Back to Design Basics

I recently watched Peter Skillman (VP Designof HERE) discuss an experiment he conducted and the discoveries he made while doing it – listen below:

The kindergartners outperformed all the “smart” people in the experiment!  The lowest performing group . . . business students.

Telling.  Organizations have over-thought and over-designed just about everything – leading to complexity and waste by designing in  their own problems.

Over and over again I have found that the approach from management in service organizations is to get an idea, plan and roll-out to the organization via project management the implementation of the idea.  Long projects (Over 6 months) have requirements change because of the dynamic nature of service.  The project is typically obsolete before the implementation is finished.

Information technology companies selling software perpetuate and lock in the waste by “nailing down” requirements and writing contracts that impede or dismiss an iterative approach.  In fact, the whole software development process has created a barrier to changing requirements.

Those software companies that do iterative type of software development are still missing the work design issues that need to be dealt with before starting to code.  The business requirements are born from a poor work design and can only be seen when developers actually understand the work – not through written requirements, but through observation and iteratively improving the work.  This is a programmer-user activity with no intermediaries.

Few software companies address the work design itself and when they do it is usually a retrofitting activity.  Slam the software in and then make process improvements.  The operating assumption is that the design ONLY needs process improvement rather than redesign BEFORE any software is provisioned.  Monthly sales targets in a software organization wouldn’t allow such diligence and even if this didn’t exist most software organizations don’t have the knowledge to do a redesign (one of the reasons I offer a workshop and consulting in this area).

Service organizations would be better off to design/redesign services before pulling in IT companies.  When you have iteratively discovered a better design, then software may make sense.  Service organizations just like to do things backwards . . . an operating reality.

Regardless, there are better ways to go about improving service organizations than the large single-focused project.  We are better off being armed with knowledge and an “iterative” discovery process than the business school definition being used today.

Take a look at your organization as your customers see it –  our 4-day workshop has been called “an awakening experience.”  You will understand the customer view of your organization and take inventory of the assumptions, beliefs and perspectives that drive performance.  Tripp Babbitt is a service design architect and organizational futurist.  His company helps service organizations understand future trends, culture and customer.  The 95 Method designs organizations to improve the comprehensive customer experience while improving culture and management effectiveness.  Read his column at Quality Digest and his articles for CallCenterIQ. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

 

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Barclays: 2,000 More Layoffs for Decimation

Barclays  announced they plan to cut 12,000 workers and give out 10% more in bonuses for management  as reported in the USAToday article, Barclays cuts 12,000 jobs, ups bonuses 10%.

If Barclays had laid off another 2,000 employees they would have achieved the decimation that ancient Romans used to seek compliance.  You see, back in the days of the Roman empire when you had unrest, mutiny, disobedience, etc. in the Roman army you would kill every 10th man to restore order.

Barclays has committed an act that everyone knows deep down smells bad.  There is something not right about this practice that does not sit well in the gut of most people.  Besides the moral issues, the unrest is real.  If you read the comments section of the article you will find that people are calling to boycott Barclays and today the stock is tanking – but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

I have written much about the problems associated with ranking, Better Thinking: The Case Against Targets, Rewards, Incentives, Performance Appraisals and Ranking Workers and you can search this blog for more.

I believe an important question to pose to anyone doing layoffs to keep the most talented and rid themselves of the under performers is, ” Why did you hire the under performers in the first place?”  There is real cost associated with hiring poorly . . .especially 12,000 of them.

Another question I would have . . . would be, “Were they really good performers working in a bad organizational design?”  Here is where I find the biggest problem, the design of the work and system of management that has been put in place.

It is hard to blame the CEO – although many will.  The culture of many organizations is steeped in this Darwinian, “survival of the fittest” mentality.  The cost to both society and the organization are immeasurable, however, most CEOs have learned that getting to the top means leaving carnage strewn behind them is the path there.  It is they way of the world.

There is a better way.  Safer than the known way.

This means building a system where all people have dignity and worth.  Especially, those on the front line that can deliver what is important to customers without them there is no business.  Building a better system to work in can lead to not having to make cuts in the first place.

However, dire times require action.  It is hard to justify bonuses to the best while dumping 12,000 souls on society that at one time you found worthy to hire.  The loss is too great.  Just ask Enron who hired and kept the best.

Here is what I would suggest to organizations instead that would provide better leadership:

  • Forgo the bonuses and keep the employees.
  • If that is not enough, management should take a 10% cut.
  • If that is not enough, than a 10% across the board cut of salaries for all employees.

The above are actions to take for executives that want to lead from the front and not behind.  Otherwise, by default, society will view you as greedy and employees will view you as selfish.

Take a look at your organization as your customers see it –  our 4-day workshop has been called “an awakening experience.”  You will understand the customer view of your organization and take inventory of the assumptions, beliefs and perspectives that drive performance.  Tripp Babbitt is a service design architect and organizational futurist.  His company helps service organizations understand future trends, culture and customer.  The 95 Method designs organizations to improve the comprehensive customer experience while improving culture and management effectiveness.  Read his column at Quality Digest and his articles for CallCenterIQ. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

 

 

 

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Standardization: A View

Blog Pictures 092Allow me to give you a view on standardization.  As part of this view, I will give you my background which will give you some insight into why I see things this way.  Gone is the moniker of “Lean basher” or being part of a group that takes pleasure in being experts, but not very helpful.  I represent only myself and what I have learned.

I started my “organizational improvement” journey back in industrial distribution in the mid-80s. I was influenced by the work of W. Edwards Deming as his message was far different than what I had learned in my MBA program.  I made lots of mistakes (and still do) and continue to learn.  I do not believe there are experts when I consult, the true experts are those doing the work.  I can only offer what I have experienced and learned.

I’ve worked with just about every type of service organization and spent a large bulk of this time working with information technology companies.  Upon reflection of these years, most of the work was to standardize and improve processes as coding to a standard process is much easier than coding to large variation.

The more I saw standardization being written into business requirements the more I saw workers and service suffer.  Standardized menus to choose from call center workers that don’t reflect the actual demands.  In contact centers, I saw the most popular choice of call type being “miscellaneous” or “other” – worthless data that could help no one.

I also saw workers being forced to standardized processes, scripts, rules, procedures that did not fit the questions customers were asking.  This caused customers to call back or leave – you can measure the ones that call back, but it can be difficult to measure who left or gave up and will eventually leave.

I have also seen that as I worked with information technology customers’ that making a change to the software became an event.  Even small changes had to be vetted and prioritized while workers and customers waited.  Governance meetings were held and items would move up and down the list.  I knew there was something seriously wrong when a developer after a governance meeting stated, “I could have made that change in 5 minutes and we discussed it for two hours.”  The software development cycle (a form of standard work) to build software had become the inhibitor to enabling the work that mattered to workers (end users) and customers.  IT had lost its aim – to help users create value for customers.

Side note: Information technology companies have made it much harder than it used to be or needs to be.  The answer to budget and time overruns to IT projects was building more bureaucracy with BAs, Testers and PMs.  Most of the time the PMs are just asking the developers when they will be done or ticking some other box.  The truth is the only role that creates value is the developer.  The way software has been split into multiple specialists has created more complexity and waste.  Even small changes can take weeks and months.  All in the name of process.

Today, when I work with a client I don’t even talk about standardization.  I talk about a customer’s interactions and aims, and organizational perspectives, beliefs and assumptions.  The first two help you see what the customer sees and that last three help you understand why you designed the work that way.  I call it a Model to Unlearn as part of the 95 Method – it is explained in the 95 Method video.

During this exercise, I typically will find where standardization is driving in avoidable demand (demand that customers don’t want to have and service organizations don’t want).  If I was talking about 1 or 2% that might be OK, but when you see 25, 50 – 80% you know there is something seriously wrong. The root of the problem is not all standard work, but it is certainly its brothers and sisters . . . scripts, rules, procedures, etc.  All these things create barriers between front-line worker and customer.  And many were created by management and support areas without worker input.

Instead, what I find works best is smartening up workers.  Learn the end-to-end system and the beliefs and assumptions that went into it.  Armed with knowledge, understanding and wisdom . . . workers can decide how best to design the work.  This is not what I see happening under any moniker (lean, six sigma, TQM, continuous improvement, etc), instead we get the “smart” people from support areas and management to make standardized work to control the worker.  Adding additional waste by inspecting them, pressuring compliance and then rewarding or disciplining them – how fun a job is that?  The worker I mean.

The key to me is that I don’t even bring up standardized work until the worker says, “It would be nice to have something that helps me do this.”  It is natural and unprovoked by outside influence – you won’t have to reward, discipline, inspect or seek compliance because the worker understands the need.  The added benefit is increase morale.

Take a look at your organization as your customers see it –  our 4-day workshop has been called “an awakening experience.”  You will understand the customer view of your organization and take inventory of the assumptions, beliefs and perspectives that drive performance.  Tripp Babbitt is a service design architect and organizational futurist.  His company helps service organizations understand future trends, culture and customer.  The 95 Method designs organizations to improve the comprehensive customer experience while improving culture and management effectiveness.  Read his column at Quality Digest and his articles for CallCenterIQ. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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Service is a Box of Chocolates

You never know what you’re gonna get.

 

The standardization juggernaut continues to carve a deep path through service.  Improvement folks, IT, management, etc. continue to hitch their wagon to the standardization movement.  Complete with mind numbing audits and inspection to seek compliance.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the workers were “pulling” for standard work, but what I continue to see is folks not doing the work or even really have a clue about the work coming up with standard work and sending the audit police after the perpetrators.

However, this is only half the problem.  The other half is the problems you get if the processes look the same from location to location, but the demands are different.  Now you may be creating avoidable customer demands in the name of standardization.

Still another half (yes, I know I have used up my halves) say, “no kaizen without standard work” quoting Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System (TPS) assuming manufacturing is the same as service . . . it is not.  Consider Forrest Gump and the box of chocolates, if the variety of demands is great or different by proximity forced standardization can create more problems (increased costs, lost customers, more mistakes, etc.).

Regardless, studying the effects of standardization before a massive roll-out is a good place to start.  Steps to standardization:

  1. Study customer interactions/demands and do this with workers that deal with customers/clients/patients/constituents.  Are they repeated over and over (like manufacturing)?  Probably not, but if they are then make sure the worker is asking for standard work – after all they have to use them.  Forced standardization will create zombie workers.
  2. Train on customer demands, not processes.  If workers are being trained, they need help to learn.  If 80-90% of the volume of demands are from just a few types of interactions then only train what they need to do them.  Leave out the IT system training, only train to what they need to handle what customers are asking for . . . the rest is waste.
  3. For the rest, customer-interacting workers are better to work to axiom and principles.  If you have a principle to “Do what is important to customers – that is reasonable.”  Workers will know what to do without having their minds checked at the door.  The workers engaged with customers have all the information needed and are in the best position to make a decision on what is best for the customer.  Once you restrict this with policies, rules and procedures or have to pass to managers you enter cost and waste.

 

Maybe I need a new slogan like:

“Friends don’t let friends standardize”

“When it absolutely, positively, has to be standardized let the workers do it.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  Don’t standardize.”

The tyranny of forced standardization without knowledge or worker input has to come to an end.  I hope it comes soon.

Take a look at your organization as your customers see it –  our 4-day workshop has been called “an awakening experience.”  You will understand the customer view of your organization and take inventory of the assumptions, beliefs and perspectives that drive performance.  Tripp Babbitt is a service design architect and organizational futurist.  His company helps service organizations understand future trends, culture and customer.  The 95 Method designs organizations to improve the comprehensive customer experience while improving culture and management effectiveness.  Read his column at Quality Digest and his articles for CallCenterIQ. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt. 

 

 

 

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