An organization's leadership system serves two main purposes. First, it is intended to ensure that those who have formal leadership roles have the skills necessary to fill those roles effectively. Second, it serves to communicate the organization's mission, vision, values, and goals across all workgroups and into the community, while also serving as a a feedback vehicle from those stakeholders into the organization's planning system.

Leadership systems tend to breakdown when leaders do not practice those skills that they should be modeling, either because the people in formal leadership roles do not have these skills or there are no consequences for failing to contribute effectively as a leader. Breakdowns also occur when leaders fail to effectively communicate their strategic intent to their people and the community on a consistent and clear basis, and when they fail to obtain the necessary feedback for performance improvement from their stakeholders in an open and consistent manner.

I can help you install an effective system for measuring leadership performance and developing those skills that this evaluation process identifies as being in need of improvement. I can also help you design an effective process for communicating with your stakeholders in a clear and consistent manner, both for the purpose of sharing information and obtaining performance feedback.

An organization's planning system does not have to be complicated, but it does need to (1) involve most, if not all, of your stakeholders, (2) result in the selection of key projects that meet your most pressing needs, and (3) include links to performance indicators for gauging your progress. Strategic planning needs to occur every two to three years, and uses a slightly different process than an annual planning process. Both are needed though. The annual planning effort is perhaps the more critical of the two, as it serves as the bridge between the longer term strategic plan and the workgroup and employee specific action plans which exist to support the execution of the organization's strategies.

Planning systems tend to break down when stakeholder involvement is low, when too many projects, or the wrong projects are defined, and when performance increases are projected without first defining the system changes that will make them possible. In many cases, organizations only define improvement objectives (such as "Improve communications") instead of defining HOW that objective will be attained. Two other common reasons for breakdown involve failing to ensure that enough people have the necessary time in their jobs for project work and failing to link larger company projects to those that are being worked on at the workgroup level.

I can help you become more effective at your planning efforts simply by facilitating a one day annual planning workshop. I would prefer however to help you design and install a planning system that helps you realize the three needs mentioned above and avoid those system problems that lead to an ineffective annual or strategic plan.

An effective satisfaction measurement and improvement system addresses the key requirements of both your internal and external customers. Through the use of surveys, focus groups, other customer listening posts, and regular measurement, you can increase the degree to which customers see value in your products and services, while also obtaining information that will help you begin to anticipate their needs before your internal and external customers tell you what these needs are.

Customer satisfaction primarily suffers when you think you know what the customer wants and in turn fail to actually 'keep in touch' with them on a regular basis. Internal customers are often called the 'forgotten customer' because their unmet expectations are ignored, even though their needs may be more important than those of your external customers. Finally, focusing more on fixing customer problems after they are pointed out to you will leave you in a constant state of fire fighting, and rob you of the time and insight necessary for proactively identifying and addressing customer expectations.

I can help you install a system that gives you regular performance feedback against requirements from both your internal and external customers. I can also facilitate a workshop which is intended to help your internal customers work more effectively together, in turn leading to higher levels of external customer satisfaction. By linking fundamental system changes to desired levels of service improvement from a behavior perspective as part of the planning process, I can show you how to make improved levels of service endure over time and exceed those of your competitors.

A well-designed performance measurement system is made up of a balanced set of metrics, with each workgroup and level in the organization using aligned metrics which fall into a common set of key performance areas. Trend charts are used to understand current system performance, and process capability is studied through the use of process control techniques. Associates throughout the organization understand how their jobs affect a variety of performance areas, including cost performance. Perhaps most importantly, leading indicators of a ratio nature (such as quality near miss observations per employee) are used to gauge process improvement progress, instead of relying mainly on lagging indicators of a count nature (the number of lost time accidents for example).

Performance system breakdowns often occur when (1) different workgroups use different, misaligned measures, (2) certain types of measures (i.e. efficiency) are favored and emphasized over others (such as service and retention), and (3) performance trends over time are not consistently monitored and reviewed in a team setting. Ineffective measurement systems are often overly complicated, contain too many, or the wrong, measures, and fail to effectively gauge those factors that affect true performance the most.

Performance measurement systems do not have to be complicated to be effective. I can help you install a balanced scorecard process at all levels in your organization which contains an appropriate mix of leading and lagging ratio metrics. I can also help you define the best way to use existing technology, such as spreadsheet software and your intranet, to keep all associates informed of performance trends and challenges in a highly visual way. Perhaps most importantly, I can give you the tools to help teach each associate how their daily job impacts the bottom line and to motivate them towards higher levels of improvement through the concepts of open book management.

An effective system for designing each job to support your high performance goals is needed if you really want to realize those goals. All too often job design is ignored - instead, we simply ask people to do more with less, and then wonder why they keep doing the same old things and don't invest time to do those new things we would like them to do. In order to have time for team meetings, planning, training, and project work, organizations often need to review and redesign each job if they are going to really move to a higher level of performance.

For example, many supervisors and managers spend way too much time doing clerical work, such as processing e-mail, preparing reports, and processing paperwork. In this day and age, technology can help us eliminate a lot of this type of work. We also tend to invest too much time in non-value added activities, such as doing redundant work or rework. Whenever this occurs, we are sacrificing valuable time that could be devoted instead to learning, improvement projects, and coaching. Front line associates also have non-value added time remaining in their jobs, but not to the same degree as members of management.

Over the years and as strange it may seem, I have applied the time study skills I was taught as an industrial engineer to the practice of managing in a high performance workplace. Through personal experimentation, I have learned (1) how to get the most out of my time as a manager and (2) how the jobs of both front line associates and management need to be redesigned in order to support the high performance goals of an organization. Isn't it time you stopped wasting your time dollars?

Like it or not, the question of "What's in it for me?" (otherwise known as WIIFM) does and will continue to exist in any organization. As good employees become harder to find, the need for attractive and fair compensation packages at ALL levels in the organization will only become more important. Additionally, logic will tell you that your associates will work to improve the organization only as long as they feel their efforts are worth it to them. It is also important to recognize the efforts EACH associate makes to improve performance on a regular basis and in a meaningful way.

Compensation systems break down when associates feel that some group, or someone, is receiving more wages and/or benefits than they rightly should. When times are tough, this issue may not be as great. If the organization is growing however, or if certain people are getting a lot more of the compensation pie than others feel they deserve, it can become more critical. Like it or not, employee expectations as far as compensation and recognition go do change over time. What used to seem meaningful becomes only a dissatisfier if it is taken away. Money and other forms of compensation are not motivators as much as they are demotivators if they are unfairly distributed.

I can help you explore and put in place alternative forms of associate compensation, such as profit sharing, pay for skills, and stock ownership. We can evaluate the relative pros and cons of these options, and others, as we design a compensation system that meets both your short and long term needs. We can also look at how your recognition system needs to evolve over time in order to ensure that it remains meaningful, and in turn encourages higher levels of the 'right' performance, from all associate groups.

If nothing else, the rate of change in the world today has created a need for continual learning in the workplace. As you attempt to install new systems and learn to use new tools, your people will need to really learn to use those systems and tools. Finally, there is perhaps no better benefit that you can give an associate than the opportunity to continually upgrade their skills. Effective training systems help each employee develop on a consistent basis, in a manner that results in true skill understanding, retention, and application.

Training systems breakdown when lecture and computer-based training are used too heavily, when people don't get many opportunities to learn, and when training efforts are not linked to the strategic needs of the organization. A lot of time is wasted each day supposedly training people - if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that people rarely learn when they are not actively involved in meaningful formal and informal learning opportunities. In best practice organizations, all individual courses are linked to job-based curriculums and formal skill development certification processes.

I can help you design a comprehensive training curriculum and certification process that will support the strategic intent of your organization. Through the use of highly interactive, team-based courses, I can help you get the most out of your training time investment. We can also explore where the right, and the wrong, places to used computer-based training exist in your organization. Most importantly however, I want to make sure that your people learn the most important concepts and practices, and that we do not waste time on attempting to learn about concepts that people may rarely, or never, use.

An effective system for driving process improvement is not based solely on team meetings that associates attend for one hour a week. True process management and improvement involves identifying your value creation and support processes, the customers of those processes and their requirements, and the key in-process measures that you will use to monitor and improve their effectiveness. People tend to follow the same series of work practices each day, without even recognizing that they are using a process. By defining and streamlining these processes, a lot of improvement can be made in a short amount of time.

All too often a linkage fails to exist between an organization's training system, its measurement system, its compensation system, and the processes that people execute repeatedly each day. When this linkage fails to exist, a lot of time, effort, and money is wasted. Customer expectations are not satisfied as they should be, and stress levels rise. System design and behavior are at the heart of process improvement, but all too often, we tend to focus more on tweaking our systems and asking (telling?) people to change rather than significantly improving the systems we use each day.

Through interactive workshops with your associates, I can help you define your processes, their customers, and their key measures. We can work together to help ensure that key linkages exist, and that people know where the waste is and can help define ways in which it can be eliminated. By getting rid of the daily headaches, we can raise morale and create time that can be used to fuel further learning and performance improvement efforts. Perhaps more importantly, I can help you (1) identify current non-value added time investments which are leaving with you with too little time for improvement focused activities and (2) redesign your time wasting processes (such as meetings and e-mail processing) to recover a high percentage of that time.

An effective communication system makes the best use of available technologies and the time you invest in group events such as meetings. Unfortunately, most companies have yet to embrace and effectively utilize the power of technologies such as intranets, shared folders, and e-mail, and they continue to waste lots of time and money each day in various types of meetings.

For example, do you currently have a plan in place to minimize the amount of paper you currently use in your company to share information? Have you strategically decided when e-mail should be used to share and collect information as compared to doing so in a face-to-face manner? Are your people getting and understanding the proper feedback they need each day in order to not only do their jobs, but to do those jobs more effectively? Believe it or not, the solution does not involve spending thousands of dollars on the latest and greatest software package.

I can help you set up low cost systems to make the best of the low-cost technologies you probably already have in place. I can also teach you how use simple tools for coordinating, streamlining, and getting the most out of the variety of meetings that you have. By doing so, I guarantee that you will save lots of time and money while also increasing the amount of information you share with your people, and the retention and use of that information.

Organizations are relying on technology more and more to do their work for them. In some cases, the shift from manual processes to technology-based processes makes sense - take spreadsheets for example. On the other hand, in some companies it is actually becoming a norm to 'hide behind e-mail' in order to avoid conflict or to claim that 'I did not hear about that.' At the same time, we don't use our information to the degree that we could to solve problems (do your managers understand and use their databases?) or plan for effective technology use in the coming years.

Does your organization have a sound technology utilization plan for the next three to five years? Are you getting the most out of the time and money that you invest in preparing, issuing, and analyzing performance reports? Are your people getting the information that they need each day, in a usable form, to make the right decisions? If not, you could save a lot of dollars by using some simple tools to improve the way you use, and plan to use, the technology you have already paid for.

Through the use of interactive planning workshops, I can teach you how to use these tools to get more out of your database of information, your performance reporting efforts. I can also help you create a simple, focused technology utilization plan that will help you ensure that you are collecting and sharing key information in the most effective way possible. How much is your existing technology system costing you?