Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [62]
With these inputs Tom felt confident that he had good indicators of the quality of his restaurant from the customers’ point of view.
And for the most part he was right. There are other measures he could use, like availability (restaurant hours), reliability (consistency in taste, quality, and time to table), and accuracy (getting the food orders right). These would help round out his metric and give him a more comprehensive picture. But his customer satisfaction and usage data were a good start.
Removing Fear
By looking at the customers’ viewpoint, Tom removed the basis of fear, which plagues efficiency metrics, while focusing on Return vs. Investment—the area most managers desire deeper understanding of. Fear is born of the unknown. The unknown factor in most early metrics programs (especially in an organization suffering from immaturity) is how the information will (and won’t) be used. That is why I push for all metrics efforts to clearly communicate how the metrics will and won’t be used.
Even if you promise that the measures you collect and report won’t be used improperly, unless you have a strong culture of trust in your organization, the workforce won’t believe, and fear will rule. At least if you use efficiency measures. If instead you start with effectiveness measures, it is easy to convince others that the information won’t be used against them. This is because all of the measures will reflect the customers’ point of view.
A real life example follows.
No matter how often I argue that metrics won’t be used improperly, the only way I’ve won over my clients is to show them the metrics. Let’s take accuracy in the form of rework. When designing the metric, if you stick to the rule that it has to be from the customers’ viewpoint, you won’t even collect data on internal rework. You will only deal with rework from the customer’s point of view.
When I was designing effectiveness metrics for our printing services, the question arose around what constituted rework.
“If we have to send the printer back to the vendor three times before they fix it, is that rework?”
I answered with a question. “Does the customer know you sent it back three times?”
“No.”
“Then no, it’s not rework.”
“How about if we get the wrong parts from the vendor?”
Again, I replied with a question, “Does the customer know?”
“Nope.”
“Then it’s still not rework.”
“How about if we fix a printer jam, and when the customer tries to print, we find out there was also another problem?”
“Does the customer know?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t our fault…”
“Then, yes, that’s rework.”
“But it wasn’t our fault…”
“I understand that. But the metric isn’t used to place blame. The metric is simply a way for us to understand what the customer sees. If the customer would consider it rework, we want to know. We can’t solve a problem if we don’t know it exists.”
Effectiveness is not used to judge or place blame. Effectiveness metrics provide us the customers’ view of our services and products.
Focusing on First Things First
You have to start at the beginning, while keeping the end in mind. The end is a well-functioning, comprehensive metrics program. To get there though, we have to have a mature organization. We have to have a culture of trust. We must have open communications in all directions. We have to be pretty well ahead of the curve. As David Allen said in his book Getting Things Done (Penguin, 2002), about his consulting services, “those who use [his methods for improvement] need it the least.”
So for the rest of us, we have to start at the beginning. And the first thing you’ll need to do is see your organization as your customer sees it. Effectiveness measures do that.
Recap
Start at the beginning. It keeps you out of a lot of trouble when you start at the beginning. Jumping into mature behaviors