Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [108]
Consistency allows for improvement.
The same is true for process improvement in your organization. You have to understand the process. You have to repeat the process the same way each time. You have to measure the results. You can then make adjustments to improve the results. Your process or methods can be unique, but they have to be repeatable and repeated.
Measuring Helps to Encourage Using Existing Processes
You don't have to try to improve something with measures to affect it positively; simply measuring it has the capability to do so. This is where the adage, “you improve what you measure” comes from. As I've told you, though, measuring can also make the performance deteriorate. There is no assurance that the result of measuring is improvement. The only assurance is that the things you measure will change. The act of measuring acts as a catalyst for change—good or bad.
While that is true for the process being measured, there are other, related processes that are affected as well. For example, in our Service Desk scenario, the speed to resolve a trouble call required the use of the trouble-call tracking system.
When I needed to measure the time to resolve issues for a couple of our offices, it quickly became apparent that the trouble call system was not being used by the technicians. The manager of the departments would have to go through each case history to adjust the close dates and times because the technicians weren't closing them when the process called for them to. They would wait days and even weeks to close cases. It was seen as unimportant documentation and paperwork. I heard more than once that “it's not the real work—the real work is helping the customer.” And “filling out that stuff takes time that I could be helping solve more problems.”
As with most arguments, there is a fair amount of truth packed into those statements. But as with most things, the paperwork is very important. It's important when the manager is fighting for additional resources. You have to prove not only that you have more work than your staff can handle, but that it is working efficiently and that adding more resources would solve the problem. This is hard to prove if you have no evidence. And if your time to resolve shows up as weeks for simple problems, leadership will rightly assume that you are inefficient.
When we developed the Report Card, these managers got tired of me coming to them each month for a quality check of the data in the trouble call tracking system. It was data that should have been accurate. The metrics I was building wasn't the reason for the data. The metrics only highlighted that the staff was not using the tools properly. People were not following the processes and procedures that were created for them to track trouble calls. The managers knewthe staff wasn't completing the cases properly, but it was a battle they didn't want to fight. They were actually happy to have a clear reason to push their staff to use the tool in the way it was intended.
Metrics in the Other Quadrants
In Chapter 5, which discussed using the Answer Key, and Chapter 6, which covered effectiveness metrics, I discussed each of the four quadrants. I also suggested that you start with Effectiveness and you end with Efficiency. While you may use efficiency measures (sparingly) to support your Product/ Service Health metrics, you shouldn't embark on a full Process Health program at first.
I recommended that the second area to add to your metrics program would be the employee view, Organization Health. This can yield immense benefits for your organization. By focusing on your “greatest assets