Sharing learnings from working with high performing teams facing extreme operational, business, &/or technology challenges.

Break-through Performance: “Hard” & “Soft” Tools that Work

June 11, 2018

Reed Harrison, Founder & President, Antietam Strategy Partners, Inc.

We’ve all experienced … and been wowed by … how much more effective a large organization is when responding to a crisis than it is day-to-day. And, in spite of the stress and long-hours inherent in dealing with a crisis, people feel much better about their work, their colleagues, and themselves. Being part of a team that responds to a crisis is a magical moment. 

How can we make that those wonderful results and satisfaction with one’s work more commonplace?

Why are big organizations so much “better” in crises? 

Imagine every person or team in a large organization is represented by a little vector. Each little vector has a direction relative to the large organization’s goals. And, each has length that represents the velocity of progress towards the organization’s goals. The large organization’s direction and velocity are the sum of all those little vectors. 

What happens to those vectors during a crisis?

• Goal Clarity & Alignment. Suppose the large organization’s desired direction is North on a compass. Day-to-day in the real world, all those little vectors are slightly misaligned, scattered directionally across a field between, say, northeast and northwest. Even this slight misalignment results in a tremendous loss of effectiveness. Then a crisis happens. First, the Goal is crystal clear and focused. What “North’ means is unambiguous and commonly understood. For example, restore as much telecommunications service as quickly as possible after a natural disaster. Second, all (or most) of those little vectors snap into alignment in the same direction: resolving the crisis.  The sum of all those vectors will be much, much greater when aligned, than when they were when they were slightly misaligned. A crisis dramatically improves Goal Clarity & Alignment.
• Intensity. A crisis causes many of those little vectors to get bigger too. People rally to the cause and work more intensely. Life has taught me that it is a basic human need to work and succeed at something important and worthwhile. If it’s a crisis, by definition, it’s both important and worthwhile. Of course, “crisis” and “important” and “worthwhile” are all in the eye of the beholder.

Day-to-day, when there is no crisis, how do you replicate more of that Goal Clarity and Alignment, and that positive emotional energy that increases Intensity? 

What tools work in the real world?

In my experience, there are “hard” tools and “soft” ones. 

Here are some thoughts on “hard” tools. (I will consider “soft” tools in a subsequent installment.)

My “hard” tool of choice is a Scorecard system of management. In my experience, people and teams do not get misaligned on purpose. Instead, they do not know or understand in the same way what the most important Goals are, how success will be measured, and how their work relates to the Goal.

• By “Scorecard,” I mean a set of quantitative Metrics, each with a quantitative measure of success, a Goal. The selection of Metrics and setting of Goals enables “Goal Clarity & Alignment,” by providing a clearly articulated definition of “North.”
• By “system of management,” I mean regular reviews of actual results vs. Goals and active intervention when results are not tracking towards Goal achievement … and, at least as important, when results are exceeding expectations. The “system of management” is all about increasing “Intensity” and creating a common understanding of “North.”

Step #1 -- Select Scorecard Metrics & Assign Responsibility: 

• Selecting Metrics is a critically important and serious leadership task, one that must be performed by the senior leadership team themselves (and not delegated). It forces leadership to decide and communicate what is important (Goals) and how to measure progress (Metrics). The task of developing the Scorecard is also a mechanism for building cohesion and alignment, and teamwork among the senior leadership team as they all share and debate their diverse perspectives of your business. 
• I’ve had the most success with Metrics that clearly align with the most important Customer and Shareowner satisfiers: lower defect rates, faster problem resolution, a higher rate of delivering when promised, productivity and unit cost improvement, and revenue growth. 
• Avoid making things complicated or hard to understand. Would an outsider to your business get it? Simple and straightforward trumps complexity and intellectual elegance.
• Start small. Having 5-10 Metrics is about right in my experience.  Less than that and it will be unlikely that learning how to use the Scorecard will permeate enough of the organization or have enough of an impact to matter. More than that and it’s too much to take on and may indicate leadership hasn’t picked the critical few.
• Assign ownership for each Metric, both the results and for the data. Each Metric should be owned by one and only one senior leader. That Metric Owner should have the biggest influence over and stake in the results. Each Metric should also have a Metric Data Steward accountable to the Metric Owner for data quality, completeness, and timeliness. The Metric Owner, with their direct reports as well as teammates in other organizations, is responsible for the results. And, with the Metric Data Steward, the Metric Owner is responsible for the quality, completeness, and timeliness of the Metric’s data.
• Collect and improve Metric data. Expect that it will take several months to get “clean” and consistent data. There is always some confusion in “counting” and inconsistency in the definition of the data elements that make up the Metric. It just takes time to get the data defined in a uniform way across the organization.

Step #2 -- Set Goals:

• Sometimes the Metrics are new to the organization and current performance levels are not known. Sometimes there are seasonal variations. Sometimes there are one-time events that perturb the data. It takes several months’ worth of Metric data to baseline performance. In my experience in the case of monthly results reporting, this can take 6 or more monthly iterations.
• Once performance has been baselined, there are several alternative approaches to setting Goals:  1.)  Close the gap to best-in-class performance. For example, set goals to improve 30% per year if performance is worse than best-in-class or if best-in-class is not known. This incents the Metric Owner to research credible best-in-class benchmarks and, more importantly, the techniques that best-in-class performers use, i.e., best practices ... or 2.)  Simply improve from current performance. While the latter seems less than aggressive, it is my experience that this approach can be equally effective in improving results. 

Step #3 – Demonstrate Activist & Agile Leadership:

• Conduct senior leadership team Results Reviews when results for the latest period are available and have been analyzed and “cleaned-up.” For example, if Results for a month are available on the 5th work day of the following month, schedule the Results Review for 10th work day of the following month.
• In the Results Review, allow enough time to have a detailed review of each Metric: the results, the root causes of success and shortfalls in achieving Goals, and corrective action plans. Allow perhaps 30 minutes for each Metric.
• Expect all members of your senior leadership team to attend the whole meeting, not just the portion of the meeting devoted to the Scorecard Metric they own. Why?  In almost all cases, there are dependencies among several organizations in achieving Goals … and often between Metrics.  You want your whole senior leadership team to contribute their good ideas, expertise, and experience to Goal achievement.  You want your whole team to learn together how best to use the Scorecard to manage towards Goal achievement.  Finally, some internal competition is healthy.
• Standard templates for the Metrics Results improve the speed and clarity of communications. Examples:  1.)  A graph and data table showing the Results for the Metrics over time, past months’ actuals and future months’ forecasts.  2.)  A Pareto chart for root causes of success when performance is better than Goal.  3.)  A Pareto chart for root causes of shortfalls when performance is worse than Goal.  4.)  A “what / who / when” chart showing actions that will be taken “fix” the root causes of shortfalls and/or further promulgate the roots causes of success.
• Take the time in the meeting to celebrate successes and to offer encouragement and support when there are shortfalls. Take the time after the meeting to send an email reiterating your appreciation for the hard work that led to the successes … and your appreciation for the hard work and confidence in fixing problems. People have an insatiable appetite for sincere, genuine thanks and praise … and get far too little of both.

Imagine anything in your life getting better at a sustained rate of 20% per year!

In my experience, a Scorecard approach outlined above can deliver break-through performance, typically a 20+% per year improvement in performance for several years in succession. 

About:

Antietam Strategy Partners, Inc. is a boutique consulting firm which specializes in one-on-one coaching for transformational change in technology, operations, and business models. Areas of expertise include scaling for growth, radical cost reduction, rapid acquisition integration, and break-through improvements in quality, cycle-time, and customer satisfaction. 

Reed Harrison, founder & President, has a unique foundation of C-level leadership experience in providing technology and services to both external and internal Customers at two Fortune 100 companies, a small early-stage hyper-growth public company, and the federal government.