Three Groups at Boeing Zero in on Performance Measurement (published by National Productivity Review, Spring 1994)
The Blossoming of Melissa (published by Roots and Wings Adoption Magazine, Jan/Feb/Mar 1996)
Learning to Walk the Leadership Talk? (published by Healthcare Executive Mar/Apr 1994)
Using Leadership Criteria to Measure and Reward Performance (published by Physician Executive, Aug 1995)
Practice what you Preach (published by Best Practice, "Measuring Performance" Issue, IFS International Lmt, UK, Jan 1995)
Integrating Processes and Performance: Benchmarks and Keys to Quality (published by Performance & Instruction, Sept 1993) ...and 19 more Practice What You Preach
(by JT Carr, published by Best Practice, "Measuring Performance" Issue, IFS International Lmt, United Kingdom, Jan 1995) Excerpted ...For several decades, executives have sought to improve performance, especially that of their staff, but what about their own performance? Why is it so difficult to make changes? First, many decision makers do not have an appropriate understanding of how to recognize and measure leadership performance. Secondly, the right behaviour is not rewarded. Executives know they can and should improve their own behaviour, but are not held accountable for achieving these improvements. Nor are these changes rewarded. When performance is tied to achieving results, and executives are rewarded for these changes, only then will changes occur. People can make all the excuses they desire and provide reasons why changes are not possible. But, when performance is tied to results, to achieving customer needs and organizational and personal goals and objectives--and results actually occur--only then should performance be rewarded. Rewards must be tied to satisfying customer needs. And it begins with leaders. How Can We Measure Leadership Performance? Leaders are people willing to take risks to improve the situation. They treat people with care and respect, and seek creative solutions along the way. Frequently, they are the quiet success stories that are rarely spotlighted. Leadership can be measured and rewarded using the leadership performance criteria of Teamwork, Productivity and Entrepreneurship. Let's examine this performance management process briefly. Measuring and Rewarding Teamwork Leadership begins with teamwork, and teamwork begins with caring and respect. Start simply. Have fun together. Get to know each other. Become friends. Do what you can to help each other, whether it be a colleague, member of staff, customer or supplier. Be a caring friend. Many people do not recognize their own customers. Know who your customers are. Whether the customer is internal or external, colleague or staff, treat them with respect and care, like a friend. Example: An unidentified $2.88 charge continued to be billed on the AT&T/US West telephone bill, month after month. During a call to the AT&T representative, the customer questioned this overdue charge, and refused to pay until it was explained. The representative listened carefully, put the customer on hold while she contacted the local carrier, came back on the line, explained the delay, and asked for patience. When she returned, she requested [urged] that the customer call the local carrier and explained why she could not help further. The US West (local carrier) representative listened to the customer's story, and took the initiative to erase the past due balance, stating that it was more trouble to find the source of the problem. A win-win agreement was achieved. Therefore, the key points are: * Process: Negotiating process * Measure: Talking, an agreement * Reward: Praise Be respectful and build communication bridges. Learn how to speak respectfully and avoid roadblocks. Some roadblocks include: giving orders ("Don't write like that"), belittling ("That's silly"), reassuring ("You'll get over it"), denying ("You can't still be angry"), or giving solutions ("This is how you should handle it"). The effect of these roadblocks is that people learn not to come to you with their problems. Example: Melissa, eight years old, was adopted from the streets of Calcutta in 1988. When she arrived in America, she spoke no English, had never been to school, and had lied and stolen to survive. Over the next five years, I loved and parented her as best I knew. During her first year of school, her confidence and successes developed. In the following years, she commented that she "didn't like school", and eventually refused to attend. By the time she was 12 in 1993, her behaviour worsened. She ran away from home and school. How could I build trust and influence the then-withdrawn Melissa to share her thoughts and feelings? The key to success was "getting acquainted", the second step of the negotiating process. I was determined to treat the now-teen Melissa with dignity, respect and tolerance. Instead of: "Put on your coat", I explained, "The forecast is for snow. You might think about..." When I forgot to use this approach, she became defiant. I admitted my own mistakes, was patient with her mistakes, suggested alternative behaviour and reasons why, and praised our smallest achievements. Most important were the humour, talks and laughs we shared. Gradually, she shared her feelings and problems were resolved. In corporate management, this function is known as counseling, mentoring and building trust, through fun, sharing [talking] and humour. Key points are: * Process: Negotiating process * Measure: Talking, an agreement * Type or reward: Praise, fun As a suggestion, make teamwork part of performance criteria, and measure and reward yourself for reaching an agreement achieved through the process of negotiating--illustrated by a handshake, a kind word, a smile, a hug or something in writing, and rewarded by praise or fun. Talking in terms of explanations, descriptions, experiences and humour is the basis of developing relationships. Measuring and Rewarding Productivity First let's examine what we mean by productivity, since it can represent different things to many people. Productivity includes quality work in terms of structured processes, and knowing and understanding such processes; smart work in terms of specific productivity techniques and tools, including streamlining and simplicity. The common processes in the managing function include planning, designing (life cycle), negotiating, and creating. The planning process, for example, has a specific set of steps, each of which results in a written document. These documents--which also serve as measures of quality--generally include: - Organization charts which identify function and sometimes the name of one responsible person. - Work breakdown structures which break the work to be done into systematic tree-like structures. - Schedules, both master and detailed. - Requirements. Various types of reviews and tests are quality measures of the design-build life cycle which is integrated within the planning cycle. Nested within the latter is the writing cycle since most, if not all, of management and planning efforts result in a document of some kind. These processes are integrated, occur frequently, and constantly cycle. Learn the correct processes. Some common processes in management include; the planning and controls process, known by various names, the life cycle or design-build process, the writing process, the creativity process, and the negotiating process. These are the same whether one builds aeroplanes, runs a hospital or manages a bank. The difference is in tailoring. Example. During the beginning of a facility relocation project at the Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington, team members had limited understanding of the project and were unclear about details of the work to be done and team member responsibilities. A Statement of Work, or project description document, was developed and used as a discussion document during the kick-off meeting to introduce the major details of the project to team members. This document served to increase common understanding and minimized miscommunication by the project team. Therefore, key points are: * Process: Planning process * Measure: Statement of Work * Type of reward: Praise As a suggestion, make productivity through processes part of performance criteria and reward yourself for learning and using the right process measures. Measuring and Rewarding Simplicity Examples of some productivity tools and techniques include: mind mapping, do all the same function at one time, be selective with perfection, put it in writing, have more than one use for something, streamlining, and simplicity. Not surprisingly, everywhere people speak of their frustration with complexity-- complexity in writng, methods, excessively large teams, excessive resources. Then, why not measure and reward simplicity? Example: At the Boeing Company, a supervisor simplified the training schedules, eliminated abbreviations to improve clarity and communication, reduced schedules to one format, used an easier graphics software tool enabling the preparation of schedules in under one hour instead of two days, and surfaced numerous existing rooms that were available for use and were previously unused. This eliminated the problem of double-booking. Key points are: * Process: Writing process (simplicity in) * Measure: Something written simply and clearly * Type of reward: Praise, personal growth By contrast, David Middleton, vice president of Excel Partnership, when asked to voice his concerns about the ISO 9000 international management standard, said: "You will hear varying advice that is inconsistent. People try to make this more difficult than it is...it takes far more skill to make a difficult process more simple." The biggest barrier, he concludes, is senior management and their perspective on what quality is about. Joe De Carlo, division manager of QA services at TUV Rheinland in North America, advises:"...lots of people are in consulting without ever having any experience of how to do it, and some don't understand the basis of what quality means. It's not a compliance issue, it's a management issue". As a suggestion, make productivity or simplicity part of performance criteria and reward yourself for all types of productivity. Examples of simplicity in productivity might include the size of a document, the clarity of writing, the size of teams, the number of resources used, and the types of reward offered. Measuring and Rewarding Entrepreneurship A leader could be defined as a person: - Willing to take risks. - Who is productive, efficient, and has personal standards. - Who is a caring, respectful team player. Leadership is not the same as management, and has nothing to do with status or title. Anyone can be a leader, if they have the courage to make changes. Being creative and taking risks. Examples of creativity include adding to, subtracting from, taking a piece of, changing shape, (wrinkled, cut, squashed, puffed), or changing colour. The mind-mapping tool can also be used for creativity and generating ideas. Example: Albertsons, a US national food chain, uses the motto 'It's your store' which one customer took seriously. When selecting ripe fruit for some baking creativity, the customer tried to obtain a deal on bruised fruit that was to be thrown away, but the produce clerk was threatened by her manager with loss of job if she helped meet the customer's request. The clerk was required to throw out the food, rather than negotiate a creative/win-win agreemnt. Fear and lack of trust prevailed. Key points are: * Process/result: Creativity and negotiating processes forbidden
* Measure/result: Consumer now shops elsewhere
* Type of reward/result: Fear Admitting /forgiving mistakes build trust. In the trial and error process of making improvements, leaders must be kind, tolerant, and admit (and forgive) their own mistakes. Lewis Lehr, former chairman and chief executive officer of 3M Corporation states: "I am tempted to say that innovation at 3 M works in spite of top management". Example: When the once-rebellious Melissa was asked what contributed to her willingness to be creative in terms of cooking and tasting new foods, developing school reports, and making creative gifts, she commented: "It was 'talking' in terms of explanations, demonstrations, and praise, and that it is all right for us to make mistakes because that is how we learn." Key points are: * Process: Creativity process * Measure: An idea * Type of reward: Fun, praise As a suggestion, make entrepreneurship--innovation and decisiveness--part of performance criteria and reward yourself for all types of creativity and results. Admitting and sharing mistakes build trust. Creativity, humour and fun reduce tension, promote trust, and help build friendships in the journey towards teamwork. Reward yourself with something fun when you achieve your own goals. Assessing and rewarding our own performance Many organizations and executives are seeking Baldrige criteria performance assessments to determine how well their corporations are doing in terms of achieving quality. Whilst quality performance seems to vary, the area that most needs strengthening is leadership. What is the answer? Consider using leadership performance criteria that discourage bureaucracy, cronyism and empire building, and measure your own performance. Reward yourself for achievements in: * Productivity. * Teamwork. * Entrepreneurship. Explore using simple yet fun rewards, such as time off, free time, favorite work, fun, praise and recognition. If you find it difficult to reward yourself and have fun, perhaps you might start working on changing your behaviour. Do so simply, praising yourself for your smallest achievement. William Sandy, chairman and CEO of Sandy Corporation, speaks of: "Organizational charts that vaguely define roles, overlapping charters with more than one person accountable, too many decision makers, rewards not commensurate with risks, praise for activity rather than results, and innovation without special nurturing." "When major changes don't happen," he continues, "frequently it is because people don't know why or what is expected, not how to do it. Nor do they believe the effort is worth the gain." When executives learn standard management processes and, when performance rewards are tied to achieving customer needs, the common problems cited by Sandy will be eliminated. Processes and performance criteria, such as productivity and teamwork, have little meaning until leaders begin to practice what they preach. Productivity is not well understood; streamlining and simplicity are not commonly practised. Further, they are in conflict with current measures of power. Large staff and budgets erode morale. When there is a performance management system in place that rewards executives for entrepreneurship, teamwork, and productivity--and top managers exemplify this in their own personal practices--organizations will surely succeed. And learning teamwork, by having fun and building trust is the best place to start.## About the author JT Carr, president of Structured Methods Applications Co near Seattle, Washington, USA, specializes in refining leadership skills. A planner with the Boeing Company, she guided senior managers in their planning and controls, systems management, and technical communications at Boeing Commercial Airplane Group. With a background in aerospace and pharmacy, she was Aerospace/Defense Track Chair for 1992 PROJEXPO, PMI's 1991 Aerospace/Defense Track Chair, and has contributed to several professional and business journals. Carr is a 1994 Washington State Quality (Baldrige) Award Examiner and a candidate for 1995 National Baldrige Award Examiner.
|
