no surprise to any of us that if a numeric target is imposed on a system then the process performers will do what they can to achieve it, even when their actions are detrimental to the actual purpose of the system. The controlling influence of the targets will be even greater if contingent financial implications are involved (carrots or sticks).

If we viewed a league table of (say) hospitals and wait times, what would this tell us? Would it tell us which:

  • has the best current method as judged against the purpose of the system; or
  • is best at managing the system against the numeric targets?

…and what about quality?

This NZ research is not an isolated or even new incident. John Seddon has been following, and challenging the fallout from target setters for many years, across the whole range of UK public sector services. Many of his findings are comedy and yet scary at the same time.

Any target-setter should have no surprise by the resultant behaviours of process performers and their managers, such as to:

  • Avoid, or pass on difficult work;
  • Attempt to restrict work in the process, by:
    • making it hard to get into the process; or
    • throwing them back out (‘they didn’t do it correctly’); or
    • inventing new ‘outside the target’ queues earlier in the process
  • Applying the ‘completed’ stamp as soon as possible, and often before the customer has reached the end from their point of view;
  • Earn easy points, by doing things anyway when not strictly necessary…because it will count towards the target

The target-setter has created a ‘survival game’ of ‘how can we make the target’ which replaces ‘serve customer’.

So what to do? How about adding on layers of compliance reporting and inspections to police the process, to spot them doing ‘naughty things’ to meet target and punish bad behaviour…that should work, shouldn’t it?

Thus the battle lines are drawn, with the customer suffering in the cross fire.

Of note, the Press article goes on to explain that the Government target of 6 months is soon to be reduced to 5 and then 4….because, obviously, adding more pressure on them will motivate them to improve!???

What about if we replace numeric targets with capability measures (which measure the capability of the process against the purpose of the system)….and then used these measures to help us improve.

We can laugh (or cry) at the public sector comedy…but let’s not forget what we do with targets in our own organisations.

Stating the obvious!

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Copy-of-dumb_blondeIt is really easy for any leader to say “I want…

  • Continuous Improvement;
  • Removal of waste;
  • Reduction in failure demand*.”

(* explained in my earlier marbles post here)

All are sensible, in fact obvious! But it’s a bit like a financial advisor telling you to ‘buy low and sell high’…what have you actually learned that you didn’t already know, and how does this help?

It’s much harder to understand the system conditions (structures, policies, procedures, measurement, IT), and underlying management thinking (beliefs and behaviours) that protect the status quo, create the waste and cause the failure demand….because you have to change your thinking!

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” (attributed to Einstein)

If you:

  • set numeric activity targets to make improvements…
  • …and offer rewards for their achievement…
  • …and rate (and rank) people’s performance against them…

…then you haven’t understood (or accepted) about systems, measurement and motivation.

To quote from John Seddon:

“Treating improvement as merely process improvements is folly; if the system conditions that caused the waste are not removed, any improvements will be marginal and unsustainable.“