Creating and sustaining process improvement.
"A problem well stated is a problem half solved" ~ Charles Kettering
In my last post, we talked about the core reasons why data projects never make it to production and fail. The number one reason was "unable to define the problem." So let's go from there; let's "consider" that we define the problem correctly. It's time to talk about the people and the process.
Today managers face a paradox.
On the one hand, the number of tools and techniques available to improve performance is growing rapidly.
Further, with advances in information technology and the ever-growing legions of management consultants, it is easier than ever to learn about these techniques and to learn who else is using them. On the other hand, there has been little improvement in the ability of organizations to incorporate these innovations into their everyday activities.
The ability to identify and learn about new improvement methods no longer presents a significant barrier to most managers.
In other words, it's not just a tool problem, any more than it's a human resources problem or a leadership problem. Instead, it is a systemic problem, one that is created by the interaction of tools, equipment, workers, and managers.
Successfully implementing these innovations presents the biggest challenge. You can't buy a turnkey six-sigma quality program. It must be developed from within.
The people
"Never reveal you have a problem until you also have the solution." ~ Anonymous.
Of course, everyone knows that it is better to work smarter than to work harder: An hour spent working produces an extra hour's worth of output, while an hour spent on improvement may improve the productivity of every subsequent hour dedicated to production.
Companies may launch improvement programs, encourage people to experiment with new ideas, and invest in training.
If successful, these investments will, with time, yield improvements in process capability, boost throughput, and close the performance gap. However, success creates its own challenges.
One issue is related to the persistence of the cost-saving mentality.
- "As soon as you get the problems down, people will be taken away from the effort and the problems will go back up."
- "An engineer might not take the time to document their steps or put the simulation results on the bookshelf, and because of that, they saved engineering time and did her project more efficiently. But in the long run, it prevented us from being able to deploy the reusability concepts that we were looking for."
As organizations grow more dependent on firefighting and work harder to solve problems caused by low process capability, they reward and promote those who, through heroic efforts, manage to save troubled projects or keep the line running.
Successful improvement must include a significant shift in the mental models of those both leading and participating in an improvement effort.
There are two theories. One says, "there's a problem; let's fix it." The other says, "we have a problem; someone is screwing up; let's go beat them up." To improve, we could no longer embrace the second theory; we had to use the first.
Once the cycle of self-confirming attributions is broken, any number of process improvement tools and methods can help improve capability; without this shift, new tools and techniques, no matter how great their potential, are unlikely to succeed.
The bias towards blaming people rather than the system/tools in which those people are embedded means managers are prone to push their organizations into a capability trap. As workers spend more and more of their time on throughput and cut back on fundamental improvement, shouldn't managers realize that the actual cause of sub-standard performance is low process capability rather than unmotivated workers?
Unfortunately, in many situations, managers learn the opposite lesson.
Pressure to do work includes, most obviously, direct measures such as telling people to work faster or put in overtime, setting more aggressive targets for throughput, and imposing more severe penalties for missing those targets. Pressure also includes more subtle actions designed to extract greater effort from employees. Not surprisingly, such attention sent a strong message to all involved: keep the machines busy at all costs.
The capability trap eventually gets embedded in deeper structures, including incentives and corporate culture.
"The best leadership is by example; a manager could be wrong, make mistakes, and require help. There is golden clarity to admit not knowing." ~ Jesús Córdoba
The process
Observing that process or the performance is not improving, managers conclude the particular improvement method is not working and abandon it. Since the need to enhance remains, they search for another, more promising tool, only to find it too suffers a similar fate. The result is growing cynicism among employees about programs.
It takes time to uncover the root causes of process problems and discover, test, and implement solutions.
The actual performance of any process depends on two factors: the amount of time spent working and the capability of the process used to do that work.
One major contributor is the failure to distinguish between practices and principles.
The performance of any process can be increased by dedicating additional effort to either work or improvement. However, the two activities do not produce equivalent results. Time spent on improving the capability of a process typically yields a more enduring change.
An organization suffering from the self-confirming attribution error is poorly positioned to escape the capability trap.
Improvement programs add stress to the organization, triggering greater work pressure that prevents people from investing in improvement, and encourages shortcuts. In such organizations many improvement programs never get off the ground. If, despite the work pressure, people do succeed in allocating more time to improve, the result is a short-term drop in performance as time spent working falls before the investments in improvement bear fruit.
More insidiously, these dynamics strengthen stereotypes and conflicts that not only hurt organizational performance but damage society.
Time spent on improvement does not immediately improve performance.
Most importantly, the inability of most organizations to reap the full benefit of these innovations has little to do with the specific improvement process or tool they select. Instead, the problem has its roots in how the introduction of a new improvement program interacts with the physical, economic, social, and psychological structures in which implementation takes place.
The structure of the procedure inadvertently leads even many talented and dedicated managers into a capability trap while at the same time providing compelling evidence that the sources of their difficulties lie in factors beyond their control, such as lazy workers, a "difficult" union, faulty machinery, or fickle customers.
Managers are unlikely to escape the capability trap because they rarely realize they are in it.
Instead, as capability stagnates despite repeated attempts at improvement, they slowly, perhaps reluctantly, but with increasing conviction, come to believe that their problems lie in the attitudes and character of the people that work for them. Having made such an attribution, the actions they take, while rational from their perspective, make the situation worse.
In short
The most important implication of this analysis is that experiences often teach us exactly the wrong lessons about how to maintain and improve the long-term health of the systems in which we work and live.
- First, engaging a particular task needs to be clearly connected to an important outcome, and the person doing it needs to be able to use various skills in executing that task.
- Second, humans find a task more engaging when they exert a measure of control over how it is executed.
- Third, we draw more satisfaction from tasks where we get regular and rapid feedback concerning our performance.
- Efficiency – We can do things better.
- Productivity – We can do more things, better.
- Optimization – We can do different things, innovate and improve.
Small actions could snowball into significant headways. Most importantly, staff will learn that they could, after all, make a difference.
You will win the confidence and move to the next issue by picking a small problem. This is a much more sustainable path to transforming yourself and the organization.
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." ~ Thomas Edison.
