Change Management and Performance Newsletter

[michaelbeale@ppimk.com]

Change management newsletter

I'm delighted that Phil Jones, managing director of strategic performance management specialists, Excitant, has agreed to post his monthly change management newsletter on the forum.

Its one of the few of such newsletters that I regularly read. In addition Phil runs the Cambridge NLP practice group.

http://nlp-experts.org/change-manage...interview.html

[PhilJones]

I am delighted that Mike has asked me to put up some of my newsletters on this forum. When you want to have a chat to me about any of the content, drop me a line at phil@excitant.co.uk.

What do you notice?

Have you noticed how you notice what you are paying attention to? Are you paying attention to the letter t in this newsletter? I doubt you were, but you are now, and you can stop if you want. Likewise, when you get a new car that you thought was unique in colour and model, suddenly every other car you see seems to be the same.

The opposite is also true. You tend not to notice what you are not paying attention to, unless it catches your attention. You probably didn?t think about the punctuation in the last paragraph. You just read it and it passed you by. It didn?t try to attract your attention.

You have probably noticed how the same is true with performance measurement and management. Recently we were working with a City Council, which involved helping them improve their planning processes and pay more attention to the quality of their thinking about strategy. As a part of the work, we took a look at the existing strategic plans and cast them as a strategy map, with interesting results.

Two things quickly became apparent: Firstly there were plenty of measures and activities around what they did. There were also many measures of how the council would tell whether things had changed for their community. There were, of course, plenty of financial measures.

Something was missing, though. We found few statements, let alone measures, of how the council would change. How would they change? What would make the difference? This was a council that was trying to improve the way it worked. Yet evidence of what they were going to do differently was sparse. In fact we had a completely blank ?Learning & Growth? perspective.

Now, no doubt, they had been thinking about how the organisation needed to develop and how this would change overall performance and make the strategy happen. Yet that thinking was not clearly nor explicitly captured. They were not paying attention to it. Guess what. It wasn?t happening much either. As the Chief Executive put it, ?What is happening with our change programme? We seem to have forgotten it?

As you think about your organisation, you?ll start to notice what it might not be paying attention to.

Phil Jones
Strategy & Performance Specialist
Author of "Communicating Strategy"
Strategic Performance Management Specialists
Communicating Strategy: The book and consultancy services

[PhilJones]

Mike has asked me to post somemore newsletters so here they are

?Our Balanced Scorecard is an unfocussed mess.?

Many years ago I was chairing a Balanced Scorecard conference. There were over 120 organisations represented and there seemed to be 120 different ways of doing the Balanced Scorecard being promoted. Over dinner I was sitting amongst a group of people when the person on my right said, ?This Balanced Scorecard thing is a heap of junk?. Intrigued I asked him why he thought that.

He explained that he worked for a large, public sector organisation and their scorecard had over 50 measures on it. It was impossible to work out what was important from it. There was no logic to it. It just created confusion.

So I asked him, ?Why do you have so many measures on it?? He replied, ?We were supposed to.? Now I must admit I was puzzled at this point. I could not imagine where this ?rule? of his had come from. As a guideline we used 4-6 objectives or measures in each perspective. That generally led to around 20-24 measures.

What puzzled me was that, unlike other approaches like, say, EFQM, there are no guidelines as to which objectives and measures you should have on a strategy map and scorecard. Whereas EFQM will ask about your capability in a number of dimensions of good practice, there is no such standard set of objectives and measures for the Balanced Scorecard (though many people have constructed them, of which more another time). Its good to think of the approach as a blank tableau: It?s like a mirror to the organisation. The people who are designing the scorecard will be representing the thinking of the organisation, won?t they. In other words, what you get is what you put there. What you put there is a reflection of the organisation?s thinking.

In this case, I simply asked, ?So if the scorecard is a reflection of the quality of the thinking and clarity of the strategy of your organisation, what does your scorecard tell you??

A common example of this is where the scorecard is used to capture all the measures in particular perspectives. No selection is applied. In many ways it is simply a diagnosing tool, that says, ?This is what we have available?. Like me you probably come across management reports with 100, 120, 150 or even 200 measures in them. They are simply collecting and presenting the information that is available to them (If its there we shall have it). I know that many organisations do this. I also know that they benefit from the far simpler and clearer focus that high performing organisations use.

In the design process, people have somehow lost sight of the question ?Why do I want this objective or measure on the scorecard?? and have drifted into, this is what we have available. It?s a ?manage what we can measure?, mentality. This leads us to our third principle

3. If you don?t know where you want to go, you are unlikely to get there.

By now you will have realised that this applies both to the design of scorecard projects and to the organisation itself. If there is no clear strategy, or as would be suggested from the earlier discussion, it has become so unfocused and muddled that no-one can work out what they should be concentrating on, then guess what you will get: An unfocussed strategy map and scorecard.

If on the other hand you are clear about what you are trying to achieve. If you are clear what you are doing and what you are choosing not to do, and how you will get there, then you are likely to be more focussed. This will be reflected in the strategy map and the scorecard.

So a useful test of any scorecard or strategy map is, ?Can I deduce the strategy from this?? If not, then you should ask, ?What purpose is this serving and what effect it is having on the organisation?? That can be quite scary, can?t it?

You will appreciate that this is why we spend time with clients working on two aspects. What are they trying to achieve as an organisation? What are they trying to do with their performance management and decision making processes? You might want to think about how well your organisation does these.

That is why we have developed diagnostic tools and techniques that help us understand where an organisation is trying to get to and how it wants to manage performance. We also have standard workshops we can customise to suit your particular circumstances and needs. When you want more information on these take a look at Strategic Performance Management Specialists

By paying attention to just these two basic pieces, you will start to improve the value of your balanced scorecard in your business. Of course, you realise, there are other key principles that will make a difference. In your next few newsletters we will look at how strategy, people, focus and ownership affect things. In subsequent newsletters we will also set out

?Ten top tips for successful implementation and operation?.

Of course if you are impatient, we can do on-site seminars and workshops to help your organisation make sure your investment in performance management and its strategy make a real difference.

More soon

Phil Jones
Strategic Performance Management Specialists

[PhilJones]

Underlying principles of Effective Performance management
using the Balanced Scorecard

Like many organisations, this FTSE 100 Company?s executive team had a vast amount of data at their fingertips. Their monthly report contained around 120 measures. The Chief Executive could drill down to individual retail outlets, and look at Saturday?s product sales for all their categories, first thing Monday morning.

We had been brought in for a relatively common problem. As the Chief Executive put it, ?They don?t get the strategy?. So we read through their strategy documents and interviewed the executive team to understand the strategy. At the first workshop it became clear that what was in the paperwork was not what they considered important. Like many organisations there were vast reams of documentation and thinking in some parts (retail offering in this case) yet very little about the store positioning (having the right offer in the right place).

Why they didn?t get it is a story for another newsletter. By the time we had finished the Executive team were down to 26 measures to manage the strategy for their business. But here is the interesting bit: Only 12 of those measures were amongst the 120 in their monthly management report. The other 110 in their management report were useful diagnostics and detail, but they were not part of changing behaviour and driving the organisation forward. Performance measures vs managers of performance.

Moreover the 14 missing measures were spread between
1)Those concerned with the culture, skills and behaviours that would help to change the organisation and move it forward
2)Measures of what the customers actually thought.
3)Aspects of the strategy that were not represented in the management report. In particular this covered the vital new product & service development pipeline and store portfolio management.

In other words they were now starting to measure what was important and what they wanted to change, rather than what they could measure. So principle 4 is

4 ?Measure what you want to manage, (not manage what you can measure)?

Yet this behaviour is so common, so it is important to understand why. Why do organisations end up having so many measures that they cannot see the wood for the trees? Why do they tend to measure what they can measure, rather than standing back and thinking what should we measure.

Well there is a simple reason for this. They are doing it because it makes sense. Imagine for a moment you have just taken over a new role. It?s a department, unit, organisation, product you do not know. So what will you do? You?ll dig around, walk about, talk to people and gather as much information as you can. It makes sense when, as a manager, you are in a diagnostic and fact finding mode. You are trying to find out what is going on with a unit, department, product or process. You gather as much information as you can to piece together a picture and diagnose the underlying problems and causes. You put in place ways to measure what is going on.

But this is completely different to motivating someone. If you want to influence a person?s, team?s or organisation?s behaviour how many measures would you use? 120? 100? 50? Of course you wouldn?t. You would use maybe 3 or 4 or perhaps 6 at most. Any more and that would confuse the issues. So this leads us to principle number 5:

5 ?Be absolutely clear what you are using your scorecard for?

There are plenty of examples of this in the private sector but an interesting example comes from the public sector. In the health service some measures are generated by parliamentary questions. An Member of Parliament asks a question and a measure is set up to answer the issue that is raised. All the hospitals in the land are not responding to the Department of Health?s requirement to provide more information. So a measure is created. But what stops it being measures. The MP get the question answered and moves on. Yet now all these administrators are collecting this information, which is no longer required. They get added to. They do not get removed. When I was first told this story it included a room in Leeds where the printouts are piled up and locked away and no-one ever looks at them. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant. Most organisations have done similar things in the past.

So a useful test of any scorecard or strategy map is, ?What am I trying to achieve?? ?What purpose is this serving and what effect will it have on the organisation??

You will appreciate that this is why we spend time with clients working on what the information is used for and helping them move from continual diagnosis to influencing behaviour and checking that it happens. You will of course recognise that as performance management.

As you think about how your organisation does these and what diagnosis would help you can think also about the workshops we can customise to suit your particular circumstances and needs. When you want more information on these take a look at Strategic Performance Management Specialists

By paying attention to just why you are measuring, you will start to improve the value of your balanced scorecard in your business. Of course, you realise, there are other key principles that will make a difference. In your next few newsletters we will look at how strategy, people, focus and ownership affect things. In subsequent newsletters we will also set out

?Ten top tips for successful implementation and operation?.

Of course if you are impatient, we can do on-site seminars and workshops to help your organisation make sure your investment in performance management and its strategy make a real difference.

More soon

Phil Jones
Strategic Performance Management Specialists

[PhilJones]

I missed these off an earlier posting so I must come back to them...

Key principles of a good balanced scorecard

1. It is about balance

The reason it was called the ?Balanced Scorecard? is precisely because that is what it was trying to address. Its origins back around 1992 were to get organisations to focus on more than the financial measures and the processes. To redress the balance with measures of what the customers think and want. To add to this measures that reflected how the organisation was to learn, develop, change and grow.

That council is not alone. Research indicates many organisations that say they have implemented a ?balanced? scorecard have measures that are predominantly financial and process. As a consequence they are measuring what they are doing, rather than measuring what is making them change.

Which lead us to the second key principle

2. It is about cause and effect

It wasn?t long in the development of the scorecard, that it was realised that the old four-box model was a mistake. You have probably seen it around.

Financial Customer
Learning & growth Process

This model of the scorecard is all over the web from people who think of this as a scorecard. But just ask yourself, ?How do you choose what to put in each box?? ?How do these boxes relate to one another??

You are all smart people so you know, like, our client, that that changing what they did should end up affecting both costs and their customers. So a better way of thinking about things would be.

Financial
Customer
Process
Learning and growth

Of course this is what, by 1994 had become the basis of the strategy map. Sometimes, it was called the performance driver model in its early years.

As you will have spotted, this makes a major difference to how you think about the measures. For one, you are asking the question, how do these measures change behaviour and cause the higher pieces to behave differently? For another you start to ask what are the right measures in each of these perspectives?

We?ll cover more of this in the next newsletter

If you want to move your balanced scorecard on, bring it up to date and make it more effective. Whether that is to change behaviours, focus people of strategy, make management meetings more effective or just get a clearer view of performance in your organisation, in just a day, just go to Strategic Performance Management Specialists

By paying attention to just these two basic pieces, you will start to improve the value of your balanced scorecard in your business. Of course, you realise, there are other key principles that will make a difference. In your next few newsletters we will look at how strategy, people, focus and ownership affect things.

In subsequent newsletters we will set out

?Ten top tips for successful implementation and operation?.

Of course if you are impatient, we can do on-site seminars and workshops to help your organisation make sure your investment in performance management and its strategy make a real difference.

More soon

Phil Jones
Strategic Performance Management Specialists

P.S. As you think of others who would benefit from this report, please pass this on, or to get their own copy point them to Strategic performance management specialists

Our MD worked for the originators, Norton & Kaplan, for over 4 years. As you can imagine, not all of the underlying keys to success are explained in the books. We have helped clients improve their strategy and performance in organisations ranging from FTSE100 and international companies to dot.coms and a whole variety of public sector organisations.

[michaelbeale@ppimk.com]

[PhilJones]

Mis-use of Mehrabian statistics - Do not mis-represent the Mehrabian statistics on non-verbal communication

I would be very surprised if some presenter has not trotted out Mehrabian's statistics about not verbal communication is only 7% of the communication.

99 times out of a 100, when I hear this, the person talking is using the research out of context and mis-representing it.

Typically they draw a circle and say that only 7% of communication is verbal, 38% is how it is said and 55 % is visual.

Then they say that this applies to all communication!

They are talking rubbish.

If you want to de-bunk it quickly, ask them to tell you the time without saying anything?

You can't (unless they show you their watch).

The actual experiment was about about communicating feelings and emotions. Not facts. It fact the experiment only used SINGLE words that carried an emotional context and looked for congruence between the word, voice and face.

Note FACE only. NOT the whole body as many claim.

The actual work concluded:
? Words
? Voice/Tone
? Face and expression
Total liking = 7% verbal liking + 38% vocal liking + 55% facial liking

The work was actually about feelings and attitudes. Not Facts.

What the peddlers of the urban myth version of Mehrabian?s statistical story don?t make clear ? or perhaps don?t know themselves ? is that Mehrabian?s research was concerned with a very specific, and limited, aspect of nonverbal communication ? it?s not about communication in general.

His work relates only to inconsistent messages about feelings and attitudes, that is, face-to-face exchanges in which the meaning of what we say is contradicted by our body language and tone of voice.

Mahravian himself says in a later paper, ?Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable."

You can find a useful reference to his papers on wiki-paedia. I strongly recommend that if you are going to refer to these statistics then
a) read the original work
b) ensure you refer to single emotional words when explaining it.

Please please please, only ever use these statistics in context, or don't quote them at all.

Don't get me wrong. Non-verbals do matter. Congruence does matter. Belief in the information does matter. Confidence in your story, does matter. A good presented will put emotion and expression into what they say. But please don't miss use these statistics to make the point. It will undermine your credibility with those in the know.