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October 29, 2006

Changing Performance

Although quality of execution ("QOE") is not the same as "performance", in the minds of many managers QOE's Deming Cycle has long ago taken up permanent residence as the basis for performance improvement.

In that view, the mantra of PLAN DO CHECK ACT (i.e., design, execute, measure, and adjust) is a huge reminder that while the "activity" half of work (PLAN DO) is always to be attended formally and closely, the "achievement" half (CHECK, ACT) is not just a "gimme".

From that perspective, managers have a better view of how to make things work not just well but, due to the repetition of the cycle, also with continuous improvement.

Yet forty years after the cycle's debut, the challenge of ever-increasing organizational complexity makes the effectiveness of this advice harder and harder to realize. For management solution-builders like CEO Jonathan Becher of Pilot Software, a reinterpretation of management focus seemed necessary and timely enough to even build his company around. Becher's model -- MOTIVATE, MANAGE, MONITOR, MEASURE -- shifted emphasis from the "Plan / Do" of Deming to a sensitivity about how communication brings workers into the realm of reliable support for the Plan. As a result, purposecould become more consistently followed by execution.

Both of those men's approaches convey value through completeness in a scripted sequence of management influences. Yet both must be grasped within an even larger context of what more completely accounts for "performance".

What really controls the generation of events and their results is the interrelationship of internal forces in the organization; and what is often overlooked is the degree to which those connections are leverage points that are vulnerable to unscripted change. The following illustration's high-level view exposes these points of leverage:

In representing a cycle, part of how this picture works is of course how it positions the leverage points in question, which are Interpretation, Participation, Examination and Prioritization. Here, they take up spots in between the more conventional subjects of management attention.

Each of the "new" items significantly constrains the influence of managed strategy, planning, execution and evaluation. It is relatively easy to grasp that defects, omissions, exceptions or errors at any one of these four constraining points will potentially delay, disrupt or at worst cripple the cycle, despite attention to the more standard concerns. Yet all it takes to introduce those interruptions is competition from some recognized alternative -- in goals, methods or needs. Given that, can we say that we're managing things if we aren't attending to the four constraints on an explicit and sustained basis?

Sometimes the alternative comes from outside of the manager's field of view; sometimes, from deeply within.

For example, as now seen, a Plan is not a transcription of a Strategy; instead, it is more nearly a transcription of an interpretation of strategy. Or said better, interpretation is a precedent of the plan. People don't automatically interpret things the same way; and naturally, politics can play a heavy hand in which interpretation may have the best shot at prevailing. The point is, do we know why people are interpreting things the way they do?

And consider the phenomenon of a second opinion; if interpretation imposes a competing sense of credibility, opportunity or belief on the strategy, the prior anticipated plan will again likely risk being changed.

Further along in the cycle, at the point of Participation, a deeper look at people is also due.

Participation is perhaps the "intermediary" point that ordinarily gets the most attention. But what often gets overlooked in that attention is the distinction between productivity management and change management -- with the big question being how we know that people will really adopt and execute the plan.

These days it is still relevant and popular to understand productivity from the viewpoint of running healthy "systems". And most typical in our thinking about that is the mantra of "people/process/technology". That describes the three dimensions of the systems that we think are both useful and manageable -- plus it offers the encouraging claim that technology will make things more likely do-able. But the catch is: people have to want it to. If they don't want it to, a lot can change. (As noted frequently elsewhere in Archestra discussions, the People/Process/Technology mantra is essentially flawed and should be replaced with the mantra of People/Events/Technology, further superceded by Assignments/Processes/Configurations. But for now we'll leave that alone, and just take advantage of the focus on people.)

What about change? Underneath Deming's "DO", and between Becher's "MOTIVATE" and "MANAGE", people decide what they are going to actually bring to the party. They make the decision as a result of comparing what they are being offered as "next" versus "now". This will not just be a simple comparison of better versus worse, with "now" being the benchmark; "now" may not even be clearly good or bad.

Instead, the comparison will be about whether being involved as requested (for example, by the plan) is a difference that the person can prefer. So what in particular is getting compared?

Both "now" and "next" present possible but alternate realities that elaborate, in detail, the general picture below:

For the individual person, the issue is to reconcile how they already are now with how they are going to be next. Any part of the above cycle that changes -- whether that be expectations, intent, or observed effect -- can introduce a new preference, dissuasion, or even some cognitive dissonance such as pitting their desires against their ideas or against their ethics.

In this second picture, as in the first, the points of influence are interrelated by position. To the point, Acceptance is always preceded by Expectations. Then, when Acceptance is followed by Intent, people really arrive as drivers of the activity that eventually will be studied for determining performance.

What managers need to know is that the Expectations segment of the cycle is affected by both Awareness and Acceptance. If either of those changes, expectations change too. Likewise, intent will be sensitive to both Acceptance and Actualization -- so managers have to provide corresponding opportunity that moves Intent to real action. These sound a lot more like issues of leadership that managers must fit in.

Meanwhile, in the end, the individual's mentality about his/her requested role must track back beneficially to the participation needed in the point between planning and execution. That's what the two illustrations together reveal.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at October 29, 2006 6:37 AM

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