Jump!!!- How to “ignite change” within your organization…

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Bob Champagne

Using the “nightmare scenario” to catalyze change…

Since I started my career 22 years ago, I’ve always been intrigued by the use of the proverbial “burning platform” as a motivational tactic for catalyzing and effecting change within organizations. Originally, the “burning platform” was simply a metaphor used for a looming crisis that required a change in organizational thinking and behavior. More and more, however, these “burning platforms” are becoming more literal, making the consequence of “status quo” even more real and threatening to those who are on it.

There is no shortage of cases in which the threat of REALLY BIG negative consequences turned out to be an effective means of initiating major change within organizations, cultures, and individuals who were otherwise operating myopically, blind to many of the realities around them. We saw it in the 1960’s as MLK used present inequities among races, and what the future would look like if left unattended, to inspire what would become a successful civil rights movement that would change US and global principles, policies, legislation, and ultimately cultural behaviors themselves. Auto companies used the threat of overseas domination as a way to improve productivity and quality, and continue to use it as a way to sustain performance.

“Burning Platform” examples: Past and present…

We are also seeing it quite literally now, as nuclear companies have used past examples of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now the as-yet-unresolved crisis at Fukushima, as a way to renew the industry’s focus on safety. And of course, all major oil companies are using the consequences of the BP spill of 2010 as a catalyst for driving major improvements in operational safety. The latter is a particularly good example, as on the day of the explosion itself, the company was celebrating a long string of days without a recordable safety event!

Late last year, Nokia’s new CEO Stephan Elop used the same tactic to catalyze the need for some dramatic new thinking within his organization. To amplify the importance of responding quickly to what appears to be a competitive nightmare scenario, he sent a memo to the organization comparing its circumstances to that of a “burning platform” surrounded by the “icy waters” of the North Sea. In this case, survival meant risking both a fall and survival of icy waters in order to avoid the certain death of being consumed by fire. Talk about a wake up call!!!

Even humanity in general uses the “burning platform” as a way to inspire vigilance and action around things like spirituality and lifestyle. Most are aware of Harold Camping’s prophesies around the projected May 21st “Rapture” of Christians worldwide and the October 21st end of the world as we know it (Sorry if that puts a damper on anyone’s springtime plans :), but hey, I’m just the messenger!). Regardless of your religious background, or whether you “buy into” this or the myriad of other “end of days” proclamations, prophesies like this one certainly get our attention, and remind us of the importance of staying in close touch with our maker–lest we risk the ultimate in “burning platforms.”

Nevertheless, most of the successful uses of the “burning platform” tactic of motivation, particularly those in business, are based in fear–fear of losing customers, fear of losing market share, fear of financial collapse, and the myriad of other risks associated with not responding fast enough, or with enough magnitude to avert otherwise disastrous consequences. And while most leaders, like myself, would prefer to use more positive oriented motivation and reinforcement to accomplish our vision, the “burning platform” (threat of crisis) often has a more pronounced catalyzing effect, and as a leader, it is highly likely that you will be forced into using it at some point in your career, assuming you haven’t already.

Guidelines for developing your “burning platform”…

If you are going to use the “burning platform” tactic effectively, I believe there are a number of factors that should influence and guide your approach:

Make sure the platform you choose is real, credible, and significant. — Focus on specific threats or risks to your business that cannot be dealt with or averted using existing processes, practices, or people (e.g., a specific safety risk that if unmanaged would sink the company, or a productivity gap that is 40% worse than your top competitor, is better than a repeated message that sales are down, costs are up, and profits are hurting).
Make sure you offer a “roadmap” or “pathway” for success that is achievable (assuming one exists)— Everyone has heard the adage “accept the things you cannot change…change the things you can …and have the wisdom to know the difference.” There are two implications of this in creating your burning platform. First, there is nothing worse than a dismal scenario that has no way of being averted, as that is a sure path to apathy and hopelessness. Assuming there is one (if there is not, you may want to think about jumping ship), make sure that you help your staff see it. None of us are capable of changing the “end of days” scenario described above (should it prove out), but we can change our behaviors, approach to relationships, and other facets of our life.
The “burning platform” doesn’t always have to be apocalyptic in nature. — You can be just as successful defining a future scenario that might open possibilities for you or your organization to “break out” or leapfrog competitors. Our visit to the moon was a good example of where we used external forces and opportunities to inspire a very positive outcome.
A “compelling narrative” is essential. Almost every good example of a “burning platform” tactic being successful begins with the ability of a leader to clearly and compellingly state the case for change. At its basic level, this is the ability to be a good storyteller, in a way that vividly paints the picture of the crisis at hand, shows the vision for success, and clearly identifies what must change, all while respecting the history and past successes of the organization.
Track and report progress/establish consequences — If you do a good job of identifying a real and credible threat to the business, and articulating a pathway to averting or navigating the risk, then you should be able to establish some good metrics for reporting success. Think of these as milestones or way-points on your journey. Report these frequently so that they enable critical course corrections. You’ll want to make sure you hold yourself and those on your team accountable. Again, if you’ve done a good job of defining the threats, risks, and path for success, then improvement in the business should allow for ample rewarding of those who contributed the most.
Don’t overuse the tactic. — There is nothing worse than a leader who constantly “cries wolf”. All of us have had bosses who live in a constant narrative of “the sky is falling.” They repeatedly send the same message over and over again, and when subordinates stop listening, they ascribe it to their staff “simply “not getting it”, when in fact what has happened is that they have become so “numb” to the message that it has the reverse effect, i.e., of creating complacency.

A “burning platform” can be a very effective strategy for managing change within an organization, regardless of the business type. But doing it incorrectly can create hopelessness and a feeling of apathy across the team and put the organization in worse shape than when it started.

-b

Author: Bob Champagne is Managing Partner of onVector Consulting Group, a privately held international management consulting organization specializing in the design and deployment of Performance Management tools, systems, and solutions. Bob has over 25 years of Performance Management experience and has consulted with hundreds of companies across numerous industries and geographies. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com

Performance Lessons From “The Masters”…

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Bob Champagne

“A Tradition like no other”…

Well, folks, it’s “Masters Week” once again, the time of year when Augusta, that little town in southern Georgia, comes to life in an awe inspiring array of colors and sounds that usher in the early days of spring, and the beginning of another golf season. From the proud magnolias and tall pines, to the brilliant display of azaleas and dogwoods, the setting becomes an iconic announcement that spring has well and truly arrived.

Add to that the flurry of colors that will characterize this year’s fashion statements by golf’s superstars, and you have the setting for spring’s equivalent of the Superbowl. As Jim Nantz of CBS will say repeatedly throughout this week’s broadcast, the Masters is, most definitely, “a tradition like no other!”

I know there are those who probably couldn’t care less about the game of golf, (see my friend Brian Kenneth Swain’s comedic golf essay on the nonsense of it all). For these folks, our fixation on watching the flight patterns of a tiny white ball, no matter how inspiring the backdrop, is about as interesting as a marathon birdwatching event. In this context, some might even find it repulsive, because inside this metaphor the birds are white and the measure of success is how hard we can hit them and how fast we can stuff them into 18 tiny holes. If this is you, you might want to fast forward through this post and leave the golf analogies for someone who actually gives a damn.

For some, it’s all about the theater…

For many, this time of year is to golf what opening day is to baseball and the fall chill is to football. But unlike baseball and football, the Masters golf tournament often captures the attention of those who would not normally proclaim themselves to be actual fans. Over the four days of the Masters, most will find themselves sitting down to watch at least some portion of the event. Even the many golf widows like my wife who admittedly have no interest in the game, and whose passion for sports is limited to “Superbowl commercial viewing” will even find time to enjoy a few holes of this springtime fiesta.

But for others, it’s much more than that…

For those in the latter camp, myself included, golf has taken on a somewhat spiritual meaning. You don’t have to be a professional golfer to let this kind of obsession bring you into its grasp. And once it has you, the meaning of golf extends well beyond the beauty of the day, the dynamics of the tournament, and sometimes beyond the game itself. Before long, we find ourselves exploring the many parallels between the game of golf and circumstances in our everyday lives. And just to prove that I am not alone in this crazy obsession, just look at the number of books that have been written and sold on the non-technical aspects of the game. I can vouch for this because one entire shelf of my home library is dedicated to books on golfing implications on everything from mental attitude to overall relationships and life skills.

As crazy as it may sound, though, I’m not alone in these sorts of interpretations and extrapolations. Perhaps it’s because so many of us overachievers are such underperformers at the game itself, and hence are forced to seek out other meanings to rationalize the time and interest we dedicate to the sport. But I suspect it’s more than that, given that the writings of those far more experienced and respected in the game assert similar observations. One of my favorite books is called “Golf is Not a Game of Perfect” (and the sequel, “Life is Not a Game of Perfect”) written by a famed sports psychologist Bob Rotella, seems to give genuine legitimacy to this perspective.

The connection between your golf game and “managing business performance”…

For those of you who know me professionally and personally, it’s probably not surprising to find yet another post that integrates golf with the discipline of performance management. Combine my passion for the game, my ability to draw parallel observations between the game and life experiences, and my everyday profession, and …well…did you expect anything else this week?

But rather than pontificate on one dimension of this relationship (like I’ve done in other posts on “performance sustainability” and the importance of “progress over perfection“)…I’ve elected to provide just a few thoughts on various aspects of good performance management systems, for which I believe the game of golf has key implications.

So without further adieu, lets “tee off”—

On Vision-

Perhaps no other sport speaks to the importance of vision as golf does. We see this at both the player level, and in the design of the venues on which they display their talent. Anyone who has walked a great golf course, whether Augusta or any of the other marvelous creations like St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, or the myriad of other golf wonders of the world,” is obliged to respect the vision and imagination that guided their designers and architects. They are much like artists, only instead of painting on canvas or sculpting physical structures, they perform their craft on acres of often undeveloped earth. If you’ve never seen one of these venues, tune into CBS and have a look this weekend. Even the environmentalists in the crowd have to acknowledge the beauty of it all, not only in the landscape, but also in the variety of wildlife that is so prevalent in the audio aspect of the broadcast.

I liken the golf course to the business model that your staff operates within. A great one will not only possess creativity and uniqueness, but will also provide the right level of challenge to truly engage your “players” and allow the great ones to succeed.

On imagination and creativity-

This apparent genius of great golf course design should not be especially surprising, given that most golf architects were good players to begin with. After all, it was a true legend of the game whose imagination and passion went into creating Augusta. Imagination is a requisite skill and competency that all good golfers must develop and nurture. And some of it is innate . “Visualization” is often the word chosen to describe what a player does before a key shot , in that he visualizes every aspect of the shot, from the ball strike to the trajectory, landing spot and resulting ball “behavior on the surface when it lands”. Not surprisingly, good golf courses bring out the creativity in good golfers, and nowhere will this be more evident than on the lush fairways and undulating greens of Augusta National.

In our professional environments, we have to remember that there is a limit to what tactical skills and training can produce. Great performance is often the combination of near flawless execution on the basic skills (which certainly can be taught and measured), along with an added dose of creativity and imagination that often can’t.

On goal setting-

One thing that is always impressive to watch is the way in which professional golfers approach their goals. While most approach each tournament with the goal of winning, this happy outcome rarely occurs week in and week out, since there are not just two competitors but often over a hundred. Thus, if this were their only goal, we’d see a lot of disappointed and demoralized performers. So what happens when a player enters a Sunday several strokes back and it is clear that victory will have to wait for another week? Their perspective simply changes. Most good golfers achieve an excellent balance between short and long term goals, and when some objectives become temporarily out of reach, these individuals have an uncanny ability to shift gears and focus instead on other goals that are just as important to their career success. Sometimes it will be refocusing to the number of career wins, sometimes it’s the overall tour ranking, and sometimes it’s just, well, improving on one specific skill or technique they have been working to improve.

In our corporate performance framework, it is important that we design in a healthy mix of goals and targets that will guide our staff and teams. Our goals should be both short and long term, and should cover various aspects of our performance. And while these should be firm, they also must have some “flex” built in so that success and failure are not binary in nature. For me, the concept of balance in the balanced scorecard goes way beyond having adequate coverage of objectives and goals, and gets to the overall balance and flexibility of the “system.”

On metrics-

I can’t think of many sports where there are metrics and statistics for just about every aspect of your game and playing experience. And every good golfer uses most of these to effectively navigate every part of their game. I’ve never seen a sport with as much focus and transparency as golf when it comes to being able to measure, track, and improve through the use of metrics and statistics. And what’s also amazing is how all of these metrics are tied to each other…from leading indicators like % fairways hit, greens hit in regulation, sand saves, etc…, to result indicators like the stroke count on a specific hole, to the net score on a round, to tournament and season results.

Managers need to really think about their operations in a similar context. Do I have the right metrics that ultimately translate to outcomes desired? Do I actively use the metrics to navigate by? Do I set targets deliberately, or do I aimlessly monitor performance against the absence of desired performance aspirations?

On managing “the game”-

A golf round, whether for amateur or professional, can be both an emotional and trying experience. Just listen to the post-round interviews this week and you’ll hear numerous players describe how they “grinded” through a round, having to endure disappointment and distress while patiently waiting for their “game” to return. I recently read an interview with a college golf coach who says the main thing they look for in junior golfers is how they recover from strings of bad play; in essence, can they mentally recover from the demoralizing effect of three or four bad holes, bad rounds, or bad seasons that characterize the proverbial slump. This requirement is present in most sports, but with golf, that mental pressure, present and highly visible, is on with every shot on every hole. Being able to recalibrate and adjust is critical, not only in their play, but in their attitude and confidence levels they carry throughout the round.

While we must have the ability to reward and promote great performance, and routinely exit non-performers from the business, we must also teach the organization how to manage through slumps. The capacity to do this is both a tactical (in terms of being able to adjust expectations, targets, and strategies to match the environment), and a cultural dynamic and competence in terms of being able to “manage through” failures and consistently harvest the lessons that can come from them.

On consistency-

Earlier this year, as I watched some of the opening tournaments of the season, I had the distinct impression that I was witnessing a true ” changing of the guard” so to speak. In the 90’s we witnessed a tidal shift when Tiger reset the bar, essentially distancing the entire field of golfers that competed at that time. Just as Hogan referred to Nicklaus in his prime as “playing a game with which he was not familiar,” many began to refer to Tiger the same way. But given Tiger’s slump, and the inconsistent play of others from the same class, I began to question whether the new class of “young guns “were beginning to displace them.

But now with the season in full swing, we are seeing great play emerge from all corners. Amidst the strong play from the game’s new “young guns “, the older icons of the game like Fred Couples, and others who have long been written off by the golf pundits as a legitimate threat, are frequently dazzling us with strong performances. So rather than signaling another transition or sea change, I think we are simply seeing the emergence of the great equalizer- a leveling of the playing field that is free of any single dominant player. Today, it seems great players only win 2-3 events every season/year (not 10+) , and those wins are based on truly brilliant displays of technical competence and creativity. The real mark of a champion now appears to be generating those 2-3 wins year in and year out without fail, in essence creating a portfolio of wins that transcends decades, rather than a few dominant tournaments or seasons.

We’ve seen this play out in business as well. Our performance measures and indicators of success should be built to reward short-, mid- and long-terms success. The failures of Ebers, Maddow and Lay demonstrate both the flawed logic and the risks of just a short term oriented strategy. Once again, the balanced scorecard must not only transcend the types of measures, but also the horizon and depth of ambition that will drive the aspiration of consistency in performance excellence.

Well, I suspect there are many other examples of these kind of parallels, but rather than list all of them here, I’ll invite you to chime in with yours as you watch the events of the week unfold. For any of you that are like me, these will jump out at you as you witness the ups and downs of the four days, and the emergence of a new Master’s champion.

I wish all of you a happy Masters week, and I hope you enjoy the theater this weekend will bring as your senses are dazzled through the screens of your HD TV!!!

-b

Customer Engagement and Efficiency- Are these conflicting priorities?

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Bob Champagne

The Challenges of Funding a CEM Strategy…

A few weeks back, I was talking to a client about their latest strategies to enhance what is now known commonly as “the customer experience.” And like most companies that are working tirelessly on driving their customers toward higher levels of satisfaction, delight, and our latest aspiration, “engagement,” this company was going through all the common challenges of funding their new Customer Experience Management (CEM) strategy.

But also, like many others, funding their CEM strategy is meeting some pretty big resistance from their CFO and others who are trying to make corporate “ends meet,” especially in this economic climate. More and more, these two perspectives are clashing, not because the organization fails to value investment in Customer Service (CS), but more so because the impacts associated with that those investments are often less direct and less tangible, at least compared with the realm of immediate cost and productivity savings that produce faster (albeit not always sustainable) payback to the bottom line.

The Cost/ Service Trade-off: Myth or Reality?

For over two decades of working in the Customer Operations arena, I’ve heard clients invariably revert to the “perceived” trade-off between customer service levels and cost savings or efficiency efforts. That is, the notion that there is an inverse relationship between our ability to improve service levels and our ability to capture CS related productivity and cost savings. And for a long time, the data supported this notion. But as technologies improved, and companies began to increase investments in CS-related technology, tools and process changes, select companies started to prove that notion false by demonstrating the existence of both high service levels and low cost at the same time–companies clearly worthy of the term “myth busters”.

Yet despite all those great examples from the 90’s, we are now seeing many return to the proverbial “trade-off” as a reason for deferring further investments in their CS infrastructure. Make no mistake, there are clearly companies that are pushing the envelope of customer delight, and perhaps even engagement, but more often than not, investments in CEM, and even critical investments in basic infrastructure, are once again hitting the funding wall.

Some of this is clearly driven by the current economic climate. As a CEO from one of my energy clients said recently, “We haven’t given up on CS. But these investments are discretionary, and right now we are struggling to ‘keep the lights on'”. And, while on the surface, this may provoke emotions of heresy from those in highly competitive markets, it’s hard to argue with financial realities. At one time or another, most CS executives, regardless of industry, have encountered this same argument from their C-Suite executives.

Unfortunately, for some, the lack of investment in that infrastructure has created a bit of a back-slide in performance, creating the question of whether we are back to the days of the proverbial trade-off.

Reversing The Course…

As with most things in life, the cup can be either half empty or half full based simply on the lens through which we are looking.

Sure, we all want to delight our customers and make them happy. But from a financial perspective, there is always an ROI at play, and it’s not always easy to establish a causal linkage between that “added delight factor” and the bottom line. Hence the conflict.

But this assumes we are trying to impress, delight, or otherwise “engage” the customer for the sole purpose of selling more of our product or service. And that is clearly part of it. But again, at the risk of offending our hardcore sales and product advocates (of which I am one), I would assert that there are many other reasons for having an engaged customer that go far beyond the next product sale or any direct influence on buying behavior at all.

Beyond the Obvious…

From my perspective, “Engagement” is about changing the overall predisposition of a customer from one of negative predisposition or neutrality, to one of positive engagement that is leveragable in some context. That context could be higher sales, repeat business, or Word of Mouth (WOM) referrals, but it could also serve a variety of other purposes.

One of those purposes is cost savings. What?

That’s right, cost savings.

Over the past several years, we’ve completed a variety of assignments that were geared to identifying efficiencies where the mandate was “zero degradation to Customer Satisfaction”. Not an insignificant challenge. Especially when you consider that most companies have explored every way under the sun to drive more productivity out of their workforce, and have automated just about everything they can automate. And in some cases, these efforts have in fact degraded service level.

But many of those changes were inflicted on customers in a “push fashion”. Sure we’ve made tons of good changes in everything from local office closures, to call center automation improvements, to web interaction, but many of those changes were “pushed on the market” regardless of the level of satisfaction or disposition it happened to be in at the time. Yet we still wonder why the acceptance rates on what may appear to be wonderful customer options are at levels well below their potential. Experts claim that something as basic as “paperless billing” should be hitting 50-70% saturation in the next 3 years, but most of us are only at a fraction of those levels. But to me that is not surprising, given that we have not yet engaged the customer who we are asking to accept these changes. At least not in the spirit of how it is defined above.

Engagement for the Sake of Cost Reduction ?

Just for a second, put on your CFO hat and consider the following argument.

Cost is a product of both efficiency and transaction volume. We can decrease cost per transaction by 5,10, or even 20% in the form of cost-per-call, cost-per-bill, cost-per-payment, and the litany of other transaction types we offer. But the large majority of cost still remains.

Now think about the other side of the equation. Transaction volume. Different story entirely. When we eliminate a transaction, be it a printed bill, a mailed payment, or a call to the call center, we eliminate 100% of the cost. Looking at it this way, there is no question where our focus should be. And looking at the potential that our recent advances in technology could have on enabling these reductions in transaction volume, it’s rather amazing that such a large part of our focus is still on operating and productivity gains.

On this basis, and given the potential that exists in the workload dimension alone, it is conceivable that savings of 30, 50%, or more are possible, and go well beyond what we would ever consider from mere productivity gains.

It all starts with Impacting Predisposition and Behavior…

Given the impact of workload on bottom line, why wouldn’t that become our primary focus?

Perhaps it should be. Or at least one of our primary goals. But haphazardly looking for where we can drive customers to self-service channels without a clear strategy will get us right back to square one. The “win win win” (CCO, CFO, and Customer) if you will, is only achievable if the levels of potential I describe above are fully realized, and accomplished in a manner that leaves the customer satisfied and engaged.

Engagement is about changing customers’ predisposition from negative or neutral to positive and engaged. Once that is accomplished, there exist numerous ways to leverage that engagement, including getting the customer to willingly shift the nature and frequency of their interactions with us, thus decreasing transaction volume. But that is only the tip of the iceberg, as the companies mastering this dynamic are finding out.

But it all starts with the lens we look through.

So next time you are faced with hitting that infamous “funding wall”, or get challenged on the basis of your new CEM strategy, think beyond the obvious.

-b

For more on driving Customer Excellence through combined efficiency and service level focus, see the folloowing posts on EPMEdge.com . Related articles include:

What a good preacher can teach us about accountability…

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Bob Champagne

iPads, Insomnia, and Podcasts…

Sometimes, when I have trouble sleeping, I will find a good podcast or ‘sirius talk’ channel that looks interesting, and let the drone of the narrator “read me to sleep”.

I don’t know what it is about “talk radio” or short podcast subjects that do the trick for me (instead of music, for example), because some of the topics are really interesting and engaging and would keep most normal people “awake” rather then send them off to sleep. But not for me. 30 Minutes into one of these podcasts or talk shows, and I’m out like a light.

Who Knows. This phenomena probably has to do more with our childhoods, when we were “put to sleep” by our parents reading us a good story book, than it does the level of topical ‘engagement’ of the content itself. But that’s a subject for another day, or perhaps my therapist.

Now, sometimes when you download a podcast, there is not too much background available on the host, but that usually doesn’t bother me because the vast majority of them on itunes are pretty much free. So, if it’s a bad one, so be it- it’s still usually enough to put me to sleep through the sheer value of their mindless droning. Last night could have been one of those nights.

Last night, however was about the content. I found a podcast dealing with the topic of “personal change”, something near and dear to me because so much of the consulting work I do involves cultural alignment, behavioral change and leadership skills. Invariably, all of those are in some way dependent on PERSONAL change, often of significant magnitude.

Rapture, repentance, and judgment day…

As the podcast opened,however, it was clear that I was in for a surprise. While the topic was “personal change” (which we all know can span a broad array of angles), this one had what one might call a “spiritual bent” to it, which clearly was not evident by the podcast icon and description.

Although it was not what I was expecting, I did listen on. After all, who can’t resist a little advice from a good “preacher man”!

As I am fading off to sleep amidst his messages of raptures, repentance and judgments, the word “ACCOUNTABILITY” popped out of my ear buds like a shot in the dark. And while it probably was his intention to pique my interest will all of his other words of prophetic wisdom, it was the word “accountability ” that hooked me.

Now, if God is reading this, I don’t mean to say that I didn’t internalize ALL of the other parts of the sermon. I LISTENED TO ALL OF IT!!!” It’s just that the subject of accountability is one that I have been working with many of my clients on currently, and so the mere mention of the topic grabbed my attention just A LITTLE more than the “end of days” stuff. But that was for one instant, until I returned to the rest of the sermon, at which point I paid perfect attention. (Ok- bases covered with God- check.)

What “The Preacher” says about accountability…

Good preachers have a few things in common. One, they are charismatic speakers. Two, they are usually great storytellers. And three, they have an uncanny ability to translate complex principles into very simple messages. So what was his simple message on the subject of accountability? Just tell someone!!

That’s right, tell someone. Such a simple act. Yet such powerful implications. Here was his four step process to accountability:

Make a decision to make a commitment
Set a goal
Write it down
And tell someone

Now before you conclude that it’s not that simple (and I am not suggesting it is), just think about this in various facets of your personal, spiritual and work life. Heck, think about something as simple as exercise and weight loss (yet another topic close to my heart- literally!). I know for me, the only time I take that seriously is when I do in fact ‘tell someone’. I don’t know exactly why that works, but it does. Probably, it has something to do with someone else “watching”. Or perhaps it is because you feel a commitment beyond just yourself. Whatever the reason, I find that it works.

It also works in other areas of my life. When I commit something verbally to my kids, it means more than just a superficial personal “intent”. Same with my spouse. And truth be told, as a “good Catholic” (subject to debate, I suppose), when I make a confession to a priest, I take the commitment of “doing better next time” more to heart, than if I just made that same commitment to myself in passing.

I think”writing it down” certainly helps too, since it is now part of “recorded history”, and something you can go back to and look at. It becomes tangible.

Livin’ “The Gospel” in business!!!

Even if it’s just inside your own sandbox…

As I think about this in a business context, specifically with respect to performance improvement, it all makes sense, doesn’t it? I can’t tell you how many times those “personal change “rock-stars” (from Carnegie to Covey) have preached these same principles in their books on ‘achieving success’, ‘positive thinking’, and the broad array of topics they wax so eloquently on. And no doubt, every consultant (including your’s truly) has developed some methodology for driving accountability and change that include these basic four steps in some way, shape, or form.

I know many of you are working on driving accountability into your business cultures, and have one point or another, been involved in that type of multi step, multi phase, “journey of change” that was no doubt complex. And for many of you, some level of reward was received from those efforts. Change management programs do work, and with good leadership commitment, can really mobilize and cement long term improvements to a results oriented and highly accountable culture across the business.

But there are other times, when a manager just wants to simply motivate an employee, change the attitude of a team member, or the shift culture within a small workgroup. But instead of moving ahead in their little “patch of turf”, they often get caught up in the narrative of “it’s all about leadership” and the inability to change things from within unless “the top dogs” are behind it. That’s unfortunate, because change can happen in small pieces if the managers of those parts of the business understand the simple behaviors required to catalyze that change.

So before you conclude that reaching an new or ambitious goal is not achievable with your current team and cultural environment, give the preacher man a chance, and try out his 4 steps. Make the commitment. Set a goal. Write it down. And tell someone.

Then come back in a few weeks and see if anything has changed. You might surprise yourself!

-b

Data, Metrics, and Information- Are we better off than we were 4 years ago?

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Bob Champagne

Data, data…all around us…

Most of the projects I work on day in and day out involve data to varying degrees. I use data quite extensively in all of the assessments I do on organizational and operational performance. I use it heavily whenever I benchmark a company’s processes versus a comparable peer group. Data is at the very core of any target setting process. And, of course, data is (or at least should be) the beginning, and a continuous part of any gap analysis and any subsequent improvements that follows.

Today, the hunger that organizations have for good data has reached such unprecedented levels, that whole industries have developed in and around the domain of what we now call “Business Intelligence” or BI. Having consulted to organizations over the last three decades, I’ve seen this hunger level increase steadily throughout the entire period. But no more so than in the past few years.

However, despite all the gyrations that we’ve gone through over the years, one of the first things I hear from C-Suite Executives is that they still feel “Data rich and information poor”. So I’ll start this post off in the words of late President Ronald Regan by asking, “Are we better off or worse off than we were 4 years ago (in terms of translating data into useful and actionable information)?”

So are we better off than we were 4 years ago?

As any good politician, I would have to hedge a bit, and say yes, and no. And appropriately so I think.

We are most certainly better in our ability to “access” the data. If you’ve lived through the same decades as I have , you will remember the painstaking efforts we all made to extract data out of those proverbial “source systems” (when “SAS routines” had nothing to do with the SaaS of today). Everything from the data inside of our source systems, to the tools we use to access the data, to the ways in which we report and visualize the results has moved forward at lightening speed. And so, from that standpoint, we are, in fact, better off.

But on the other side of the coin, our tools have, in most cases, outpaced the abilities of our organizations and their leadership to truly leverage them. At a basic level, and in part because of the technology itself, we often have more data than we know what to do with (the proverbial “data overload”). Some would say that this is just a byproduct of how wide the “data pipe” has become. And at some level, that’s hard to argue.

But I think the answer goes well beyond that.

“Data rich, information poor”…still?

In large measure, yes. The bigger issue in my view is the degree to which the organization’s skills and cultural abilities enable (or better said, disable) them to effectively utilize data in the right ways. Most companies have put such a large premium on data quality and the ability to extract it through their huge investments in IT infrastructure and financial reporting, that it has in some ways forced leadership to “take it’s eye off the ball” with respect to the way in which that data is operationalized.

So from the perspective of using the data to effect smarter operational decisions, I’d say the successes are few and far between.

Of course, you can google any of the “big 3″ IT vendors and find a myriad of testimonials about how much better their decision making processes have gotten. But look at who’s doing the speaking in the majority of cases. It is largely from the Financial and IT communities, where the changes have been most visible. But it’s in many of these same companies where operating executives and managers still clamor for better data and deeper insights.

So while at certain levels, and in certain vertical slices of the business, the organization is becoming more satisfied with its reporting capabilities, translating that information into rich insights and good fodder for problem solving still poses a great challenge. And unfortunately, better systems, more data, and more tools will not begin to bridge that gap until we get to the heart of some deeper cultural dynamics.

Needed: A new culture of “problem solvers”

Early in my career, I was asked to follow and accept what appeared to me at the time to be a strange “mantra”: “If it ain’t broke, ASK WHY?” That sounded a little crazy to me having grown up around the similar sounding but distinctly different phrase: “If it aint’t broke, DONT fix it”.

That shift in thinking took a little getting used to, and began to work some “muscles” I hadn’t worked before. For things that were actually working well, began asking ourselves “why?”. At first, we began to see areas where best practices and lessons learned could be “exported to other areas. But over time, we quickly learned that what appeared to be well functioning processes, wasn’t so well functioning after all. We saw processes, issues, and trends that pointed to potential downstream failures. In essence, we were viewing processes that were actually broken, but appeared to be A-ok because of inefficient (albeit effective) workarounds.

“Asking why?” is a hard thing to do for processes that appears to be working well. It goes against our conventional thinking and instincts, and forces us to ask questions…LOTS of questions. And to answer those questions requires data…GOOD data. Doing this in what appeared initially to be a healthy process was at first difficult. You had to dig deeper to find the flaws and breakdowns. But by learning how to explore and diagnose an apparently strong processes, doing that in an environment of process

failure became second nature. In the end, we not only learned how to explore and diagnose both: The apparent “good processes”, and those that were inherently broken. And for the first time in that organization, a culture of problem solving began to take root.

Prior to that point, the organization looked at problems in a very different way. Performance areas were highlighted, and instinctively management proceeded to solve them. Symptoms were mitigated, while root causes were ignored. Instead of process breakdowns being resolved, they were merely transferred to other areas where those processes became less efficient. And what appeared to be the functioning parts of the business, were largely overlooked, even though many of them were headed for a” failure cliff”.

Indication, Analysis, and Insight

Few organizations invest in a “culture of problem solving” like the one I describe above. Even the one I reference above, deployed these techniques in a selected area where leadership was committed to creating that type of environment. But throughout industry, the investment in generating these skills, abilities and behaviors across the enterprise, pales in comparison to what is invested annually in our IT environment. And without bringing that into balance, the real value of our data universe will go largely unharvested.

There are a myriad of ways a company can address this. And some have. We can point to the icons of the quality movement for one, where cultures were shaped holistically across whole enterprises. More recently, we’ve seen both quality and efficiency (more critical to eliminating waste and driving ROI) get addressed universally within companies through their investments in the Six Sigma, and more recent Lean movements.

But if I had to define a place to start (like the business unit example I described above), I would focus on three parts of the problem solving equation, that are essential to building the bridge toward a more effective Enterprise Performance Management process.

Indication– We need to extend our scorecards and dashboards to begin covering more operational areas of our business. While most of us have “results oriented” scorecards that convey a good sense of how the “company” or “business unit” is doing, most have not gone past that to the degree we need to. And if we have, we’ve done it in the easier, more tangible areas (sales, production, etc). Even there however, we focus largely on result or lagging indicators versus predictive or leading metrics. And in cases where we have decent data on the latter, it is rarely ever connected and correlated with the result oriented data and metrics. How many companies have truly integrated their asset registers and failure databases with outage and plant level availability? How many have integrated call patterns and behavioral demographics with downstream sales and churn data? All of this is needed to get a real handle on where problems exist, or where they may likely arise in the future.
Analysis– When many companies hear the word “analysis”, they go straight to thinking about how they can better “work the data” they have. They begin by taking their scorecard down a few layers. The word “drill down” becomes synonymous with “analysis”. However, while they each are critical activities, they play very separate roles in the process. The act of “drilling down” (slicing data between plants, operating regions, time periods, etc.) will give you some good indication where problems exist. But it is not “real analysis” that will get you very far down the path of defining root causes and ultimately bettersolutions. And often, it’s why we get stuck at this level. Continuous spinning of the “cube” gets you no closer to the solution unless you get there by accident. And that is certainly the long way home. Good analysis starts with good questions. It takes you into the generation of a hypothesis which you may test, change and retest several times. It more often than not takes you into collecting data that may not (and perhaps should not) reside in your scorecard and dashboard. It requires sampling events and testing your hypotheses. And it often involves modeling of causal factors and drivers. But it all starts with good questions. When we refer to “spending more time in the problem”, this is what we’re talking about. Not merely spinning the scorecard around its multiple dimensions to see what solutions “emerge”.
Insight– I’d like to say when you do the above two things right, insights emerge. And sometimes they do. But more often than not, insights of the type and magnitude we are looking for are usually not attainable without the third leg of this problem solving stool. Insight requires its own set of skills which revolve around creativity, innovation, and “out of the box” thinking. And while some of us think of these skills as innate, they are very much learnable. But rather than “textbook learning” (although there are some great resources on the art of innovation that can be applied here), these abilities are best learned by being facilitated through the process, watching and learning how this thought process occurs, and then working those skills yourself on real life problems.

Dont forget “line of sight”

A few days ago I wrote a post on the concept of “line of sight” integration of your performance management content and infrastructure. It’s important here to reinforce the importance of tracking all of this back to that underlying construct.

The process of operationalizing information, is but one of many in the “line of sight” chain from your company’s vision, to the operational solutions that manifest here. And this process of operationalizing change is only a beginning of the journey you will make to translating these gains into ROI for the business (what I’ve referred to before as “value capture” or “value release”).

So as you navigate your path through the above activities, its useful to keep it in context and remember that the desired end state is to enable your business to see that clear “line of sight” from the very top of the organization right down to the work-face.

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There’s not enough space in a post like this to elaborate as much as we could on each of these. And creating real cultural change clearly involves more than a few quick bullet points. But as has been my tradition in this blog, my intent is to introduce you to principles and techniques that can get you started on this journey, or increase the ability for you to navigate the road your on.

Category Archives: Lean

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Data, Metrics, and Information- Are we better off than we were 4 years ago?

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