The Performance Improvement Blog

ThePerformanceImprovementBlog Now Featured on eLearningLearning

My blog is now featured on Tony Karrer’s collaborative blog, eLearningLearning. He describes his blog in   this way:

eLearning Learning  is a collection of blog posts and articles all around eLearning.  It uses the Browse My Stuff technology to create this topic hub.  Topic Hubs are sites that aggregate content from a variety of sources, organize that content around keywords in the topic domain, and support both manual and social curation of that content.

He has designed the blog to:

·         Collect and aggregate “high quality content”

·         Provide a site that can be navigated easily by bloggers and non-bloggers

·         Be a link to additional sources of content

·         Surface content that might not be found otherwise

You can find the same “Browse My Stuff” search tool for my blog in the lower left column. This tool appears to be a great way to organize and find information from this blog and from many blogs and online articles that emphasize "e-learning".

What Can Health Care Learn From Toyota?

What can we learn from Toyota’s fall from grace? This is the question I ask in a blog posted on February 11^th. In that piece I write about Toyota’s need to learn about the deficiencies in its corporate culture rather than framing their problem as one of defective parts. Other organizations that are trying to adapt “The Toyota Way” to their own operations should look at Toyota’s experience as a wake-up call. For example, a number of health-care organizations are implementing the quality tools and efficiency procedures developed by Toyota. They want to save money and improve the quality of health care in their systems. These are admirable goals. However, in light of Toyota’s recent travails, these organizations should look closely at their own cultures and what could become barriers to effective change over time. They might have a Hawthorne effect in the short run but fail in the long run if they don’t stay cognizant of the same threats that are causing problems for Toyota.

What are some of these potential threats? One is focusing all of their energy on change in parts of the organization that are easiest to change (e.g., nursing, housekeeping, purchasing) with little effort in the parts of the organization that are hardest to change (e.g., doctors, senior management). Another is building a capacity for continuous improvement inside the organization while at the same time being unable to respond to economic, competitive, and political threats from outside the organization. A third potential threat is resting on one’s laurels of short-term gains but not doing the hard work of creating and sustaining a culture of continuous improvement that permeates every nook and cranny of the organization.

What do you think are other potential threats to long term successful implementation of “The Toyota Way” in health care?

Bad Management Practices

Every once in awhile we need to step back from what we are doing and ask ourselves, “Is this the right thing to be doing?” I’m reminded of Chris Argyris’ and Donald Schon’s “double-loop” learning in which we are asked to challenge the underlying beliefs and assumptions of our actions; not simply improve what we are doing but learn from examining the values implicit in what we are doing. Dropping relief packages from helicopters into the middle of a throng of Haitian earthquake victims might be a fast, efficient way to get food, clothing, and medical supplies to masses of desperate people, but what does it say about the beliefs and assumptions of the people providing the aid?

In an article for BusinessWeek titled, “Ten Management Practices to Axe,” Liz Ryan identifies ten popular   practices of organizations that they should stop doing. At the risk of putting many of my consultant friends out of work, I recommend that all managers read this list and re-evaluate the underlying beliefs and assumptions represented by each of these actions in their own organizations. Ryan's list has:

1. Forced Ranking
2. Front-Loaded Recruiting Systems
3. Overdone Policy Manuals
4. Social Media Thought Police
5. Rules That Force Employees To Lie
6. Theft of Miles
7. Jack-Booted Layoffs
8. 360-Degree Feedback Programs
9. Mandatory Performance-Review Bell Curves
10. Timekeeping Courtesy of Henry Ford

I want to highlight just two of these ten practices as examples. One is “Social Media Thought Police”. This is the futile practice of trying to control social media, such as Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter, that employees might use at work. Even worse, I still hear about no-email and no-Web policies. In this day and age, these policies are absurd. Companies trust their employees with millions of dollars of equipment, trade secrets, and each other’s safety, but don’t trust them to use social media responsibly. As Ryan says, if there is a problem with an individual who is abusing these communication tools, deal with that person, but don’t impose a policy on everyone because of the irresponsible behavior of a few.

The other practice I want to highlight is “360-Degree Feedback Programs”. While I believe there are times when a survey of a manager’s direct reports, co-workers, and supervisor might be useful, most of the time this performance-management tool is used as a poor substitute for honest, open supervisor-employee conversations about performance. Organizations should strive for a culture in which employees are receiving feedback regularly and frequently and are not dependent on an annual or semi-annual survey.

Which of the ten practices do you have in your organization and which do you think should be given the axe?

What Can We Learn From Toyota?

What can we learn from Toyota’s fall from grace? This company, that for the past two decades has been the benchmark for quality, has suddenly had severe damage done to its worldwide reputation and probably to its market share. Toyota seemed to be doing everything right in terms of high performance. Employees were taught “The Toyota Way”, a set of efficiency and quality principles that has been the envy of competitors and now is being adapted to a variety of different industries. To say that they grew too fast and too big, as many commentators have said, does not help us learn from Toyota’s experience.

I don’t think Toyota’s problem is floor mats or gas pedals or electronic braking systems. In fact, the number of incidences of parts failure does not appear to be significantly greater than one would expect given the number of vehicles they have on the road. Toyota’s problem seems to go much deeper than that. The problem seems to be culture and leadership of the organization. Matthew DeBord makes this point in an op-ed piece about Toyota for the New York Times. He writes:

…its management and manufacturing culture was ideally prepared to get to No. 1, but stunningly ill suited to actually be No. 1…Comfortably preoccupied with rooting out internal weakness, the Toyota Way is lost when it comes to contending with outside threats. For such an intense system to function properly, employees have to blindly adhere to it; overconfidence is the natural outcome of this arrangement. Yes, any worker is empowered to stop the assembly line because he spots a flaw. But if a flaw does get through, the company as a whole is loath to admit that the system broke down.

The point is that the climb often requires a distinct, unyielding philosophy, while setting up shop on the pinnacle requires something else entirely, like the ability to absorb some punishment. Companies that aim for cultish loyalty are vulnerable in this way. Apple doesn’t respond well to customers criticizing its products. Toyota, likewise, doesn’t have much experience being attacked. It just wasn’t ready to handle doubt, dismay or the obliteration of trust.

Stefan Stern, in accusing DeBord of being unfair to Toyota, writes in his blog:

Senior managers may have been arrogant, or perhaps just not brave enough to admit how standards were slipping. But I expect that, down on the production line, Toyota employees could see exactly what was going on. That is the Toyota way.

To me, Stern makes DeBord’s point. If some people in the organization know of a problem but management doesn’t do anything about it, there must be systemic barriers to communication and problem solving. Organizational effectiveness is more than a consistently high quality product. It is also management listening to its employees, customers, and vendors, recognizing problems, which in any complex system are inevitable, and acting quickly and decisively with the customer in mind. Customers don’t care about the industry-famous “Toyota Production System”; they care about a quality buying experience and a company they can trust.

What Gets Measured Gets Done...or Not

"What gets measured gets done." That quote, often attributed to Peter Drucker, is used frequently (I have used it many times, myself.) when talking about performance improvement. However, it would be more correct to say, "Some things that get measured get done." We measure student academic performance in schools, but it doesn't improve the quality of teaching and schools for most kids. We measure every aspect of the health of Americans, but it doesn't change access and quality of care for most Americans. Toyota has been the benchmark company for measuring quality of its products and processes, but it failed to ensure the safety of its brakes. And employee trainers have been "measuring" training since Frederick Winslow Taylor walked around the plant floor with a clipboard at the beginning of the last century, but training is still only about 10% to 20% effective.

Measurement is not the problem per se (although I agree that there is much room for improvement in how we measure learning and performance in organizations). The problem is the lack of will to use data to continuously improve systems and the lack of a process to interpret and apply data for continuous improvement. If you watched the new reality TV show “Undercover Boss” after the Super Bowl last night, you saw Waste Management CEO Larry O’Donnell discovering that some of his policies are barriers to a positive and productive work culture in his organization. WM is one of the leading companies in measuring performance and improving efficiency. They measure everything. What they weren’t doing was using that data to do what needed to be done.  

Leadership Advice a Click Away

This blog has made it onto Debbie Laskey’s “top 10” list of blogs. She writes:

I have assembled my “Top 10” list with names, descriptions, blog links, and Twitter handles.   Now, the next time you need some leadership advice or just want to see how the experts would handle your leadership challenge, the answer is just a click away.

I am honored to have my blog included on a list with the blogs of John Baldoni, Wally Bock, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, as well as six others that I want to check out. 

Management's Critical Role in Training

Management of any organization, large, medium, or small, has a critical role to play in the training and development of employees. A great example is Zingerman’s, the internationally famous specialty food retailer located in Ann Arbor, Michigan that employs over 300 people in nine separate businesses: Delicatessen, Bakehouse, Catering, Mail Order, Training (ZingTrain), Candy Manufactory, Coffee Company, Creamery, and the Roadhouse Restraurant. Zingerman’s makes a “Training Compact” with each of its employees. This Compact is essentially a learning agreement among trainee, trainer, and manager. In an article for “The Gourmet Retailer”, Maggie Bayless, managing partner of ZingTrain, the consulting arm of Zingerman’s, writes this about management’s role in their Training Compact:

Management’s role in Zingerman’s Training Compact is to 1) provide context for the training, 2)   reinforce how the training can help the employee/trainee to be successful and 3) help the trainee put the learnings from the training to good use. 

1.         Provide context for the training.

·         Agree on a shared vision of why this training is important to the trainee’s — and the business’ — success.

·         Agree on what the trainee will know and/or be able to do after the training.

·         Decide how that will be measured as part of the employee’s day-to-day work.

2.         Reinforce how the training supports the trainee’s (and the organization’s) success.

·         BEFORE: Give suggestions for how the trainee can get the most out of the training.

·         AFTER: Touch base with the trainee to discuss what’s working/not working.

3.         Help the trainee put the new learnings to good use.

·         Make sure the trainee has an opportunity to use what was learned within two days back on the job.

·         Decide if/what additional training is needed to meet the vision of success for the trainee (and the organization).

Zingerman’s has found that they achieve greater bottom-line results when managers are actively involved in supporting training. Small companies, especially food retailers like Zingerman’s, need employees to be constantly learning, but, at the same time, cannot afford to waste training dollars. They can limit this waste by managers helping to set expectations for learning, helping trainees apply the learning to real business needs, and giving recognition (and celebration) to successful application of learning.