Setting the Stage

When the curtain opens it's time for the performers to perform. All the preparation that is done prior to the curtain opening is the time for the leaders to perform.

The leaders set the stage so that the performers can perform at their best. If the stage is not set properly, the performance will not be the best. Whether it's Rugby or Business, the leaders set the stage.

Jeremy Guscott has a question and answer column on the BBC's Rugby website where he answers reader's questions about professional rugby, particularly the home nations (England, Scotland, Wales, & Ireland) and international test rugby. Recently a reader asked about the erratic performance by Wales and whether it was a reflection of the coaching or of the player's mental state. In one short paragraph (5 sentences), Mr. Guscott gets to the heart of the issue of both rugby and business. Since I can't say it any better, here's what he says:

"Coaches put in place an environment for players to perform. Preparation is meticulously
considered and calculated, strategies worked out and training geared for the match ahead. The players have everything they need and then they have to perform. If players don't or can't step up they have to be dropped, and others who can brought in. I feel coaches can only be blamed for poor selection or not creating the best possible working environment."

I've heard this message before. At a business presentation by former college football coach Dick Tomey, Mr. Tomey made the following statement: "To achieve Excellence you have to create the right environment."

Lest you think this thought only comes from the world of sports, I've heard the same theme expressed numerous times in the interviews I've been conducting for my forthcoming book, "Deliver on Your Promises". The leaders set the stage. The set the tone of the organization, they create the environment, set the standards, and hire and put in place the guidelines for hiring the right people. They give everyone the tools they need to meet the expectations they are given.

Then they get out of the way and let the performers perform.

If you're not creating the right environment, what can you do to create it?
If you're not hiring the right people, how can you hire them?
If you're not setting goals and expectations, how can you develop a system to do that?

It's up to you as the leader to put in place the environment so that your performers can perform.

Dialing for Dollars

I was listening to Hawaii Public Radio’s semi-annual fund drive when a couple of things struck me. Regardless of your views on public radio and their news coverage, there are some important business lessons to be learned from how they conduct their fund drives.

The first thing you notice is that they have set some very specific goals. The second is that their entire focus during the drive is on those goals. They are unwavering in their focus. They set their targets, focus all their efforts on achieving them, and monitor their progress in extreme detail in real-time.

Their goals start with the overall dollar amount they need. You will notice that this is a fairly precise number, not some generally rounded figure. For the just completed drive, the target was $808,000. Not $800,000 or $850,000, but $808,000. You get the feeling right from the beginning that they know what they’re doing and have a well developed plan because they have set such a precise target.

Not only do they set a dollar goal, they set a completion date goal. They communicate from the beginning just how long the drive is expected to take. Again, it is precise. Not “a week or two”, but a fixed number of days. For the current drive, the target was ten days. So you have set goals of $808,000 in ten days.

To help keep the focus strong, and to break down those large goals that are hard to really get your mind around, they break the goal down into segments. The segments are aligned with the programs that are broadcast throughout the day, and each segment has its own specific dollar goal. The dollar goals vary throughout each segment, so one segment might have a goal of $1,500, while another might have a goal of $3,000.

Another thing you will notice is that during the on-air campaign, the staff and volunteers are asking for specific, or target, donation levels. They don’t just ask for a donation, they ask for a specific level of support, such as the True-Believer, or the Dollar-A-Day levels.

You can clearly see that in order to be able to so finely tune their goals they have to have large amounts of data at their fingertips. But not just large amounts, they have the right data. They are able to effectively analyze prior results so that they can define their goals and break them down into segments. The whole thing is very impressive if you think about it.

The lesson is – set specific, measurable, goals, use data, the right data, to define those goals, and monitor progress towards achieving them.

Hard Times Offer Chance - Now How To Improve

There’s nothing more motivational for a blogger than to know that someone is reading your blog. And when they ask for more, or a follow up to a post, that will keep you going for a while. Sexy Lady (?) wants some follow up on the Hard Times Offer Chance to Improve post. Thanks for reading, and sorry for the delayed response.

Kaizen is the term for Continuous Improvement. This is a fundamental principle of the Lean Management system, and for good reason. Even in the best of times business is not easy. Conditions change constantly. Procuring materials and supplies, finding the right people to keep you moving forward, changing customer tastes, changing market and economic conditions are all part of the day-to-day. The ever more global marketplace of competition makes any business a wild ride. So even in the best of times it is important to continuously strive to improve your organization so that you can either remain in front of the pack or gain ground to move to the front.

Continuous improvement means looking at everything you do and making it better. The hard part for many organizations, though, is to see what you’re looking at. On the surface, many things you do, your processes, might look like they’re just fine and don’t need any improvement. Other processes might not even need a close view to know they need improvement. But how many times have you seen something that needs to be improved, but it just never gets done? Kaizen means seeing what you’re looking at, looking below the surface of some processes, and getting off your bum and fixing the things that you’ve been putting off.

Kaizen isn’t so much a technique, but a mindset. It’s a way of thinking where you never accept that the way you do things is good enough, they can always be done better. Your processes can always be more effective and more efficient. Efficient means using fewer resources to get the same result or using the same amount of resources to get more done. Resources include time, people, materials, equipment, space, whatever it is you use to get the job done. Effective means that you accomplish your goals. And each process has a goal.

Your organization as a whole has goals, or you should have clearly defined goals. Every process, a process simply being a series of tasks to do a job, should also have a clearly defined goal. Have you ever had a job where you performed some task and always wondered why you did it? You knew it wasn’t necessary or could have been done much better, but you had to do it anyway? That’s because no one ever defined, or questioned, the goal of that process and how it supported the larger process or the goals of the organization. I’ve experienced this first hand a number of times. It’s common with reports. At some time, for some reason, someone wanted a report, and it might even have been useful at the time. But over time the report had become unnecessary, but nobody wanted to stop generating it. On more than one occasion I’ve stopped generating and distributing reports that were unnecessary – and no one even noticed! That process was not only in need of improvement, it was in need of elimination. If you look, I’ll bet you can find many processes that fit this same criteria. And it’s not always something as innocuous as a report. Sometimes there are steps in a manufacturing process that can and should be eliminated.

More often, though, a step or series of steps must be performed, but they can be done much differently than they are now. They can be done in a different way that takes less time, fewer people, less materials or space, and less money. But you have to look, and you have to see. Look at everything you do. Do three people really need to approve that? Do you really have to write that down AND enter it into the computer? Do you really have to enter that manually, can’t it be done automatically? Do you really need to send a (signed) purchase order to your vendor, can’t you just send them an electronic signal (after you’ve set up an agreement on terms such as quantity for re-orders, price, etc.)?

The point is, examine everything you do, be sure you know why you’re doing it, and find a way to do it better. Every improvement doesn’t have to be a big breakthrough. Small, incremental improvements add up quickly. Better small improvement than none at all.

I’ll continue this thread in future posts.

Lessons from the Airwaves

Here's a lesson in Business Operations from an unlikely source - the Hawaii Public Radio semi-annual fund drive.

I listen to HPR (usually KIPO) even during their fund drives. I'm that much of a Public Radio junkie (I'm also a "True Believer"). I'm always amazed that they raise the amount of money they need, and they almost always achieve their goal on-time.

That's your first lesson. They set a specific goal, a specific dollar amount that they need to raise, and a specific time frame to reach it. Lesson? Set specific, measurable, achievable goals.

But I was getting worried this drive because they had fallen significantly behind after several days. With the economy the way it is and all the cutbacks and layoffs, it wasn't really a surprise, but it was a concern. But they got back on-track and even managed to reach their goal right on time. Amazing! So how did they do it?

Here's the big lesson. The big, final goal is hard for most people to really get their head around. It's a big number and people don't see how their little, individual contribution puts a dent in it. So what HPR always does, and what they sat down and really pushed and focused on after they fell behind, is break that big, final goal down into smaller targets set for each program or hour of the day. That is, instead of having to think about how your $60 membership (or $120 True Believer or $365 Dollar-A-Day pledge) puts a dent in the $700,000-plus final goal, you can get a really clear picture of how you pledge makes a difference in a $1,200 target during your favorite show. Lesson? Break a big, final goal down into smaller, more easily digestable targets that people can understand and feel good about.

Oh, and donate to your favorite Public Radio station (even if you're not liberal-leaning, the music's great).

Performing

I just read an article in Inc. magazine (December 2008 issue, yes I’m behind in my reading) that ties into a conversation I had yesterday. The article is titled How to: Conduct Annual Employee Reviews. My conversation included why annual reviews are mostly useless and how a proper Performance Measurement system should work.

I’m doing some work with a small non-profit arts organization. The art is great. The business side needs a little work. Part of my discussion revolved around measuring the performance of the administration; Executive Director, Artistic Director, and the Board. Many non-profit arts organizations struggle financially and administratively. It almost goes with the territory. In that kind of environment, an annual review is irrelevant. Performance needs to be monitored constantly, as part of everyone’s daily work. To do that, it has to relate to something. Performance has to relate to progress towards defined goals.

The Goal Attainment System includes the Goal Attainment Plan, where the goals of the organization as a whole are defined, the Action Plan, where the map of how the goals will be achieved is developed, and the Performance Measurement System, where the performance and actions of everyone are tied to the defined goals and work towards achieving them.

With this arts organization, everyone should know where they stand at all times. The Executive and Artistic Directors will know almost daily how they’re progressing and how they’re moving the organization towards its goals. The Board meets monthly and should know prior to each meeting how the organization is progressing, and how both the Executive and Artistic Directors are doing in progressing the organization towards the goals. Any other paid staff and volunteers must be included in the system too.

When looking at performance and performance measurements for your organization, look at one industry where measuring performance is critical to success – the sports industry. I was thinking of an example while reading some of Wendy’s blogs at Your Scrumhalf Connection. Wendy is a top athlete, but she’s had a couple of injuries lately that have temporarily hindered her progress. Think about what kind of impact an annual performance review would have on her and her rugby club, rather than a dynamic and ongoing measurement system. A year ago Wendy might have been in peak condition and at the top of her game. A performance review then would be very high. But if you relied on that review to assign her work and give her rewards for the entire next year, that would be a mistake.

In rugby, whether at the local club level or at the international level, players are selected each week or just prior to each game. You can’t wait for an annual performance review or rely on last year’s to select players for the next game. You have to rate their performance right now, how they’ve been performing the past few weeks or months and how their fitness is right now. The club or team has defined goals for where they want to be. Each individual, whether player, coach, or administrator, must help to get them there. They must know at all time how they are performing and how they are helping the organization to progress towards the goals.

So chuck the annual reviews and start developing your Goal Attainment System and Performance Measurement System. And Go Wendy!