Performance
MATTERS VOL3|ISSUETWO|2009
Solutions That PerformTM
What a Performance! N E V E R B E FO R E H A S H U M A N A N D O P E R AT I O N A L P E R FO R M A N C E B E E N S O I M P O R TA N T — W E ’ V E G OT T H E T I P S A N D T EC H N I Q U E S T H AT ’ L L M A K E YO U A S TA R .
FROM DR. DEUTSCH
Performance Improvement is Vital PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT
Dare to Elevate Engagement TIPS ON TALK
Improving Communication
VOL3|ISSUETWO|2009
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Unless your organization, like any sports team, is unusually talented—or unusually lucky—you will certainly face challenges that seem to resist solution. The issues are many: Cost. Asset management. Workflow and process. IT. Production. Safety and compliance. Process, people and resource issues. These challenges will require you to change the way you or your staff is currently working. Many of us have already had to make changes at work and in our personal lives as a result of the economy. As a native “Michigander” living near the Detroit area, I am constantly aware of the situation and its effects on the people who live here. Although I thought we would be talking about recovery by now, we need to focus on what our organizations should be doing to optimize their workforce now and prepare them for better times. This collection of articles will provide you with examples and get you thinking about what you can do to create a winning team! Sue Varner | Editor Kayla Hartford | Associate Editor Corporate Marketing & Communications For questions and additional information on the content of this newsletter contact Sue Varner at 1.800.677.3688 or svarner@rwd.com. Copyright ©2009 RWD Technologies, LLC. All rights reserved.
A Message From Human and Operational Performance Improvement: More Vital Than Ever
Performance
MATTERS 2 1 Message from
Dr. Robert W. Deutsch Vital lessons in human and operational performance improvement.
2 Keep Your Learning Initiatives Green A new twist on the classic phrase, “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” 4 Client Success How RWD
5 Dare to Elevate Engagement Going up? Address personal sustainability, engagement, and performance improvement.
7 Risk and the Science of
Operation Procedures Embedding a safety culture.
9 11 Tips on Talk Improving communication improves human performance.
12 Introducing the Clarity
Model for Organizational Performance Creating clear communication affects more than just the bottom line.
14 Mark Your Calendar! See what’s coming up.
Dr. Robert W. Deutsch
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And this daunting recession is why we’ve dedicated this issue of Performance Matters to the theme of Human and Operational Performance Improvement. Companies that don’t look to bettering their people and how they
Leading off, Mark Deans provides a fascinating look at how a “green” approach can help a client sustain solid learning and performance support on today’s tight budgets. The secret is, as Mark explains, to “reduce, reuse and repurpose.” In “Human and Operational Performance Improvement,” Rick Contel examines how addressing
in human and operational performance improvement.
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helps clients achieve success
operate will not only endanger themselves in the short term, they won’t be in a position to thrive when the storm clouds lift. These kinds of improvements are essential. In this issue you can read what five RWD authors and one outside expert suggest for enterprises, going forward.
little less than two years ago an obscure segment of the home mortgage market called “sub-prime” started to self-destruct. Since then, we all know what happened.
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individual accomplishment, process effectiveness and organizational development can transform performance. Our outside author, Anese Cavanaugh, offers four common-sense tips to engage employees more fully—a valuable upgrade for a discouraged workforce in these high-stress times of ours. No matter how the economy is misbehaving, one thing that shouldn’t be scrimped on is safety. Bill Roberts writes about how well-crafted procedures can keep everyone from harm. Mike Koper addresses “Eleven Tips on Talk.” And Butler Newman provides a great background on RWD’s counterintuitive approach to upgrading
organizational performance— The Clarity Model. Hopefully, the worst of the economic downturn is behind us. Whatever happens, though, it’s vital that companies continue to work hard at improving the performance of their people and their operations—just as our six authors have suggested.
Dr. Robert W. Deutsch | Chairman
Keep Your Learning Initiatives GREEN
By MARK DEANS
Budget cuts, hiring freezes, layoffs and plant closures… all the ill-fated signs of hard economic times. Today, now more than ever, companies need to find more efficient, economical and impactful ways to improve their employees’ performance, especially now that they must do more with less.
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on’t cut enough and face another round of hard decisions; cut too much and you leave your employees unskilled and ill prepared for when times do change. What can you do to make sure your company can sustain the necessary level of learning and performance support on a limited budget? We will explore some ways to apply a “Green” approach to your learning initiatives, and make sure you realize a bottom-line impact and that will value your employees and customers. Apply the same mindset to learning as you would when considering a good recycling plan: Reduce, Reuse, and Repurpose.
Do you offer ethics, compliance, safety, new hire orientation, or are you supporting an ERP upgrade? These programs probably need to continue. Advanced Underwater Basket Weaving? Maybe that can be put on hold for a while (unless your company sells underwater baskets!) Archiving less necessary class materials on a documentation website and listing qualified coaches/ mentors that can be sought out for one-on-one sessions can retire some of your catalog’s slow movers and allow you to focus on your high-volume needs. Learning programs that help employees retool for changes in business, or improve
profitability should take priority. Can’t cut a course from the catalog? Consider reducing the frequency of the offerings. Perhaps your schedule was created based on employee populations set several months or even years ago, or a large percentage of your population has completed certain requirements so they can be offered less often in the future; needs analysis is often only done once when a learning need is first identified. Validate those findings again and again. Partner with your HR team and dig into your Learning Management records to see what the real population needs are, and coordinate with your staffing team to understand what the predicted volume of new hires or job changes may be in the next 6-9 months. The cost to print, ship and distribute training manuals is a real budget strain. It may take a little convincing but your learners
will survive without a 4-inch binder, but they probably will not miss it when they realize the material they need is now available on a performance support website or document library that is always up-todate, searchable and easy to use. Use these sites in class to demonstrate their ease and reduce fear of not having that printed binder by their side. Offer a prize to the person that comes to class with the oldest training manual from a previous class. It can be a fun way to show that people hold onto years old information for no reason. Reuse The money you have already invested in your organization can be used to breathe new life into your learning programs, and help take full advantage of these investments perhaps in ways not considered before. Look at your technology landscape; can you use web conferencing tools to offer training remotely, thereby reducing instructor or student travel costs? Maybe your company has a document management tool such as Microsoft SharePoint where training manuals can be loaded and made
Reduce Even a mature fruit-bearing tree needs to be cut back to encourage new growth. We are all guilty of holding onto things we no longer need. Imagine your learning catalog is like that big pile in the back of your garage. Roll up your sleeves, open every box and evaluate what you are really trying to support compared to its impact to the organization and cost to sustain. A simple ROI analysis can quickly identify your budget zappers and those that have true value.
Reduce. It may take a little convincing, but your learners will
survive without a 4-inch binder, but they probably won’t miss it when they realize what they need is available on a website or in an electronic library that is always up-to-date, searchable and easy
to use!
accessible to students? Handing out a small exercise workbook for specific hands-on activities and perhaps a few key work instructions can cut duplication costs significantly. Several technology options exist for the gathering, management and reporting of post-class assessments and other administrative information. Web survey tools can replace manual tabulation of Level 1 evaluations, and electronic versions of Level 2 or Level 3 assessment tools can streamline their execution for little investment. Even a simple webpage with questions can automate a lot of this. How can you reuse your existing learning programs’ content? Older courses may be revitalized with updated information, or their components can be reused in new ways. Take an 8-hour “new user” class and hone in on specific skills to refresh users. This not only reduces the time away from the job for each learner, but it focuses the attention where it is needed most. Hands-on exercises take a lot of effort to plan and prepare. Can these components be used in the upgraded training you are offering next in spring? What about the fundamentals of the business processes you are teaching? Have they changed or do they just need a little dusting off? Often a
Today more than ever we need to be creative with every dollar we spend. Look at your learning support team. Are they challenged? Are they capable of doing more than they have in the past? Challenging people to help be part of the creative solution to your budget problems will bring new fresh ideas and revitalize an otherwise stagnant team.
significant amount of time is spent on creating exercise data for transactional classes. Talk with the teams that do system testing and see if there is any way that data used during testing cycles can be reused, or if any test automation tools are being used that could help do data load. Repurpose Today more than ever we need to be creative with every dollar we spend. Look at your learning support team. Are they challenged? Are they capable of doing more than they have in the past? Giving stretch
assignments and challenging people to help be part of the creative solution to your budget problems will bring new fresh ideas to the team and revitalize an otherwise stagnant team. Budget cuts and headcount reductions often unfortunately mean there are less learning professionals to support your learning initiatives. Instead of putting the entire design task on an already overworked instructional designer, consider changing their role in the design process. Partner a strong instructional designer with knowledgeable subject matter experts. Build a simple and repeatable design process and determine standards that can be easily followed. After a guided work session to lay ground rules and expectations, and some time spent brainstorming to identify course objectives and general design elements your SMEs will be well on their way to doing the lion’s share of the work. The learning professional can coach and mentor from
the sideline to ensure that the end product is instructionally sound, and can focus on other areas where their expertise is needed more. Not only do you get a new perspective on the learning content, the SMEs will likely become strong supporters of the offerings that likely are intended to reach their peers; certainly a win-win for everyone. As with any good recycling program, it is often the small changes and little impacts that we make that collectively can make a big difference. Who knows, some of these new approaches may not only be good economically, but they will become part of your standard practice for years to come. WHO IS MARK DEANS? As a Principal Learning Consultant at RWD, Mark Deans maintains an expertise in learning industry trends, requirements of the modern “knowledge worker” and strategic business drivers that our clients face on a daily basis. Mark works to design leading-edge learning solutions that align with our client’s business requirements and maximize the return on investment.
HUMAN & OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT
Client Success! By RICK CONTEL
Human and operational performance improvement are inextricably linked. Each leverages the other and together they demand attention to three basic and equally important tenets: individual accomplishment, process effectiveness and organizational development.
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he recent challenge faced by one of our clients exemplifies the importance of effectively addressing these linkages to significantly improve business results. Our client’s challenge was the same fundamental issue companies around the globe are facing. Namely, how to improve operational performance when the workforce is shrinking, budgets are shrinking and the work and pressure to perform is increasingly demanding. This client needed to transform the way their internal IT organization supported their business operations and engaged RWD to help with this transformation. This client already had an organization of over 100 highly skilled IT practitioners and had just rolled out a new IT implementation methodology. However, with economic pressures ramping up, it became clear they needed to do more to standardize the way they execute projects to be able to achieve the flexibility they needed in staffing and leading projects and to develop true partnerships with the internal business owners who are their customers. The challenge here was clearly more than a need to train Project Managers. It was to execute a business strategy to
transform the way work was done. This meant addressing individual accomplishment, process effectiveness and organizational development. The following is a closer look at the key components of each. Individual accomplishment The key word here is “accomplishment.” This means more than what individuals need to “know” about their jobs. It means what they need to “produce;” what “outcomes” they need to create. To have the needed impact on operational performance, individuals needed more than to learn the mechanics of good project management. They needed the following: • Customer relationship building—PMs needed to understand their own personality types and operating styles and how to effectively communicate and work with customers and team members who have different styles. • Project leadership skills— PMs needed experience making the kind of decisions they would need to make on their jobs. Using a sophisticated computer-based simulation of a 12-month project, PMs worked in small teams making all the kinds of decisions a PM is faced with relative to team building, stakeholder
management and budget and schedule control. This highly engaging workshop format allowed PMs to learn from each other and experience the consequences of their decisions in real time. • Basic project management—Certainly, they needed solid project management skills. Built on PMI models and RWD’s experience, this “track” provided tools, templates and methods for managing and controlling project work.
training environment, they must find the “mold” that will define the way they will work. This “mold” is formed by the leadership team and how they support, encourage and demonstrate the behavior they seek. • Governance—A crucial part of an effective PM program is a governance model and process that ensures norms are adhered to, continuous improvement is encouraged and performance is audited and maintained.
Process Effectiveness and Organizational Development
• Organizational change readiness—Any change in behavior or process impacts many people and processes in an organization well beyond those who are implementing the change. These people and processes must be prepared to understand and support the change and the impacts on them understood and addressed.
To truly “transform” the way work is done, a program that addresses individual accomplishment is only one piece of an overall initiative. To realize and maintain results, the effort must be linked with the following process and organizational elements:
Change must happen to react to or anticipate the markets, economies and realities faced by any company. This change, when done in a thoughtful programmatic way, positions a company to survive in the near term and thrive in the long term.
• Definition of leadership roles and responsibilities—As with any training initiative, learners are like metal ingots in a blast furnace. In training, they change from a solid (their past behavior) to a liquid (ready to reform their behavior). When they leave the
WHO IS RICK CONTEL? Rick is
• Mentoring—Between each session, RWD instructors worked with each PM to help them apply what they had learned in class back on the job. Each PM created a personal “action plan” that formed the basis of this mentoring relationship.
the Director of Strategic Initiatives for RWD Technologies. Over the last 20 years, he has been deeply involved in the field of learning and human performance improvement as a practitioner, thought leader and business builder. As Director of Strategic Initiatives, Rick currently helps identify and bring new product and service offerings to market.
Human and operational performance improvement is the heartbeat of successful business & has the best chance of achieving its intended impact if all the elements are planned out and well executed.
Dare to Elevate Engagement PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT
By ANESE CAVANAUGH
Did you know that 21 percent of the global workforce considers themselves actively engaged in their work right now (loyal, passionate, positive, enjoying their work)? An alarming 38 percent are actively disengaged (meaning they’re complaining, bringing morale down or looking for another job). And the remaining 41 percent aren’t sure where they stand. Wow!
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oes that surprise you? Surprised me, but then not too much because I’ve watched chaos, scheduling, technology, travel and the demand for instant results increase dramatically over the years. We are busy! We can get a hold of each other in ways now that make one dizzy. Technology in many cases is replacing face-toface contact. Travel on Sunday for a Monday morning meeting is becoming quite the norm. So, as an executive coach, it doesn’t surprise me that we are bumping up against the following performance improvement challenges. Some of the biggest concerns reported in the ‘disengaged and unsure categories’ are: • Lack of a good work/life balance. • Lack of understanding of how one’s work is important or how it impacts the bottom line. • Not being matched up with roles that evoke passion and strength. • Not being recognized or engaged by leaders enough. As an effective leader in your organization, would you like to do something about that? Studies show that if you can move a ‘disengaged employee’
to be an ‘engaged employee,’ you get an instant 20 percent increase in productivity. Not bad performance improvement. Seems to me that would be worth doing. How about you? So what to do? Here are four tips by which you, as an effective leader, can address personal sustainability, engagement and performance improvement at the same time.
Performance Improvement Tip #1: Design ‘Personal Sustainability Time’ into the day. Some rules to support this tip are: schedule regular breaks for your team, schedule workouts, bring healthier choices for food into meetings, provide a ‘decompression’ or ‘renewal room,’ or do whatever feels like a good next move towards work/ life balance. Just taking regular ten-minute breaks every 90-120 minutes can do wonders. Performance Improvement Tip #2: Link people’s jobs to the bottom line. Challenge your people to link their roles to the major goals, outcomes and initiatives in the company. Help them see the importance of their work in relationship to what the team and organization is
accomplishing. In this busy world, it is quite easy to disconnect from the, “Why I’m doing this work and what’s important about it?” Reconnect with that, and you’ll be reconnected with some passion and purpose. Performance Improvement Tip #3: Are your people matched up with the right roles that excite, invigorate and give them a place to shine? Are your people passionate about their work? Are they in roles that best use their strengths and energy? Do you showcase their gifts and talents? If not, it’s a fabulous opportunity to see where things can be rematched and leveraged. If I’m not loving my work and passionate (or aware) about my purpose then I’m not playing to my strengths. I’m probably not going to be giving it 100 percent and I’m definitely not going to be as engaged as I could be. Performance Improvement Tip #4: Finally, assess how
How do you feel? A lack of work/life balance is among the biggest concerns reported by workers who feel disengaged.
engaged your people feel with you. Do they feel seen, acknowledged, respected and honored? Or not? Connection to human beings is not only a key element of feeling engaged, it’s also key to the human spirit - we want to be connected to others. If even in a quiet way for work/life balance, connection is important. Yes, ideally, it takes two to engage, and as many of my executive coaching clients hear me say, “The best place to make an impact is to be the first to engage.” Make it a point this month to fully engage daily with at least ten different people in your life. If even for two minutes, dare to fully engage. Notice your impact, and see what shows up. These are all ways you can begin to engage your work/life balance in one way or another today. So pick one thing or four, whatever feels meaningful and do-able. Something that you can write down (right now) and with which you can create a tangible action plan. You may not see the full impact immediately. But stick with it! The performance improvement will be there. Imagine the impact you can have on one person, and what impact they’ll have on another, and then another. WHO IS Anese cavanaugh? Anese Cavanaugh, founder of Dare To Engage, is devoted to helping forwardthinking business leaders become revered leaders in business and life while they build a more authentically engaged workforce, retain top talent, and support personal sustainability throughout their organizations. With degrees and credentials in the areas of kinesiology, leadership development, productivity, coaching and wellness, Anese brings a fresh perspective to experiential leadership training and fully-engaged living, celebrating and honoring the hero within each person. For more about Anese or the Dare To Engage Programs or to receive a complimentary report and audio on “Three Key Strategies to Lead Your Energy & Create Results (in business, in life, & in leadership)” go to www.daretoengage.com.
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Design “Personal Sustainability Time” into the day.
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Link people’s jobs to the bottom line.
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Are your people matched up with the right roles that excite, invigorate and give them a place to shine?
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Finally, assess how engaged your people feel with you.
Risk & the Science of Operating Procedures EMBEDDING A SAFETY CULTURE
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here is significant value derived from energy production and process unit operations. Likewise, there are significant costs associated with operating and maintaining these processes. Poor training, outdated procedures, and a culture that does not see the strategic value of training and procedures results in millions of dollars of lost production every year, not to mention the costs associated with risk of injury and life. While enterprises may invest a great deal in upgrading their procedures, they can sometimes fall short of sustaining this effort by failing to address the work process that supports them. Procedures alone are not enough. Use of Procedures Procedures are step-by-step instructions used to guide engineering, maintenance, and operations personnel on the proper execution of a task or groups of tasks. Areas where RWD develops or upgrades procedures vary in complexity and type including: • Commissioning activities • Startup and shutdown actions performed by a crew • Normal operating tasks associated with running a unit or equipment • Emergency Response Procedures
By BILL ROBERTS
One critical element for mitigating catastrophic releases of hazardous chemicals, personnel injury, and equipment damage is operating procedures. If this element is so critical to safety, why do so many companies get it wrong? • Material Movement • Safe Out (Repair and Replace) Procedures • Inspection and Temporary Procedures • Maintenance Procedures (Instrument, Electrical, Mechanical, etc.) Regardless of the type of procedure, there are many different approaches clients use to design, develop and implement procedures. When upgrading procedures and the work processes around them, it is critical that management elicits buy-in from end users concerning the procedure need, accuracy, relevance, and clarity. If this is not done, the best written procedure may never be used in practice. Major Industry Challenges Anyone who works in the area of procedures faces a myriad of common problems that challenge the industry today. Among the top three biggest challenges are: 1. Poor training and qualification systems 2. Poor work processes and infrastructure to maintain procedures 3. No objective approach to evaluate existing procedures Challenge # 1 - Training and Qualification
If a company has a poor
training and qualification system, the last resort to mitigate safety and environmental risk is often the procedure. The notion that a procedure is a vehicle to describe the process or inform an operator or maintenance person about safety policies often results in fat and burdensome procedures to read and maintain. If the front or end matter of every procedure is a two page diatribe about PPE, safety policies, and a detailed description of the equipment, an operator will not take the time to read it. The time and place to address these topics is in operator training and qualification. Keep procedures targeted to action steps and augment critical safety information with cautions, warnings and notes. Limit unnecessary descriptive text. Challenge #2 - Work Processes and Infrastructure
The key to maintaining good procedures is having value-focused work processes and supporting technology infrastructure that make it easy to access and manage procedural changes. The best way to maintain procedures is to use them. As procedures are used, the end user can identify missing or unclear steps. If a procedure change is too difficult to make because the work process requires loads of extra
paper work, a lengthy approval process, or a fight with an administrator there is a greater chance your procedures will remain unclear and outdated. There are a number of excellent applications that can assist in procedure writing, formatting and content storage and retrieval. Common technological solutions include an electronic content management application like Documentum©, and collaborative applications like SharePoint© and RWD’s Masterpiece Template. These solutions can provide great benefits including ease of access, content organization and protection, and improved productivity. If end users are not properly trained on these applications or the applications are not configured properly, then such benefits may not be realized. Challenge #3 - Objective Measures to Evaluate Procedures
To ensure procedures are properly maintained, an audit process should be established and objective measures or standards defined. Regardless of the evaluation approach, the key to an effective audit is having an independent evaluator and well defined standards. Standards should be written that are easy to understand, apply and not subject to a wide range of subjective opinion.
Without objective measures and standards, some routine tasks are embedded in procedures and may not require a procedure to perform them. If the frequency of a task or activity is so common or performed several times a day, creating a procedure may be overkill. For example, a kitchen recipe requires preheating an oven to 400 degrees. Rarely, do recipes include descriptive text on how to turn an oven knob or what display to read to confirm a 400 degree temperature is met. It is assumed a trained person will know how their oven works. Standards guide an organization on what kinds of activities and risk factors must be identified and subject to documentation in a procedure. The Role of Change Management One of the greatest challenges in the practice and use of procedures is getting end users to recognize the importance of using procedures. There are a number of reasons end users resist using procedures, despite the fact they are legally required and most operations recognize they prevent hazardous and unsafe practices
by their use. For these reasons and more, many enterprises stop using procedures and over time they become noncompliant. During training or procedures upgrade engagement, the art of change management plays an important role in winning the hearts and minds of management and end users. First, a clear vision of the future state must be accepted as a goal worthy to obtain. This involves engaging with key stakeholders across the organization on the importance of sound procedures and the work processes that support them. Second, an objective, risk-based analysis is used to determine the current state and gain acceptance from the organization that improving procedures is needed. Only after the need is recognized and a future state is understood, agreed on, and properly funded can a successful effort be ensured. Cost and Benefits of Procedures RWD estimates the average cost of maintaining one procedure is $150 per year. This
amount considers maintenance and review cost, maintaining systems to store and retrieve procedures, and auditing procedures for compliance with site and industry standards. The average number of procedures in a refinery ranges from 2,500 to 4,000 and represents a significant investment. When you consider risk of life, environmental hazards, and lost production, poor or unnecessary procedures are costly. Over the past 3 years of providing procedure reviews and risk-based gap analyses for various organizations, we’ve learned that typically: • Procedures existed but were not used or maintained • 20-30 percent of existing procedures could be removed • Additional procedures were needed
• No procedure standards were established • Work processes to support procedures were inadequate Companies’ aims should be to help address these common challenges, improve their methods, and seek better work processes and technologies to enable a lower cost of procedure maintenance and increased value from safe and accurate procedures. WHO IS Bill Roberts? Bill Roberts is a Business Development Manager for RWD’s Energy Performance Division. Bill has worked at RWD for 5 years, with 15 years experience selling technologies and human performance improvement solutions to the Oil and Gas, Refining, and Chemical Industries. He brings a client-focused, consultative sales approach to RWD’s business development activities. Bill is a graduate of Texas A&M University and has a MBA from Houston Baptist University.
Complicated procedures, like a choreographed dance, require training and practice to improve performance.
IMPROVING COMMUNICATION IMPROVES HUMAN PERFORMANCE
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Tips on Talk By MIKE KOPER
These guidelines for 21st century communications deliver on the importance of using communication skills that can yield optimal performance and expected results. You can avoid the proverbial missteps, vagueness or misunderstandings passed in a common message and achieve communications utopia.
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uppose you receive an email that reads, “the parts for the machine are in.” Perplexed, you ask yourself, “What? What exactly is this message telling me?” As you try to figure out this snippet of information, you may then ask yourself, “What parts, how many, from where, where are they, which machine, and who has them now?” The two core foundational elements of innovation are learning and communication. New processes and discoveries must be learned and continuously better communicated. Without a structured delivery of information important signals unintentionally get crossed. To further explain, consider the following example. Imagine that you are a rookie playing for the Boston Red Sox. It’s Opening Day, and on your first trip up to bat you are walked. Upon standing on first base you begin to lead off, and you look over to the third base coach trying to decipher the signal cadence but to no avail. Being fresh from the minor league, you’re unaware of what the indicator is in the signal cadence, in other words you’re lost and can’t decipher the message. Similarly, when
we as people or companies sit down systematically and aspire to learn, transfer knowledge or supply a service to elevate performance, the essence of the event is to communicate. Yet in reality, the foggy barrage of data, news, signals, numbers and messages has never before been more prolific and chaotic in the history of learning, or mankind for that matter, than it is today. In order to promote your message and expect good results, you must invoke a communication methodology where the anticipated result is remotely close to the real result. An example is the communication dialog occurring between the project manager, their client and the team members that perform the work. While the expectation has been set by the client and the project manager believes they have it covered, the
message relayed to the team members may set a vague course of direction. Through communication methodologies and acknowledgement of what is expected many upfront snafus can be halted and resolved early on in the project cycle. The same can be said for the delivery of complex technical skills that must be presented in a digestible format so that the end user can absorb and “take-away” the most critical content for future performance improvement. “Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a quality and productivity expert, professed that certain principles of management and cultures within organizations can increase quality, accelerate throughput and simultaneously reduce costs (generally by eliminating redundant repeated tasks and by reducing waste). His basis was that teams that focused on quality would inherently yield lower costs and higher quality, while teams focused solely on cost yielded short term savings and higher long-term costs while allowing quality to dissipate. Demming went on to say that all managers and/or management systems need to have what he called a System of Profound Knowledge, consisting of four parts: 1. Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes, it also
Imagine that you are a rookie playing for the Boston Red Sox… Being fresh from the minor league, you’re unaware of what the indicator is in the signal cadence, in
other words you’re lost and can’t decipher the message.
illustrated the fact that interactions (i.e. communications) can lead to their own restrictions on the state of the system. 2. Knowledge of variation: anticipating and strategically planning for differences in quality and output rates for a small sampling. 3. Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge, know-how and the limits of what can be known. 4. Knowledge of psychology: being cognitive of the concepts of human nature (pride, fear, feeling of importance, etc.) incorporating how chaos of data plays a role with each team member. The key is to practice continual improvement and think of manufacturing as a system, not as bits and pieces.”1 Similarly subtle techniques exist in communications that enable you to propel the innovation of skills and ideas to exacerbate a collaboration of action and results. Certain techniques available to trainers and managers include: 1) consistent explanation of material, 2) anticipate stallouts then provide solutions, 3) emphasize execution, experimentation and followthrough, 4) utilize references and samples to crystallize the expected output. Training and coaching are the instigators to the essence of learning. Robust
What’s the cost of misinterpreted messages? Like a serve and return, innovation has two core foundational elements: learning and communication. New processes and discoveries must be learned and continuously better-communicated.
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collaboration in innovative training then requires concise, accurate content compressed into snippets of highly focused knowledge. As management teams excel to meet the client expectations and as technical instruction tackles the students’ most pressing needs, communication on all forms or levels works as the omnipotent driver to achieve the balance in collaboration. Likewise, the information tidal wave has conditioned promulgated person-to-person communication acceptance of the desire to be saturated with data and the passion to disseminate it through the likes of blogs, share sites and even Twitter. The explosion of data coupled with news bombardments compound the heightened need of effective communication doctrines. Wherefore, communication ideals need to be set from the onset and greatly analyzed for budgeting criteria reflected in time and performance. The challenge of managing innovation through communication channels is applied discipline through open and consistent communicative doctrines. Doctrines by virtue are the guidelines in learning the importance of applying a communicated skill set. Such skill sets are concurrently competing through the same channel that is being proliferated by vast amounts of chatter data. Trainers, managers and developers have a duty to deliver the content to the end user in clear, concise and practical methods that will be retained and drawn upon for use. Instituting clarity into your organization culture will be replicated in your deliverables to clients, client relationships and in your brand. Such organizational transformation yields the innovation and
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practical problem solving elements that create the mantra that every activity and everyone’s job is part of the entire success. Because communication is the fuel of activity, select vocabulary can cut through the data barrage and reveal clarity to tasks. Once clear, many highlyspecific complex tasks become a repeatable flawless execution of actions that formulate the basis of throughput metrics and efficiency in human performance.
Communication is the fuel of activity—and instituting clarity into your organization’s communications and culture will be replicated in your deliverables to clients, client relationships and in your
brand.
Practical communication of elevated information can be optimized through doctrines that bring clarity to the voice of innovative management. They include messages containing: 1. Particulars—the surrounding details of fact that separate the specifics from the sea of generalities—commonly required for high standards of performance 2. Scope—upon observation, the scope builds the action content of who, what, when, where and why, constructing a base of which expectation is formulated 3. Expectation—the final vision, what’s delivered, “what will I get out of this” and “what attitude will I bring to manifest the good to come.” Measurable at various stages of the project to determine direction of progress toward achieving the scope 4. Constraints—sometimes controllable, sometimes uncontrollable—but each a condition that must be overcome in order to continue progress 5. Perform—this is where the rubber hits the road or the order is clear, the act of exerting energy to get output—to execute or to do an operation, to act in accordance with requirements or
obligations of, fulfill, keep promise, to carry through 6. Completion—Finalizing, arriving at the end of the project. Putting forth the concluding 10 percent that makes projects go from “attempted” to “accomplished” 7. Totality—Encompassing the whole aggregate picture, leaving nothing out 8. Response—assembling through words or acts a reaction to stimuli, an answer to a situation or reply about a communication 9. Achievement—attaining a certain attribute or lapsing a milestone condition 10. Whereabouts—location of what place at a specified moment in time, a measurable quality that can exemplify progress 11. Please/Thank You – always gestures in courtesy and salutatory of respect Project stall-outs as well as introducing complicated concepts can be minimized by clear descriptive communication that doesn’t leave the reader
in a fog and provokes the desired response from properly ascertained information. Better management of “unnecessary” communication dilemmas is a critical pillar to eliminating progress freeze-ups and unscheduled stall-outs. Corralling communications is a management tool for dedicating more time to focus on project deliverables. Noted quality guru, Phil Crosby, wrote a book in 1979 titled “Quality is Free.” Relevant today, the cost of quality in communications is likewise free as it tends to solidify direction and lead to greater throughput. Resources 1
W. Edwards Demming, System of Profound Knowledge, Wikipedia 2009 WHO IS MIKE KOPER? Mr. Koper is the Stamping, Powertrain, TCF Manager for RWD’s Manufacturing group and has been a leader in the company for 11 years. As a certified Project Manager, he works to interface with client’s plants while establishing new and maintaining current training programs. He brings over 20 years to the manufacturing industry and has authored over 15 articles in trade magazines.
Introducing the Clarity Model for Organizational Performance
“Of all human inventions, the organization— a machine constructed of people performing interdependent functions—is the most powerful.”
By BUTLER NEWMAN WITH Kathy Kleponis AND Kevin Boyd
Robert Shea
Unleashing the potential power stored in modern organizations is elusive in today’s jumbled business environment. There are many excellently conceived strategies that carry the bloom of hope when launched, only to end up as withering disappointments for the executive team, employees, customers and shareholders. Why is it that organizations so often fail to perform in the execution of perfectly viable strategies?
O
ver the last 50 years this question, in many respects, has become the fundamental purview of the organizational development discipline: a discipline that has a history of success, particularly during that period of our economic development that is characterized by slow and infrequent transition. Today’s global economic pace creates new challenges, however, for traditional organizational development approaches. This new pace, along with other
global competitive factors, indicates the need to address the question of organizational performance from a fresh perspective. A New Perspective The Clarity Model presents a counter-intuitive and proven approach to achieve organizational performance in spite of the transient and uncertain nature of modern organizational structures. The model, while not ignoring organizational design and
development efforts does not focus at the macro level. Instead, it focuses on the critical work that must be performed, the explicit processes required and the readiness of the people within the organization to perform this work. The approach described by this model has developed iteratively over the last 20 years and has been successfully deployed in numerous global corporations. It does not bring a “canned” solution to performance
problems encountered in modern organizations. Rather, it provides a framework for management to evaluate, design and deliver performancecentered interventions derived from newfound clarity in the work to be done, the people required, and the environment in which the work must be accomplished. All of which can seem exceeding complex in modern, global organizations. The model has proven to be successful however, in part, through the simplicity it brings to this otherwise complicated equation. Brief Background on Origin The decade of the 1980s launched an era of change. Technological advances in robots and personal computers painted the horizon with hope and promise of a new, highly
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an i za t
ional Environm e nt
Process Clarity and Effectiveness
People Readiness
What makes for interesting dialogue for any organization contemplating its overall performance … is the question, “What are the points of emphasis to accelerate in practice how these areas work together?” Figure 1. THE CLARITY MODEL.
automated world for business. The new world would require less involvement from people and the processes by which they worked. Initial attempts to build this new world brought colossal failures in implementation, however, as is illustrated by General Motor’s famous and failed effort to modernize its manufacturing facilities with robots and other factory automation technology. By GM’s own admission, a lack of process and improperly prepared employees were among the chief reasons for the 17 billion dollar failure. Meanwhile, in circles devoted to the study of human performance in organizations, the discipline of Human Performance Technology began to take shape. The formation of this new discipline was in part led by Joe Harless and his methodology to examine human performance in organizations in a new light. Harless developed a pragmatic approach to apply the theories of his mentor,
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Thomas F. Gilbert, a Harvard educated psychologist and author of the book, Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance. The fresh focus provided by Harless emphasized the accomplishments of individuals as these accomplishments contributed to the overall output of a particular business process. Additionally, Harless’s approach forever decoupled the notion that human performance in the workplace was mostly a function of the knowledge an individual had learned… knowledge literally committed to the memory of each individual. The advent of the personal computer would prove beneficial in further dispelling this notion. The lessons that Harless pioneered would, in retrospect, prove beneficial when applied to transformational efforts such as that attempted by GM. As briefly highlighted above, the events of the ‘80s served as a crucible for three
Business Results
significant thoughts that are relevant when considering organizational performance today: 1) significant business issues have resulted from lack of focus on process and human preparedness in the context of an organization’s ability to perform, 2) the discipline of Human Performance Improvement has brought new insights to replace traditional paradigms for learning and knowledge transfer, and 3) technology can be leveraged to support and augment workplace learning. Empirical analysis derived through 20 years of experience in helping major corporations address challenges in each of these areas has led to a convergence in perspective. Some key observations on organizational performance have resulted from this convergence: • Organizational performance requires that individuals within an organization be focused on producing specific and related accomplishments • Organizational accomplishments are necessarily tied to the context of specific business processes • If business processes are non-existent or poorly defined then accomplishments become almost impossible • In light of the pace in which businesses must change today, it has become
increasingly probable that inadequate attention has been paid to process definition making it likely that many entities operate with poorly designed and communicated business processes • The key driver for organizational performance is increasingly shifting to the existence of rapidly adaptable processes for which relevant information can be quickly communicated to the workforce The real secret then when considering how to drive organizational performance is in creating a focused and deliberate effort on the process and the readiness of people to operate in that process. The best efforts also synchronize organizational development and other HR initiatives to support the business process and remove significant barriers to developing motivated performers. Those environments that are unable to achieve synchronization can still move organizational performance forward through diligent attention to process and people. Three Fundamental Areas of Focus Organizations form to produce a specific output. In the corporate world this output is typically measured in some form of business result or return to the stakeholders. Historically, during periods of stable external environments, developing the requisite performance levels to achieve business results is a relatively straightforward undertaking. However, as factors in the external environment shift, new forces place strain on existing business strategies. This strain ultimately forces new or modified business strategies; and with each new strategy comes one or more new corporate initiatives.
Creating the organizational performance necessary to successfully execute these new initiatives in spite of the modern rate at which they are introduced requires deliberate, focused activity in three fundamental areas: Process Clarity & Effectiveness, People Readiness, and Organizational Environment. These fundamental areas, when viewed as a system, form the core tenets of the Clarity Model. (See Figure 1.) The fact that these areas work together to produce results is well accepted in today’s organizations. What makes for interesting dialogue for any organization contemplating its overall performance or more specifically, its ability to successfully execute new initiatives, is the question, “What are the points of emphasis to accelerate in practice how these areas work together?”
The Clarity Model addresses this question and provides a systematic way for organizations to quickly channel the energy exerted towards building new organizational capability. The approach argued through the Clarity Model is discussed in detail in the RWD whitepaper: The Clarity Model: A counter-intuitive approach to organization performance. In brief, the approach describes a flow that begins by creating well-articulated processes, develops methods to properly prepare people to execute those
processes and adapts to existing organizational environments even as those environments morph to form long-term supportive structures. For more information, contact RWD at: info@rwd.com. WHO IS BUTLER NEWMAN? Mr. Newman is Director of Organizational Performance Learning for RWD. With over 22 years of experience, he is a seasoned executive who focuses on holistic solutions for effective performance improvement, human performance, planning, execution and change management.
experienced learning strategist and human performance improvement professional, and has published several articles in Performance Matters and other training publications. WHO IS Kevin Boyd? Kevin Boyd, the Director of Continuous Improvement at RWD, has more than 14 years in the professional services industry. He is an RWD Certified Project Manager, as well as a Project Management Professional, certified by the Project Management Institute. At present, Kevin is applying RWD’s proprietary Lean methodology internally on RWD’s business processes and information systems.
WHO IS Kathy Kleponis? Kathy Kleponis is The Director of Strategic Partnerships for RWD. She is an
The real secret then … is in creating a focused and deliberate effort on the process and the readiness of people to operate in that process.
Mark Your Calendar! We’ve got plenty of ways for you to improve YOUR performance! Help your employees perform their jobs better using a systematic and proven method (Webinar)
2009 LandWarNet Conference
July 22, 2009 Baltimore, MD
The Latest Approach to Learning Management For Your Employees (Webinar)
AHA Leadership Summit (Conference) July 23-25, 2009 San Francisco, CA
(Conference) August 18-20, 2009 Ft. Lauderdale, FL
August 26, 2009 Baltimore, MD
A Practical Approach to Introducing Learning Programs into your Organization (Webinar) August 12, 2009 Baltimore, MD
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Performance
MATTERS Solutions That PerformTM
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