The "Heavy Hitter" and the "Big Guy"

You would have heard the Term "Heavy Hitter" if you've worked in an American company.  Some others use the simpler "Big Guy".  Typically used in an Operations context (and hence my interest), these are Managers who head and manage large teams - read head count or FTE.  I heard of these and, possibly, even used these terms in GE and other companies I worked for.
Nice informal terms in themselves.  The problem lies in their association with head count.  Recently, I came across this term again.  Nothing wrong you might say, its only a name.  Disagree.

I think it reinforces the wrong kind of behavior.  Measuring only the size of the team you lead to identify the big guy, is all yesterday.  If you really want to drive a culture that focuses on core competency, global sourcing / out sourcing and sub-contracting, measuring a managers potential or experience by the number of people s/he handles can only result in building large teams, turf wars and politics.

Chatting informally with Nagi Nagendran, Managing Director of Operations at Citi, Kuala Lumpur, just confirmed this! He notes that while on the one hand, large banks and financial institutions encourage headcount and cost reductions, when it comes to grading operations jobs, number of people managed still plays a big role- an intrinsic disconnect! His personal take is that with increased digitization and and spreading of work across multiple sites and entities -including captives and third parties- senior operations managers will really be managing a 'network' where it is tough to employ 'people managed' as a primary measure of job size. Other factors, taken across the network as a whole, will become more important in his view.

The 'only a name' logic doesn't work either.  As the wag said, a rose may be a rose by any other name, but order a bunch of bougainvilleas for your girl friend and you'll learn something new!   More importantly, a name connotes a brand.  Also, give a name to anything and you begin getting attached to it.  Inversely, give something ugly or undesirable a nice name and you start accepting it.  I am reminded of "putting a pet to sleep".  You get the drift...

I am not arguing a case for banning the terms.  My attempt is to re-define them.  "Heavy Hitter" and "Big Guy" should, may be, look at the budget a manager controls, or even better, the change he is able to make in key ratios: say, revenue per head or profit per head.  And don't just use these ratios in absolute terms.  It is even better to measure the year-on-year change in these ratios.  Now, if you increase profit per head by 15% over previous year, that's a Big Guy, ready for the bigger job!  Agree?

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com

The Power of Feedback

Feedback is one of the most under-utilized tools of leadership! There is, of course, lots of literature on customer feedback and how that helps product development, relationship management and the like; but precious little on its importance in Performance Management, and therefore on the criticality of feedback in leadership training.  Now, I would not be so vocal about it if I had not learnt of this MNC taking up feedback training as a strategic leadership initiative across all its global offices.

Today, I want to focus on management feedback.The ones we (are supposed to) give to and take from our teams.

The more I dig into this, the more I am convinced that it is a critical part of a performance improvement program.  If you have a Performance Improvement program or training going on in your company, I’d advise you to dig into it and ensure there is a big chunk that talks about the importance of and the 'how to' of giving and accepting feedback.

Most of us do use some types of feedback extensively.  The problem is more to do with the adequacy and the richness of the feedback we get and give.  Lets focus on that for a moment.

Technically, feedback describes the situation when output from an event in the past will influence the same event in the future.This is enabled by informing the performer about the outcome and the manner in which the outcome was achieved (or missed). The idea is for the performer to appreciate, both intellectually and emotionally, the manner in which s/he put in effort and how that effort impacted the outcome. The idea is for the performer to use the new information to do a better job of the next effort s/he makes. Thus, feedback can be said to be effective only if the information provided changes performance in the desired direction. To look at it differently, one really cannot (it, really, is impossible to) improve one’s performance without feedback.
The most common form of feedback we receive is in the form of the outcome of our effort itself, i.e., whether or not our efforts have resulted in output that works. Whether we have passed or flunked. This is great and definitely qualifies as the first and primary form of feedback. This level of feedback is OK for the most basic of activities. Activities that are so simple - or where one's understanding of it is so deep - that the mere binary information of good or bad tells me what exactly I should change to get it right next time. Unfortunately, most often this is far from adequate. Lets call this Level Zero feedback.
Six Sigma teaches us that finding a defective unit, in itself, can do very little in terms of improving our performance. At best, we can remove that particular unit or activity from the pile of finished goods (or our CV) to ensure that it does not bother the customer (or employer). We still may not know how the defective result came about in the first instance, and much less about how not to repeat that part of the process. So, we do need a deeper analysis or insight into the process to make out where exactly we went wrong and what it is that we need to change.
This is where feedback can be most helpful. If you can use your experience and expertise in helping your team member identify the ‘Defect Opportunity’* in the process, you are adding significant value to his/her learning. The cognitive element of understanding where exactly I went wrong and the emotional element of generating a new hope that I will definitely do better next time, gives me a massive boost of adrenalin. That is the power of feedback. That is the spring action that effective feedback results in. That motivational aspect is the reaso feedback is so important from a leadership perspective as well.
Importantly, the Defect Opportunity does not lie in the output. The output only tells us of defects present, if any. The Defect Opportunity lies in the Input and / or the Process. This means it lies either in our knowledge or understanding of the process or its intended outcome, or in the actions taken to achieve it.
If you, like me, are hooked to visuals, I would picture it as shown in Figure 1.

Of course, you can do better than merely pointing out the defect opportunity where s/he went wrong. You can help analyze and diagnose it for him / her. This can help even better in avoiding the same mistake next time. This means, through your past experience you have learned the various points in the process where one could go wrong and you share this with your team. The idea is that your protégé will be able to use this information to be more ‘careful’ at these points, to avoid making defects. We may call this Level One feedback.
The fact is, you can do even better! To make your feedback even more effective, you can also share how best s/he could avoid going wrong at each defect opportunity. The tips and tricks you have learnt from your own experience and received wisdom on how to avoid making those mistakes in those circumstances. When you do this effectively, you have achieved Level Two feedback. You are now clearly on the journey of performance improvement.
Finally, the very best kind of feedback I know is where we coach our ward on how s/he can analyze his/her own performance to improve results… teaching them to fish, as it were. This is what kicks off a virtual feedback cycle for your protégé; where s/he builds this analysis / feedback phase into the core process. That is Level Three feedback! Figure 2 depicts the feedback Maturity Model.

Let me also sound a cautionary note. What we have talked about above is assuming your protégé cannot perform these tasks him/herself. This is important for the leader to understand. If your team member is shrewd enough to do this analysis by him/herself, you will only end up killing their enthusiasm by going through the four levels routinely.  As a good leader, you need to be able to effectively assess the capability, energy and enthusiasm of your protégé / team to give the right level of feedback and back-off at the right time!

Hope this helped... I am waiting to read your feedback!

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com

* The element, action or event that gives us a chance for making a defect.

Staying with Operations Excellence...

The last time we were here, I said, "The surprising thing about execution is that it is very, very simple. Any one can do it.  And that is the problem! It is very, very boring."  So how does one handle this situation? 
The first - and simplest - is when an 'activist board' takes control to decide whether the company needs an 'Operational CEO' or a "Visionary CEO" (yes, they are different people).  They then go about hiring the right kind of CEO.  The Operational guy does not get bored with the execution stuff.  S/he revels in it.  They love going to the shop floor, getting involved, meeting the people there, motivating them with coffee or beer.  They pour over reports and ask questions.  They are thinking next quarter, next product launch - and if they really need some visionary thinking, they call in McKinsey - or is it Bain? - whoever.

What if the Board decides they want a "Visionary CEO"?  Well this guy comes up with a new vision, is hopefully charismatic and manages to rally the troops around their vision.  Should the time come for execution, he hires a Chief Operations Officer.

But then a few CEOs manage to do both, i.e., the vision thing as well as getting hands dirty.  How do these people do it? 
Great companies like GE have developed a mantra for this.  They use two broad tools:

1. Dashboards
2. Calendars

Dashboards are standard reporting formats, typically graphic.  They tell the operations story visually and do not take a lot of pages.  They come in slides, instead.  The page layout and orientation shifts from portrait to landscape.  You see less text and more bullets, arrows, graphs, pictures and colors.  You think visually.  This brings the detail more in tune with the visionary's bias for the visual.

Dashboards are not easy though.  They take a lot of time to design.  Even more, to bring to shape.  The CEO needs to sit with her team and be able to identify the vital few metrics s/he wants to track.  They need to be few and yet comprehensive enough.  A Balanced Score Card kind of approach is very helpful here.  It then takes a smart six sigma kind of person to design the actual dashboard templates.  The scene then moves to IT to come up with a system to generate the required data and massage it to fit the template on a periodic basis. 
The good news is that this can be done. 

Calendars.  This is the "Financial Year" kind of rhythm, you find in the Finance Departments of most multinationals.  "If its September, its time for Budget Blues", "February is Performance Review month", etc.  You set up a detailed, enterprise-wide process for key functions and ensure it works like clockwork. 
The idea is to eliminate the 'clutter' of unplanned work taking over your day.  (You never succeed 100%, but you can still do a good job). 
So, there are cycles for all key processes.  The work for them starts on a particular date every year and concludes on a particular day every year - typically by way of a presentation to the CEO or to the Board.  This enables this CEO to stay on top of operational issues, while focusing all the time in-between to his vision thing.

I bet there are more.  Can't think of them right now, though!  If you can, please add here.

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com

"Operations Excellence"

Nice buzz word, that! Never fails to capture the interest of the CEO! Every one seeks Ops Excellence. However, most managers have no clue on how to achieve it. The real reason is, they haven't really explored its meaning in detail. A quick search for the definition of the term on Google reveals thousands of pages and as many approaches! One model I liked took the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award as a reference point. That is definitely a good place to start. However, the award considers over a thousand points - way too much for the business we meet with every day. (I have not yet begun consulting with the CEOs of the Fortune-100). To me Ops Excellence has two elements:

• Satisfactorily meeting the requirements of ALL stake holders
• Continuous improvement.

That's it!

So, who are our stake holders?

I think of four:

1. Share Holder
2. Customer
3. Employee
4. Community

Not necessarily in that order. The priority depends on where you are messing up!
I would recommend most businesses should start with this simple model and move forward.

The next question is: "what does each of these stake holders want?"

Often, they know what they want. Sometimes we have to tell them. Let’s start with areas where the stake holder knows what s/he wants. We then check the data to see if we are able to give them what they want. If yes, we go beyond toward 'delighting' them. If not, we identify the gaps and plug away.

Looks simple enough, but this is where the gap between knowledge and execution widens. Up to this point, most business leaders have no difficulty. In fact they know the gaps intuitively. The challenge lies in the next steps.

Most CEOs have not listed out the gaps explicitly. Those who have done that, lack the ability to strategically prioritize them. And finally, even assuming they (or a consultant) did manage to prioritize well; few know how to pursue the chosen priorities simultaneously.

At this point, managers need several skill sets / tools:

1. Ability to identify, measure and set KPIs for each area that stake holders are interested in
2. A performance management process that tracks and measures all round performance
3. A methodology for initiating and establishing a continuous improvement culture, and
4. A determined and consistent management focus on monitoring the process… call this execution.

Items 1 to 3 can be bought. Item 4 cannot be bought and cannot be delegated. It is THE JOB of leadership. This is also the most common point of failure.
The surprising thing about execution is that it is very, very simple. Any one can do it.
And that is the problem! It is very, very boring. It does not challenge your intelligence. It does not get you in to the front pages.
No wonder most leaders hate to do this. They either delegate this or else do it in an inconsistent manner. No wonder Ops Excellence fails.
In upcoming posts, we will look at how some great companies manage to do this…. And how smaller businesses can aspire to learn and practice this.

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com

A Key Performance issue: Design of KPIs

Working on performance issues of a Dutch MNC in Malaysia.
Issues are (of course) more Malaysian than Dutch. The big ones?
- One, KPIs are loosely defined... basically each Manager is left to set their own KPIs for their team. There's no 'roll-up' in to the company's objecitves - at least the's no process or system to ensure this happens.
Working on this, I found the concept of Value Tree extremely helpful. Ever tried that? Simple and powerful concept. Start with your vision / value / objectives and go on drilling down layer by layer to factors contributing to it. (Six Sigma types will recognise the Transfer Function here; {Y = f(x)}. When you reach specific activities or a point where the responsibility lies with a specific Manager, list out the KPIs. I'm not yet comfortable with the linkage with KPIs. Got to pilot in real life and check-out. Maybe for my next entry!
- Two, No rhythmic / regular follow-up on the KPIs. There is of course a generic, informal, "how is it going?" kind of follow-up and the Supervisor does stay in touch with their team's performance. The issue was that there was no feedback to the subordinate. This meant, the sub did not know how s/he was doing and the annual performance reviews always became nightmarish.
Funnily I've seen this across the board in Malaysia as well as India and Indonesia, the three Asian countries I'm familiar with. I think this is very much a cultural issue. We Asians do have trouble giving face-to-face feedback - whether positive or negative. I'm working on a Training Program to imbed this in to the culture. I guess, to start with I've got to build it into a process and ensure the process stabilises... hopefully it will become a culture eventually.

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com

At The Heart of Change Management...

I think the essence of change that is accepted and adopted is that it is desired by the "Changee" - not the changer.  We all like to change.  But we want to change at OUR pace, in the direction WE like.  We do not want the other guy telling us what to change to.

Unfortunately most change management begins after some one up there has already decided what that change needs to be, based on what he wants.  Then he assumes people are resisting his change and sets about 'managing' the resistance, to ensure everyone adopts the change he wants.

In our work shops on change management, we do  two things differently and the results have been amazing.

1. We make sure the participants, mostly 'change agents' and 'solution developers', experience the pain of change directly, themselves.
2. We spend a lot of time understanding how change management needs to be built into the solution itself.  Understanding the life, culture, behavior and roots of the people impacted by any proposed change is part of the Analysis / Diagnisis phase of any change effort.  This has to precede the development of the solution.  When you understand that some of your audience may be asians, you build the asian-friendliness into the solution.  When you do this, you  don't need a separate 'change management' initiative.

Key to this type of Analysis is the fact that people develop roots in their current context.  When I take up a job in Brentwood, CA, I also get myself a home nearby and put my children into schools nearby.  These 'roots' cause me to 'resist' any change to my job location.  If this is understood, the change agent stops saying I resist change and starts exploring how he can solve the problem by adapting the solution or building facilitation of my move away from Brentwood into the solution and / or implementation plans.  Once the 'root cause' of my resistance is addressed logically, I do not resist the change any more.  I've become a partner - even a champion.

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com

Change we like!

Guess its the right time to talk about change!
With Obama winning so handily on that platform!!
... and "management experts" still talk of people's resistance to change!
I find that notion pretty ridiculous. How often have you worn the same shirt to work the next day? Isn't that changing?
My expert-brother tells me that's not real change!
So what is?
Here's another example I love.
For a century people 'resisted' any change to the QWERTY board. I am told there have been several 'improved' versions - all rejected by the market, due to the proverbial resistance to change!
And then comes along another 'key board' which, if anything, is ten times more difficult, cumbersome and squished up. And it becomes a run away hit! If you have not guessed it, I am talking about the numeric keypad of the mobile phone, now the rage among teens (actually, pretty universal, already) for sms.
How come this clumsy pad has been adopted so enthusiatically, when many earlier ones, designed specifically for ease of use failed?

Let me get back to that soon. Meantime love to have some thoughts from readers

Sri

www.sigmax-e.com