Fine Tuning
Performance measures are bound to turn up rough spots that need improvement. Benchmarking tells you this crucial information - and how much improvement is needed.
To fine tune performance results:
- If necessary, consult with customers to further define appropriate goals
- Ask front-line employees for input
- Produce a written point-form plan with specific actions and targets
- Continue to measure - not just processes but also outcomes (performance) and strategic success factors such as customer satisfaction.
Recalibration: Benchmarks
In most areas of business, industry standards are always rising as new approaches and technology enter the arena and competitors continually stretch for advantages. Periodically, you will need to recalibrate benchmarks.
Strategic benchmarks will probably need recalibration more often than process benchmarks simply because they are more critical to determining your competitive position in the marketplace. In addition, consider reviewing benchmarks when:
- innovative technology or practices come to light
- external factors such as new competition or altered costs arise
- the need for process improvement becomes apparent.
Refocusing: Teams and Processes
As a business grows, it's not uncommon to find that certain "systems" - whether they are individual teams within your organization or the jobs and responsibilities they handle - are now somehow disconnected from other teams and systems.
What seems to happen is that the team becomes unclear about what they should be doing. It's as if the links with other parts of the organization have broken or become badly jumbled.
The symptoms may turn up in performance benchmarks, but you may also see it in employee turnover and grumbling. Anger from other departments - complaints that a another section isn't doing its job or is trying to do everyone else's job - is another symptom. Often, you'll see these departments begin to "work around" troubled departments.
What can you do? The problem is often role clarity. The solution is getting people talking and work out a better division of responsibility and labour.
- Invite members of the group and other stakeholders to a review meeting. Ask them to discuss what they believe is happening. Attempt to arrive at a consensus on what should be happening.
- Review the group's processes step by step. Add, delete or change processes as necessary according to newly defined responsibilities. Again, invite representatives of other groups so that everyone is clear on where responsibility begins and ends.
- Continue to monitor productivity and other performance measures.
- Adjust processes as necessary.
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