Everything
discussed up to this point is supportive of the manager’s main function, which
is leading the organization in accomplishing its strategic objectives. I have
discussed several times how implementing the methods discussed eventually frees
the manager from daily firefighting activities thereby making time for more
strategic work. An organization of highly motivated workers that are trained
and empowered to control their processes will conduct the organization’s normal
activities with little oversight from the manager. However, accomplishing an
organization’s strategic objectives almost always involves doing some things
differently or some new things. The success of the organization depends on
accomplishing these different or new things successfully. Ensuring that the
organization has the highest probability of success in achieving strategic
objectives is the responsibility of the leader. In this lecture I describe a
process that helps both the leader and the team achieve an objective involving
change from normal practices.
The process was
developed and widely used by IBM and others in the 1980s. (See the paper by
Maurice Hardaker, and Bryan K. Ward, titled How
to Make a Team Work in the journal Harvard Business Review, November 1987,
page 112) IBM called the methodology Process Quality Management or PQM. It is
fundamentally a planning process in which goals, business processes necessary
to achieve the goals and measures to track progress toward goals are
identified. What sets it apart and contributes to its usefulness is the focus
on fundamentals of planning. Recall the Super Bowl metaphor I used earlier to
guide you in developing your action plan. PQM follows a similar pattern.
PQM starts with
the leader gathering all of his or her direct reports that are involved in
achieving the intended goal in a one or two day planning session. If possible
hold this session off site and forbid cell phones and PDAs during the session.
The team is typically made up of up to a dozen people that are involved in the
business processes associated with the goal. Hardaker and Ward advise not
including more than a dozen as a larger team gets unwieldy to manage. It is
essential to have all involved people in the planning session and allow no
observers or hangers on. It is also preferable that someone other than the
organization’s leader facilitate the process so that the team is not
constrained by the leader’s preconceived beliefs. The following steps are
carried out during the planning session:
- The leader introduces the goal and
explains why the organization must achieve the goal. The objectives are
for the team to understand the goal, to convince the team that the goal is
necessary and that they all are required to help achieve the goal. Then
the facilitator takes over leadership of the process and the
organization’s leader becomes a team member.
- Brainstorm to identify possible measures
of success. Then narrow the identified measures to six to eight that are
both necessary and sufficient. These measures are called the critical success
factors. One method for narrowing the list is to post the whole list and
ask the team to privately rank them in importance. Comparing and
discussing the team’s rankings allows the list to be thinned. Work on the
list until all team members agree that the remaining measures are
the necessary and sufficient measures. That is, if all measures are
achieved then the goal will have been achieved and if any measure is not
achieved then the goal will not be achieved. Consensus is required before proceeding to
the next step.
- Brainstorm to define the business
processes that must be carried out to achieve the measures of success. To
avoid getting vague and useless descriptions of business processes follow
these rules:
- A business process is defined
as a verb plus object, e.g. design products.
- Each process should have an
owner who is responsible for managing or carrying out the process.
- The owner should be a member
of the team.
- No owner should have more
than four processes to manage or carryout.
- Following a similar process
used to define the critical success factors develop a list of business
processes that are necessary and sufficient to achieve all of the
critical success factors. Again consensus is required from the entire
team. Expect to have anywhere from 10 to 20 processes. The preferred
approach to developing this list is to prepare a relationship matrix as
described next.
- Prepare a relationship matrix of critical
success factors vs. business processes. An example matrix is shown in
figure 30. The example has truncated the number of business processes and
critical success factors but it illustrates the approach. Start with the
first critical success factor and identify every business process that is
necessary and sufficient to achieving this success factor. Work through
each critical success factor in turn. Now the list of necessary and
sufficient business processes is complete. Typically processes are added
and deleted during the preparation of the relationship matrix.
- Fill out the last two columns in the relationship
matrix. These rank the organization’s capability for each process in the
column labeled business process quality and count the number of business
processes that apply to each critical success factor. The business process
quality ranking are made subjectively as A = excellent, B = good, C =
fair, D = poor and E is for processes that don’t currently exist or are
embryonic and not enough experience is available to rank them.
- The counts and business process quality
columns assist in allocating resources for changes to business processes.
There are rarely available resources to fully fund every desired change in
business processes so some prioritization must be made. These columns are
used to guide the assignment of resources to each process. Processes that
have a high number of counts and rankings of D or E must have adequate
resources. Processes that have counts of only two or three and rankings of
B or C can be assigned fewer resources. Processes with A rankings and
counts of only one or two may need little or no additional resources.
- Affirm responsibility for each business
process to its owner. The objective is to have every team member agree
that they are responsible for one or more business processes and, most
important, any necessary changes to the processes. Make sure team members
understand their responsibility and know how they are going to approach
any necessary changes.
- Define and get agreement on a plan to
monitor the status of work on the activities and progress on the critical
success factors. Depending on how the new work relates to normal work
monitoring may occur automatically via existing information systems or it
may require special meetings or it may be done as part of normal staff
meetings.
- If it is not possible to get all team
members comfortable with their next steps during the one or two day
session then schedule follow up meetings with individual team members that
might be needed to clarify details of their new assignment.
Figure 30 A
simplified example relationship matrix of business processes vs. critical
success factors.
Having a well-developed
plan is only the beginning. Carrying out the plan is the real work and success
is usually dependent on persistence in this work. It typically takes a year or
more to achieve significant goals. If your plan is expected to take more than a
year it is wise to review your plan after a year. Conditions may change and any
pertinent changes need to be integrated into your plan. If achieving the goal
is essential to the success of the organization then it is essential that the
organization’s manager lead the team during work on achieving the goal. Don’t
delegate this responsibility. Delegate other work to make time for this more
important work. Recall the research of Gary Lynn and Richard Reilly cited in
lecture 9. Successful developments are three and one-half times as likely to
have senior management intensely involved as failed developments.
Exercises
1. Review
the planning you did for your current efforts toward achieving the strategic
objectives for your organization. Did you follow planning fundamentals similar
to those outlined in the PQM process?
2. Do
you have a strategic objective or goal for your organization that would benefit
from using the PQM process to achieve organizational alignment?
3. Is
your organization in the process of striving toward a major goal and having
difficulties making progress? If so consider carrying out a PQM planning
session.
4. Are
there barriers that prevent you and your reports from holding a PQM planning
session for critical strategic objectives?
5. What
can you do to remove these barriers?
If you find that the pace of blog posts
isn’t compatible with the pace you would
like to maintain in studying this material you can buy the book “The Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” in hard copy or for Kindle at:
or hard copy or for nook at:
or hard copy or E-book at:
No comments:
Post a Comment