Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [51]
Does your root question touch on how well you perform the processes necessary to deliver the services or products? How efficient you are? How long it takes or how much it costs for you to perform the tasks in the process? Is your question one a frontline manager would ask? If your question can be found in any of these, you are probably looking at a Process Health root question.
If your root question concerns human resources, the staff, or something a compassionate leader would ask, your question may belong in the Organizational Health branch. Root questions here ask about the morale of the workforce, loyalty, and retention rates for employees, among other things. How well do you treat your staff? Is your organization among the top 100 places to work in your industry?
The final area of the third tier represents root questions that are concerned with the Future Health of the organization. Is the organization suffering from organizational immaturity? How useful are the strategic plans, mission statement, and vision of the organization? How well is research and development progressing? This view is primarily one of top leadership—if your leadership and the organization are ready to look ahead.
How would you use the Answer Key to develop your metrics?
The information needed to define the Return vs. Investment is made up of the well-trod paths of “effectiveness” and “efficiency.” Effectiveness is the organization’s health from the customer’s point of view. How well is the organization delivering on its promises? Is the organization doing the right things? This is not only important for the development of viable metrics, but for understanding and growing the culture of the organization. Some organizations may not even know who its customers are. And if the customer base has been well defined, gathering the customer’s view of the components of effectiveness is not seen as important.
Sometimes organizations are forced to ask customers what they think of the company’s effectiveness. Surveys are built, focus groups are formed, and the questions are asked.
Do you use our products or services?
Are you satisfied with the delivery of our products and services?
How satisfied are you with our organization?
While these questions help define viable measures, they also give focus for your own growth. Does the organization have a clearly-defined and documented list of customers? Does the organization know what its products and services are? Is the organization in the business of satisfying the customer? How does the organization “serve” the customer? These are more than guidelines for gathering data points. The Answer Key helps form a picture for an organization seeking to achieve continuous improvement.
While these four sections can describe the metrics themselves (if you have a higher-level root question), chances are your root question is at this level and your metrics won’t start until the fourth tier.
Answer Key: Fourth Tier
Now we’ll look at the level most organizations start and finish with. When your root question starts here, you have tactical, low-level questions. This is to be expected when an organization is first starting to use metrics. The root questions you’ll encounter will be very specific and may only address a small area. You may have a root question about delivery that asks, “How well are we responding to customers requests for updates?” for example.
You may have root questions around specific Process Health issues, like the amount of time it takes to produce a widget, the quality of your output, or the cost for a specific service. Where your root question falls in the Answer Key changes the character of each tier. Figure 5-3 introduces the fourth tier.
Figure 5-3. The Answer Key, tiers one through four
If your root question comes out of the fourth tier, everything