Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [107]
Let's look at a simple example.
When measuring the speed of a process, the organization learns that it lacks more information than it realized. Many times I've found that the organization doesn't even know the process in question well enough to produce the necessary measures. This lack of understanding becomes apparent because of the attempts to measure it.
Measuring tells you what you didn't know you didn't know.
Every process improvement method I've learned and used begins with defining the process needing improvement. Even in Lean Six Sigma, where your goals are to reduce waste and improve flow, a favorite tool is the value stream map, which requires you to define the process. But, what if you're not doing a process-improvement effort? What if your boss is pushing for measures?
Well, those measures may also require a full understanding of the processes to be measured. You'll need to ask questions like:
When does the process start? Even this simplest of questions is difficult for some organizations to answer. Does it start with the first action a worker takes within the process? Or does it start with the request by the customer? Does it start with the identification of a need?
When does the process conclude? Is it upon delivery? Or is it upon closure of the documentation used to track the progress of the process? Is conclusion dependent on a successful delivery of the service or product? Or does it simply designate the completion of the attempt?
Are there subprocesses? Especially ones you don't control? Within the process there may be many subprocesses—many that are misunderstood or unknown. Who owns those subprocesses? How do they affect your work? Are they prerequisites to other steps? Are they critical to the successful completion of your process?
By asking for the data, measures, information, and most importantly the root question, you encourage (if not force) the organization to define the thing being measured. In many instances, you will find that you have to improve the thing being measured to make it measurable.
You may need to improve the thing being measured to make it possible to measure it.
By measuring, you gain a better understanding of the things to be measured. This includes processes (if you're doing a process-improvement effort), employee interactions and policies, strategic plans, and how you handle long-term projects. Another improvement area that measuring promotes is in actually changing the way you do things.
Making Your Processes Repeatable
The steps to a process should not just be understood and communicated, but they should be consistent. They should be repeatable. In attempting to measure the process, with the underlying purpose of improving it, you push the organization to have the process defined well enough to measure it. That is why the largest benefit garnered from implementing a metric program may lie in the requirement that the processes be defined and understood well enough to measure.
When you've defined the process, you still will not be able to gain useful measures around it unless it is carried out consistently each time it is used. This consistency allows for corrections and improvements.
As you may have noticed, I like sports analogies. Here's a short one. I am constantly impressed with the ability some people have to throw a basketball from over twenty-five feet through a horizontal cylinder ten feet high. They call it “shooting,” as if that makes it more of a skill. But the simple truth is that they are throwing the ball. Many do so in a high arc, allowing the ball to come down through the hoop without touching the metal rim. What I find especially impressive is how many different forms and techniques the players use. The key I've learned is not how you hold your hand, arrange your feet, follow through, or even square your hips to the