We have all heard the phrase; “you can’t manage it, if you can’t measure it”. I also believe that “you can’t manage, it if you are always adjusting it”.

When you work in a culture that is very numbers driven or reliant, there will always be pressure to adjust your data or reporting to account for outliers, one-offs, process errors etc. This is a very slippery slope. You can not eat a single potato chip and you can not make only one adjustment.

When data and reports are “clean”, i.e. with no manual adjustments, the data is objective and we treat all parties/divisions consistently and fairly. When we add in manual adjustments, we immediately convert objective data into “suspect, subjective data with inconsistencies. I am very uncomfortable making critical business decisions using inconsistent, manually manipulated data (and you be should too).

Here are 4 reasons why you should not create an adjustment culture in your organization:

1) We own the process errors, so we must own the results

In the organization I work with, we manage technical support tickets with priorities 1, 2 and 3 and each priority has a different time to close/SLA expectation. Occasionally, a priority 3 ticket gets upgraded to a priority 2, and we immediately miss the time to close/SLA targets and I’ve been asked to adjust our reporting. Should we? No. We own the case management process and it is our responsibility to either change the policy on ticket changes and/or to manage out abnormalities in the process.

2) If you adjust the bad errors, you must also adjust the good errors

Like many organization, we send out a customer satisfaction survey after we close each ticket/case that provides customers the opportunity to rate their experiences on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 considered the worst and 5 considered the best.  Occasionally we have a customer submit the survey with all ones (instead of fives), but with very positive comments, and the impacted teams will ask about removing these results from their averages. Seems fair- right? No.

As many times as customers incorrectly choose all ones, they likely choose all fives when they are very unsatisfied. To manage this situation, we’d have to assign team members to analyze every survey, identify both the good and bad errors and make manual adjustments. This is not a good investment of time and resources.

3) Adjustments are subjective and inconsistent

In three, prior sales leadership positions, I inherited teams that expected monthly manual adjustments to their results. There was a process flow in place, where the Sales Reps submitted their adjustment request, a Supervisor reviewed it and then either approved or denied the request.

In one role, I asked to be included as a second approver for the adjustments and was astounded at what was being both submitted and approved by the Supervisors. There was an instance where I approached one of the Sales Reps and asked why they submitted a specific adjustment and their response was “I threw it against the wall to see if it would stick..like spaghetti”. It did not!

In a prior Sales Ops, leadership role, I took part in an audit of all manual adjustments approved for 400+ sales reps. during a specific quarter to identify abnormalities, and I did. I found that specific supervisors were approving questionable adjustments that ensured that sales people either achieved quota or achieved bonus multipliers. I also found salespeople working together to help each other achieve quota by trading sales, which had the same result. The audit results were very disturbing and also made me (and HR and legal) wonder, what happened last quarter and the quarter before that. Yikes!

4) You create an adjustment machine that takes significant time and resources

You must consider the time to identify and correct good and bad errors. You must consider the time to understand the impact of the adjustments on results, performance reviews or bonus payouts. You must consider the time to manage adjustments consistently across employees, teams and geographies.

Managing adjustments could become a full time job ( or more) and may require resources that are at a high enough level to be objectives and identify and question possible abnormalities, that may piss people off. Do you want to invest $100,000 in a manual adjuster or $100,000 in another Tech Support Analyst or Salesperson?

But.. common sense should prevail

One caveat.. we do need to apply some common sense or management judgment at times, if the outlier is so significant that it has a material impact to a material number of employees. In these cases, I still believe that we should not adjust the reporting itself and instead, address these situations quietly and privately. There should be VERY FEW of these adjustments.

About the author Marci Reynolds

Marci Reynolds, based in Boston, MA USA, is the Vice President, Global Help24 Tech Support, at ACI Worldwide, an electronic payments software provider, and the author of the popular, Operations Blog. Prior to ACI, Marci led successful sales, customer service and operations teams for the past 15 years at prestigious organizations including Monster.com, Staples and Deluxe Corporation. To learn more about Marci, visit her blog or follow her on Twitter, @marcireynolds12. You may also enjoy her recent blog posts, How do you know when to pick your battles? and Experience the pain to drive organizational gain.

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Fight In Wolf Pack II by amrodel on deviantart.com

Right on the heels of my recent post advocating the development of a “Shop Owner Mentality” in order to create pride and dedication within organizations, an article by Nacie Carson was published on FastCompany.com entitled “Think Like An Entrepreneur, Act Like An Employee.”

In my article, I wrote:

People who are proud of their shop always want to have that pride.  They want it to sustain and grow.  They never want to see their pride diminished.

In your workplace, do people act like shopowners?  Do they do work extra hard to take care of the shop, own its processes, design its delivery of goods and services, and constantly seek out innovative ways to provide value?  Are they looking for ways to grow the business, since that growth leads to both stability and prosperity?

Odds are, they are not.  Most people are just trying to survive it all, in return for a paycheck and some sense of satisfaction, if it can be found at all.  Most people have jobs and not purposes.  That lack of purpose prevents the emergence of any kind of pride in the ability to do the job, grow the company, satisfy the customer or improve the quality of whatever it is they are selling.  Instead, pride gets twisted until it becomes not pride of ownership, but pride of survival.

 

My perspective was this:  Most people would love to be calling the shots, but fear of reprisal prevents them from experimenting with risky project that, although they might have great rewards, just aren’t worth the potential downside if the project fails.  As a result, people embrace self-protection and learn to keep their heads down.  In other words, they learn to survive.  The only way this can be systematically overcome is for leaders at the top of organizations to embrace management styles and practices that encourage, and even reward, risk taking.

The FastCompany article has a different take on the situation:

Traditionally, the roles of employee and entrepreneur represent two completely different professional archetypes, each with their own ideal skill set. For example, success for an employee is often measured by how well they take direction from superiors, act within the scope of their job responsibilities or function, and reinforce the mission, vision, or values of the organization. Success for entrepreneurs is typically determined by their ability to direct their own work and act without precedent, to expand and grow their job responsibilities and functions, and to envision and support a mission, vision, and set of values on their own. Another way to look at it is to think of the role of an employee as implementing the tactics of an organization–the individual actions that contribute to the success of the larger strategy. The role of an entrepreneur is to develop that larger strategy, and implement it themselves or oversee its implementation.

From my experience in professional development and management consulting, I can tell you that the number one complaint organizations have about their employees is their inability to act tactically but think strategically–or, as above, to act like an employee but think like an entrepreneur. This requires being a follower and a leader simultaneously, and knowing which hat to wear when.

 

First off, I hate when someone says “the organization” has a complaint, perspective, takes an action, or anything else.  Organizations do not act – people within organizations act.  In the above passage, “the number one complaint organizations have about their employees” really means “the number one complaint people at the head of organizations have about their employees” or, in other words, “the boss is complaining about the employees’ inability.”

Yep – that’s right – the behavior of the rank & file is all their fault.  It’s not that management styles prevent risk taking, it’s that those people at the bottom just don’t know how to get to the top.

The article goes on to depict a situation where an entrepreneurial-minded young man rewrote some of the code behind one of his company’s critical reporting processes – without asking permission – and his efforts yielded success.  Of course, he was also a year out of college and, quite very likely, had nothing to lose.  Take a seasoned professional who isn’t yet vested in the 401K plan, has children in need of braces, summer camp, daycare, and a house to live in – and the willingness to unilaterally initiate an enterprise-changing project diminishes greatly.  Why?  Because in many places the very fact that you undertook something without three levels of review and approval threatens your ability to stay at least in the middle of Maslow’s pyramid.

The article’s point is well taken, and offers some very solid advice:

After all, if you are super productive, all you’ll get is more work to do, right?

Yes, and in more than one sense. You may be assigned more responsibilities and tasks, but you will also likely be offered more opportunity in the organization…as long as you make sure someone notices the effort. Like the proverbial tree in the forest, if a man works 80 hours a week and no one sees him, does he still get a raise? (No.) This is why productivity, when combined with a great professional brand, is an awesome recipe for increasing your value within an organization. The point is to look at your job responsibilities and required skills from a place of ownership, initiative, and personal direction. Remember, it’s about strategy and tactics.

However, I’d hate to be in the organization where everyone is looking for a big project to undertake in order to make a name for themselves.  That sounds like a place without standards, where it is more likely that people will seek to make themselves look good by making others look bad, and where management, rather than leading the people within the organization to reach their potential, is content to sit by and let the wolves destroy each other just to see which one is the strongest.

About the author David M. Kasprzak

I am a seasoned project and management analyst with over 14 years of experience as a trusted advisor to all levels on planning, measuring and analyzing activities. From small-scale internal projects to multi-year development efforts supporting enterprise-wide initiatives at the C-level, I “get geeky” seeing great management practices yield great outcomes. I am a fierce & vocal advocate for learning, collaborative approaches to work and pursuing Operational Excellence through challenging the status quo and fostering management innovation

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You need to give your people opportunities to flounder.  Challenge them with the impossible.  Get them in over their heads.

You’re a senior person.  You’re supposed to know what can really hurt your business and what can’t.  If you don’t – then hurry up and figure it out.

If you do know what can hurt and what can’t, then you know you can give your people interesting projects that will help to benefit the business, but not destroy it as they struggle.

It’s as simple as having extra capacity on a bottle neck or schedule slack in your project – you have wiggle room…always.

This is where the cost containers get themselves in trouble – in the effort to contain cost they squeeze the life out of their organizations, suffocating it until it can’t breathe because there’s no room to catch a breath.  There has to be room to accommodate the unexpected.  Life happens.  Shit happens.  You will never predict it all – yes, you should try, because being prepared is better than reacting like a caffeinated cat all the time, but even the hyperactive feline needs room to hop around when necessary.

If you run every resource to its breaking point, the instant anything unpredictable happens – it breaks.

About the author David M. Kasprzak

I am a seasoned project and management analyst with over 14 years of experience as a trusted advisor to all levels on planning, measuring and analyzing activities. From small-scale internal projects to multi-year development efforts supporting enterprise-wide initiatives at the C-level, I “get geeky” seeing great management practices yield great outcomes. I am a fierce & vocal advocate for learning, collaborative approaches to work and pursuing Operational Excellence through challenging the status quo and fostering management innovation

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Warrior vs Sorcerer by Pydracor on deviantart.com

There is so much written about innovation these days, it’s mind numbing.  Most of what you read, however, is all about product innovation – and there is very, very little written about process innovation.

Product innovation is something that is discussed as almost ethereal.  It is something that comes about through a little bit of magic & wizardry.  It’s romantic, intellectual, and fun.  It is the thing that enables companies like Apple & Google to push to the forefront of their industries and become the giga-bucks companies other people write books about.  It is the Holy Grail of major corporations and startups alike – both are encouraged to go on a quest for the magical, mystical powers of innovation.

Product innovation appears to be the realm of the unexplainable – that the way to go about that business is to assume a muse, or some divine spark is, ultimately, going to descend upon the workers bees and imbue them with the powers of insight and creativity.  You have to create innovation space, and adopt managerial styles and practices, that allow creativity to flourish.

Process innovation, on the other hand, is seen as something a little more grungy and foul-smelling.  It is the world of brute force and awkwardness, no matter how elegant it tries to become.  Process innovation tends to be something that people feel can be learned.  All you need to do is study Toyota, or Southwest Airlines, or General Electric and Motorola – and you will soon understand the simplicity of process innovation and be able to apply it easily, right?

Wrong.

The world is littered with great product ideas that could not be produced, as well as with companies that couldn’t sustain their operations long enough to even see the next wave of competitors, much less contend with them.    It doesn’t really matter if you have a great idea, but can’t operate the company, and especially not in the long run.

Even Google, which would seem to be a company based on Magic over Might, understands the need for a strong Operational focus in order to achieve the much-sought-after essence of Innovation.  Consider this passage from their recruitment site (emphasis added by me):

How we hire

We’re looking for our next Noogler – someone who’s good for the role, good for Google and good at lots of things.

Things move quickly around here. At Internet speed. That means we have to be nimble, both in how we work and how we hire. We look for people who are great at lots of things, love big challenges and welcome big changes. We can’t have too many specialists in just one particular area. We’re looking for people who are good for Google—and not just for right now, but for the long term.

This is the core of how we hire. Our process is pretty basic; the path to getting hired usually involves a first conversation with a recruiter, a phone interview and an onsite interview at one of our offices. But there are a few things we’ve baked in along the way that make getting hired at Google a little different.

How we interview

We’re looking for smart, team-oriented people who can get things done. When you interview at Google, you’ll likely interview with four or five Googlers. They’re looking for four things:

Leadership

We’ll want to know how you’ve flexed different muscles in different situations in order to mobilize a team. This might be by asserting a leadership role at work or with an organization, or by helping a team succeed when you weren’t officially appointed as the leader.

Role-Related Knowledge

We’re looking for people who have a variety of strengths and passions, not just isolated skill sets. We also want to make sure that you have the experience and the background that will set you up for success in your role. For engineering candidates in particular, we’ll be looking to check out your coding skills and technical areas of expertise.

How You Think

We’re less concerned about grades and transcripts and more interested in how you think. We’re likely to ask you some role-related questions that provide insight into how you solve problems. Show us how you would tackle the problem presented–don’t get hung up on nailing the “right” answer.

Googleyness

We want to get a feel for what makes you, well, you. We also want to make sure this is a place you’ll thrive, so we’ll be looking for signs around your comfort with ambiguity, your bias to action and your collaborative nature.

How we decide

There are also a few other things we do to make sure we’re always hiring the right candidate for the right role and for Google.

We collect feedback from multiple Googlers

At Google, you work on tons of projects with different groups of Googlers, across many teams and time zones. To give you a sense of what working here is really like, some of your interviewers could be potential teammates, but some interviewers will be with other teams. This helps us see how you might collaborate and fit in at Google overall.

Independent committees of Googlers help us ensure we’re hiring for the long term

An independent committee of Googlers review feedback from all of the interviewers. This committee is responsible for ensuring our hiring process is fair and that we’re holding true to our “good for Google” standards as we grow.

We believe that if you hire great people and involve them intensively in the hiring process, you’ll get more great people. Over the past couple of years, we’ve spent a lot of time making our hiring process as efficient as possible – reducing time-to-hire and increasing our communications to candidates. While involving Googlers in our process does take longer, we believe it’s worth it. Our early Googlers identified these principles more than ten years ago, and it’s what allows us to hold true to who we are as we grow.

These core principles are true across Google, but when it comes to specifics, there are some pieces of our process that look a little different across teams. Our recruiters can help you navigate through these as the time comes.

At Google, we don’t just accept difference – we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.

 

So……these wizards of innovation have a clearly operational focus – collaboration, trust, responsibility, a focus on the long-term, and all of those things emphasized right from the beginning – in the hiring process – to make sure the company is populated with people who allow the organization to sustain its operational focus.

That is the strength of the organization – not it’s magical ability to develop innovative products & solutions, but it’s powerful, day-to-day, operational focus and wherewithal to sustain it.  No matter the industry, any organization without a sense of its self and dedication to the every day operational activities of the company, will fail in its quest.  Others will out-innovate and pass you by, talent will leave the organization and, at best, you will find yourself an also-ran in the market desperately clinging to a plummeting reputation as you pursue weaker and weaker opportunities until, eventually, the light goes out.

About the author David M. Kasprzak

I am a seasoned project and management analyst with over 14 years of experience as a trusted advisor to all levels on planning, measuring and analyzing activities. From small-scale internal projects to multi-year development efforts supporting enterprise-wide initiatives at the C-level, I “get geeky” seeing great management practices yield great outcomes. I am a fierce & vocal advocate for learning, collaborative approaches to work and pursuing Operational Excellence through challenging the status quo and fostering management innovation

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A guest post from Eric Patz, Director, Recruiting and Human Resources at Kaufman Global.

There are two primary dimensions of managing your human capital―Strategic and Administrative. These same components also play an important role in Lean Transformation where skilled “people involvement” before, during and then ongoing can make a huge difference.

It’s common for organizations to begin their Lean journeys focusing on production, operations and Lean tools. It’s only after toiling at it for a couple of years that they realize they should’ve focused sooner on the human capital aspects of creating lasting change. Commonalities between operational improvement and managing involvement are significant, particularly with regard to three critical work streams often overseen by the Human Resources (HR) arm of human capital, notably:

• Resource Management (People)
• Process Understanding and Documentation
• Internal / Employee Communications

Let’s discuss these.

Internal / Employee Communications | Throughout a transformational journey, you can’t do too much communicating. That’s right―you cannot over communicate. One of HR’s main responsibilities is to interact regularly with all talent, including leadership, management, staff and production. Strategic-minded organizations take advantage of the fact that HR is already a primary interface with people already inside the organization. HR can be a strong ally in getting the message out about what’s important to the organization. And, at the same time, they can evaluate how the message is being interpreted based on the feedback they receive.

HR plays an integral role in driving message consistency and feedback across the organization. Take advantage of this valuable resource by building them into your Lean plan.

Process Understanding and Documentation | The top three rules of HR (in order of priority) are to launch with documentation, continue to document and then close by documenting. As it turns out, factual documentation―especially process documentation―is a key ingredient in Lean transformation, as well. So, why not engage HR early on by doing some Lean projects and activities inside HR? This realizes several benefits, among them:

• Awareness: It involves HR staff in a tangible way so that they get and can conveyinsights that are only achievable through direct, first-hand experience
• Discipline: Those involved gain an understanding of and can better supportprocess documentation requirements expected of the entire organization as Lean efforts accelerate
• Results: HR realizes meaningful improvement inside their own business processthat enable the rest of the organization. For an example, see our case study on Time to Hire.

HR can be more effective when they are directly involved in the real work of waste elimination.

Resource Management (People) | Lean is a people system above all else. Sure, Lean’s improvement techniques are compelling. Yet, at the end of the day, Lean is even more about predictably engaging your people in effective, sustainable waste elimination inside processes that they can influence and control. One of HR’s tasks deals with helping develop your organization’s most important asset―its people. Thus, HR can help with three aspects of managing human capital that are paramount for success:

• Selecting the right people for key roles in the transformation effort:These are the change agents that will shape and guide your efforts. Initially, technical ability is less important than the ability to deal with people and manage change.
• Integrating individual performance measures and the organization’s Lean objectives:This key driver is often not recognized until very late in the game—sometimes years later. Ultimately, organizations come to realize and apply the understanding that what gets measured gets fixed, even at the level of personal performance. Be sure to integrate personal goals and objectives for Lean inside your performance review process.
• Understand when individuals are blocking the effort: Resistance is normal. Understanding and dealing with it directly will save you significant time and avoid resource-depleting false starts.

Select key people for attitude and train for ability. Keep objectives and measures in front of everyone. Lead change and don’t hesitate to quickly address uncertainty.

Remember the journey to creating a sustainable Lean culture starts and sustains with clear communication, process understanding and documentation, and, having the right resources onboard. It’s imperative to get your HR team involved upfront to accelerate your organization’s human capital performance, and with that, enjoy a more productive and harmonious Lean transformation.

About the author Kaufman Global (multiple authors)

Kaufman Global is a proven implementation partner that focuses on accelerating performance. For 20 years, we have worked with clients around the world to drive enterprise-wide change initiatives and cultural transformations. Leveraging Lean, Six Sigma and proprietary change management techniques, Kaufman Global delivers structured implementation and transformation projects that enable sustainable operational and financial results.

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curiosity shop by rudeone-d372lk5 on deviantart.com

Hail the shop owner.  The relentless, never-ending driver of continuous improvement.  The person who, with utter conviction and dedication, is constantly seeking a way to increase sales, improve quality, gain word-of-mouth, lower costs, retain staff and improve customer experience in every way.

These folks understand that value is what customers are after – and that the only obstacle between delivering that value and mucking around with sub-standard nonsense is their own pride of ownership.  People who are proud of their shop always want to have that pride.  They want it to sustain and grow.  They never want to see their pride diminished.

In your workplace, do people act like shopowners?  Do they do work extra hard to take care of the shop, own its processes, design its delivery of goods and services, and constantly seek out innovative ways to provide value?  Are they looking for ways to grow the business, since that growth leads to both stability and prosperity?

Odds are, they are not.  Most people are just trying to survive it all, in return for a paycheck and some sense of satisfaction, if it can be found at all.  Most people have jobs and not purposes.  That lack of purpose prevents the emergence of any kind of pride in the ability to do the job, grow the company, satisfy the customer or improve the quality of whatever it is they are selling.  Instead, pride gets twisted until it becomes not pride of ownership, but pride of survival.

People are very proud of their ability to survive their jobs – they will tell great, lengthy stories about putting out fires and putting up with bosses & co-workers.  Very few people, however, are able to talk about what they’ve accomplished in terms of business growth, customer satisfaction, or quality improvement.  In fact, having to focus on those things is often seen as a burden since it takes away from the focus on pure survivability.

Such a reaction is not unreasonable, however.  With the way things are in most places, people are expected to simply show activity and not, necessarily, show results or competency.  As a result, there is suspicion and a lack of trust, and no one in their right minds would dare challenge the status quo when all the social and professional pressure within the organization says that maintaining the status quo for as long as possible is the correct way to go.

In order to have people work on improving the business, they must feel a prideful connection to the success of the business.  If not, then they are only working to achieve their own sense of satisfaction, which might come about through activities that take away from the health of the organization.  No shop owner would throw away their investment on frivolous, unimportant activities or projects that contribute nothing to the value of the business.

About the author David M. Kasprzak

I am a seasoned project and management analyst with over 14 years of experience as a trusted advisor to all levels on planning, measuring and analyzing activities. From small-scale internal projects to multi-year development efforts supporting enterprise-wide initiatives at the C-level, I “get geeky” seeing great management practices yield great outcomes. I am a fierce & vocal advocate for learning, collaborative approaches to work and pursuing Operational Excellence through challenging the status quo and fostering management innovation

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A guest post by Garry Vosahlik, CFO of Kaufman Global

Good Intent Unintentionally Sabotaged – Have you observed this in your organization? Each year the Leadership Team goes through a planning process. With good intention, they launch a number of initiatives to achieve stretch goals. Work begins with great enthusiasm but soon becomes mired down. Reality hits, priorities are diluted and the rhythm of bureaucracy sets in.

“Idea darlings” are aggressively pursued by the Leadership Team and move to the front of the queue. The rest of the projects languish … or worse. Sure, as time permits they’re continually worked on. Yet they’re not predictably getting done. And perhaps worse, execution effectiveness drops off as expected organizational learning is lost and then repeatedly must be regained.

It is not uncommon for organizations to underperform on project intent. Many times there are simply too many things being worked on at once, consuming attention and resources, and giving rise to increasing conflicts and bottlenecks. Perhaps some of these situations sound familiar to you?

• When the business plan was being developed no consideration was given to projects and initiatives already active in the organization
• The year progressed, things changed. New projects were launched at multiple levels in the organization but there was no reliable process to terminate old projects and free up people and resources to work on the new one
• The same core group of people is called on over and over again
• There is no such thing as a “not to do” list to maintain organizational sanity

For a moment, let’s assume that most organizational projects arise from an important business need. If the project is successfully completed, the organization receives the benefit right?  Well, let’s see…

Company Alpha has an idea for a hot new invention. Faster product development = faster time to market and recognition of a new profit stream. Given the opportunity, it makes sense to commit a focused team to complete the work. BUT…  many organizations run numerous projects at a time, perhaps more than they are aware of, with their people and resources diluted across a broad spectrum. Think about yourbottom line. Is it better to execute ten good projects and start delivering benefits as quickly as possible or run 4x of them  concurrently — with all achieving various stages of completion and few reaching closure?

Given that choice, the better path forward is clear. So, even though at times it may seem counterintuitive, the better answer is invariably to work on fewer projects in order to get more done. So, what’s a way to simplify and clarify the project portfolio you ask?

Conduct an Initiatives Inventory.

This is a structured and eye-opening activity that enables the organization to learn what’s really being worked on, see the decisions they need to keep momentum, and, gain insight into leadership’s role in making project teams more effective. How does it work? Simple…

• The Leadership Team and functional managers (two to three levels down in the organization) identify all of the projects and initiatives consuming time and resources.
• A project and required resource list is created, and we ensure we dig deep enough into the organization to capture all of the projects as told by the people who are leading and working on them.
• We establish a scoring system to rank the amount of time people are involved in the project. For example, A= over a month, B= two weeks, C = supervision and meetings, etc.

When the inventory is summarized in this way it offers insights into a common hazard revealing those who may be overloaded and can bottleneck progress.  Now we can rationalize based on current priorities!

Leaders are facilitated through the thorny decisions to rank the highest value projects while terminating or deferring those of lesser value. Additional screens are created as needed to thin the list. From this point the  Leadership Team can now assess the organization’s internal capability and decide on a small list of critical projects that can be active concurrently.

Finally, we put into a place a process to control new project starts (and the intended or unintended commitment of resources) at all levels. This allows the Leadership Team to rationally manage projects to closure while introducing new work when active projects are completed and resources are freed up for reassignment.

So, working on a fewer projects at a time enables you to get high impact projects completed timely and effectively. This accelerates the start of the benefit streams and drives your bottom line.

About the author Kaufman Global (multiple authors)

Kaufman Global is a proven implementation partner that focuses on accelerating performance. For 20 years, we have worked with clients around the world to drive enterprise-wide change initiatives and cultural transformations. Leveraging Lean, Six Sigma and proprietary change management techniques, Kaufman Global delivers structured implementation and transformation projects that enable sustainable operational and financial results.

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Upon_Reflection_by_Cynnalia on deviantart.com

It has been some time since I’ve written about ROWE and Lean, thanks to some personal ups and downs and the need to sit back and reflect a little on what I learned after bringing the ROWE and Lean communities together.  So, I thought it time to re-visit the situation and report on what I’ve learned so far.

In my investigation of ROWE and Lean, I initiated the process with the belief that ROWE could help Lean.  My conlcusion is a firm and definite…..maybe.

ROWE has shortcomings.  They are well explained here, via a blog by Scott Rutherford.  ROWE, if left alone and perceived as the end goal, leads only to suboptimization.  The approach is incomplete.  It might help get Lean off the ground, but that realization only solidifes ROWE’s role as a launchpad, not as an overall management philosophy, which Lean is.

In his comments on a recent post to his site, Dan Markovitz stated “Respect without tools leads to feel-good mediocrity.”  Which serves as a warning that ROWE, without an overarching framework for continuous improvement, does not have the ooomph! to prevent or rescue failing organiztions.  ROWE is incomplete.

That’s not to say it is without its merits.  ROWE can create engagement, but there’s a lot of care needed to make sure that engagement is for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.  Taking the day off due to burnout is good.  Taking the day off because I’m sick and tired of dealing with bullshit is not.  Fixing the problem, or learning how to influence the problem, or experimenting with methods for identifying problems,  is a much better result  for everyone than disappearing for the afternoon because there’s “nothing to do.”

Where ROWE is cool, and I mean really, really cool – is when it acknowledges the people side of things – that there are concerns outside of work that might keep me from being in the office, and if you let me take care of those things when I need to, I will pay you back with interest.  THAT is a good thing.  But when the people that do the work are left entirely on their own to organize themselves, without anyone to oversee the process, that is not good management – that is the acceptance of bad management as some kind of innate, inevitable truth.  Yes, we need to be much more centered on allowing people the freedom to perform without paternalistic, demeaning oversight.  Even the best of flocks need shepherds to guide and direct the herd, though.  When the humanistic approach gets elevated, everyone wins.  When it gets glorified, everyone loses.

Look at this post called Go the F**k home, courtesy of Tim McMahon’s blog.  I don’t want people who get fed up and go home.  I want people who are so fed up they begin to investigate the means of identifying mura and muri, and the countermeasures for reducing and eliminating waste, to the point that no one ever is so overburdened that they NEED to work late, or want to just to keep up appearances.

Yes, everyone would like to work where they want, when they want, to be known as a responsible agent capable of determining their own impact on the organization and entrusted with the responsibility for doing what is right or needs to be done.  Unfortunately, it’s an all-too-well-known reality of problem solving that a person has to exist outside of the process that created the problem in order to truly see where the errors occur.  That means a wizened and experienced group of people have to be monitoring that process and the system within which those processes occur.  This means LEADERSHIP.  The real problem we seen in so many organizations, however, is that leadership is absent or weak, and defines itself as the ability to push people around rather than push obstacles out of people’s way.  We are left, instead, with a caste of managers whose greatest wish is to never have to deal with their staff on a personal level or report a problem upwards…which is the antithesis of leadership.

With good leadership, any approach can be successful.  Without it, any approach is doomed.  The question, then, is which is likely to produce good leaders – ROWE or Lean?  If the situations at Best Buy and Toyota are taken as examples, the answer to that question is obvious.

ROWE is enticing, as are any other arrangements that promise more freedom, respect, responsibility and control.  Unfortunately, too many of those things leads only to under-performance and, at the extremes…chaos or stagnation.  Direction and organization are mandatory, too, and they often can’t take place without a good, swift kick in the butt taking place.

ROWE, at its best, might be able to point out Fake Lean and help Lean initiatives get off the ground, but that only highlights that embarking upon a Lean journey ought to focus on True Lean from the outset.  Doing so would invoke the same concern for individuals, in all respects, that ROWE focuses on anyway.

In the end, my conclusion is this – ROWE is, clearly, the way people want to work.  Lean is, equally clearly, the way that they should.

About the author David M. Kasprzak

I am a seasoned project and management analyst with over 14 years of experience as a trusted advisor to all levels on planning, measuring and analyzing activities. From small-scale internal projects to multi-year development efforts supporting enterprise-wide initiatives at the C-level, I “get geeky” seeing great management practices yield great outcomes. I am a fierce & vocal advocate for learning, collaborative approaches to work and pursuing Operational Excellence through challenging the status quo and fostering management innovation

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Measure Performance | Copyright © Kaufman Global

A guest post from Jerry Timpson, President and Principal at Kaufman Global.

Metrics are such an important element of continuous improvement. Wait…Metrics might be the most important element of continuous improvement. Why? Because continuous improvement by definition is the measurement of improvement — and if you aren’t measuring, how will the organization know how far it has come or where it needs to go?

Most organizations struggle mightily with the topic of metrics and sometimes it’s surprising just how much. I think it happens for a number of reasons:

1. Difficulty Connecting the Top to the Bottom: The metrics that executives are familiar with such as return on net assets, profitability, cost, etc. are at such a high level that the people actually doing the work often don’t know how to make the connection between what they do day-to-day and how that can impact the bottom line.
2. We Might get our Budgets Cut: If an improvement is stated at a departmental level, such as productivity or yield or throughput, then it might actually result in a budget reduction – and no one (at least no one in the department), wants this.
3. Uncertainty About Where to Start: Sometimes the fear of measuring the wrong thing will keep people from starting at all. After all, we already measure so much, what more can possibly be piled on?

These three could just be the tip of the iceberg for an organization that’s conflicted about this topic, but let’s address the ones at hand. The fact is, these issues can and must be overcome.

First, we should recognize that it is often difficult to connect the top and bottom. Just as the organization evolves and matures in its CI journey, so will its metrics. It takes time for improvements to show up at the headquarter level. Results will ultimately show up, but many organizations don’t have the 4 or more quarterly accounting cycles worth of patience to wait this long. That’s exactly why we plan for and achieve short term wins and measure them in ways that are closer to the operation – like cycle time productivity), yield (quality) and inventory.

It is important to relate some (but not all) of the improvements to actual budgets – this keeps our priorities aligned. That’s exactly why the finance community needs to be attached to any CI work in some way. Productivity, yield and throughput improvements can have near-term immediate budget impact. In order for this to happen, Finance needs to be involved and the organization must not be too aggressive in its estimates. Finance involvement and budget impacts are one sure way of keeping the organization honest about the level of improvement – it’s better to be conservative and have a real impact than to alienate the organization by overstating results that don’t translate to the bottom (or top) line.

Finally, let’s face it – too many things are measured. People often realize this along with the fact that the wrong things are being measured. Metrics, especially as you get closer to the operation, are not static and are expected to evolve over time. Introduce new and better metrics and then throw out the ones that are obsolete or not working for you. If you’re in doubt about what to measure, go for a good solid time-based metric. After all, time is the common denominator of all continuous improvement. If we can cycle through a process faster (and keep service quality and product integrity the same or better), then we have eliminated some form of waste! Most importantly, at the workgroup level pick metrics that can be controlled by that group. Metrics that don’t follow this rule are ineffective at best.

About the author Kaufman Global (multiple authors)

Kaufman Global is a proven implementation partner that focuses on accelerating performance. For 20 years, we have worked with clients around the world to drive enterprise-wide change initiatives and cultural transformations. Leveraging Lean, Six Sigma and proprietary change management techniques, Kaufman Global delivers structured implementation and transformation projects that enable sustainable operational and financial results.

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Salad by digitalminds on deviantart.com

A very good post appeared on the FastCompany site yesterday, in which author Ginny Whitelaw declared, “Empathy is the most powerful leadership tool.”

There’s not a lot to disagree with in the article.  It is, essentially, about Covey’s “seek first to understand” and represents both a practical, and I would say moralistic, way to approach your interactions with others.  Seeing things from their point of view is a good thing, of course.  It helps you to understand the other person better, so that you can align your message with their concerns.  It’s a practical exercise for influencing others in any walks of life where negotiation, compromise, and change are necessary.  It also indicates that you have a measure of respect for the other person’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs and opinions.

Unfortunately, there are times when people simply don’t act in a way that is consistent with what is in their best interests.  Especially not in the long term.  It’s as simple as David Meister’s Fat Smoker principle – you have to go through something difficult to get to something good, so change is hard and rarely happens.

Short-term thinking has a psychological basis.  Ronald Riggio wrote a post on his blog last year, linking the economic crisis to “short-termism:”

There is considerable evidence that short-term thinking in business, and in regard to the economy, is disastrous. It is our search for immediate gratification that fuels short-term thinking. Much of the economic meltdown was related to the pursuit of immediate rewards – whether it was the lenders trying to reap profits from questionable loans, or the homeowners who were buying property that was beyond their means.

Here are the danger signs that you are falling prey to short-term thinking.

1. No plan. Companies that don’t engage in long-term planning are prone to failure.

2. Trying for the quick score. Fads and trends come and go, and many businesses and investors that cashed in on the quick score are often gone because they don’t plan for what to do when the fad is gone.

3. Lack of analysis. All too often, what seemed like a good idea at the time, will only turn out to be a bad idea through careful analysis. A lot of terrific business ideas and inventions aren’t successful because the originator didn’t analyze how to get the product made, marketed, and/or delivered.

Having done the planning, analyzing and monitoring of budgets for initiatives at one level or another in my career, I have seen each of those three things occur all too often.

Analytics necessitate patience – they require that you take a little longer and examine a feel-good situation to make sure it’s not a long-term disaster in the making.  Unfortunately, we tend to be fat smokers when it comes to planning.  We want the rush of the good stuff first, only to (and often quite intentionally) push the messy, difficult stuff to some later point in time.  Essentially, we want dessert first and we push the broccoli and cauliflower to the end of the meal.  Of course, that just leaves a bad taste in our mouths when we’re done.

So, what can we do to overcome the problem?  I think it’s simple – just as a person who needs to eat better and exercise more will find a way to mix in a little bit of the things they don’t like with the things that they do, so must a business.  Both must learn a simply, but not easy, habit:  saying no.

Saying no to the slice of apple crisp and walking away from the table is much like saying no to what seems like a great investment, but hasn’t been analyzed.  Give yourself time to contemplate and reflect upon the consequences of what you are about to do.  If you are bad at doing that for yourself, put people in place around you who are specifically selected for their ability to disagree with you and make sure you make healthy choices and focus on the longer-term.

About the author David M. Kasprzak

I am a seasoned project and management analyst with over 14 years of experience as a trusted advisor to all levels on planning, measuring and analyzing activities. From small-scale internal projects to multi-year development efforts supporting enterprise-wide initiatives at the C-level, I “get geeky” seeing great management practices yield great outcomes. I am a fierce & vocal advocate for learning, collaborative approaches to work and pursuing Operational Excellence through challenging the status quo and fostering management innovation

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• LinkedIn
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