Performance Expertise

There are two areas that the manager or performance consultant needs to have some expertise:

1. Quick assessment, where performance and problems can be quickly detected:
   • checklist
   • scorecard
   • radar screen
2. Comprehensive organizational assessment methods, such as the "scorecard" idea:
   • checklist
   • Gaps/needs
   • performance measurement

Symptom Identification

The easiest, and perhaps the most misleading area of expertise is the awareness and identification of symptoms. Everybody feels organizational discomfort, in the form of unfairness (imbalance of work, overloaded conditions), jealousy (differences in rewards, or resource allocation), or interpersonal conflict.

The main problem with this approach is that everybody feels the problem differently. Different interests will cause every person to seek a slightly different solution.

Symptoms (= "problems"):

Relief from the symptom is usually desired first. Because relief can be had by passing the problem to another person or department, this approach is the least helpful to the organization.

Root causes often exist between departments, or are caused by large organizational systems. Changing these are often beyond the capability of those directly affected. Change at this level can have more permanent effect; but it requires actions (and resources) across the whole organization.

Shift Your Thinking

In examining organizational problems, it is helpful to purposely shift your thinking. Pretend you are looking at the problem in different ways.

Is it a problem involving:

• Culture (behavior, values)?
• Structure (job definition; task design, sequencing)?
• Internal Economics (priority-setting, budgeting, resource allocation)?
• Process (combination and transformation of information, resources, materials)?
• Metrics (how many ways could we measure the problem; how do we measure it now?)

How would we describe or measure the problem if we were the:

• customer?
• worker affected?
• supplier?
• other people?

Expertise Bias

Every speciality and functional area will tend to look at problems in terms of their usual "toolbox":

Diagnostic Questions

1. What's going on? Symptoms?
   • Behavioral evidence?
   • Outcome: hoped for; desired state (Is it realistic?)
     Define it-- be very specific!
   • What's the pain that started this process?
2. Clearly state the client's (or your) view of the:
   • System;
   • Players;
   • Attitudes;
   • issues.
3. Information-gathering
   • Be clear about the topic.
   • Use a survey: look for problems indicated
   • Clarify, make subjects get specific
   • Are things getting better or worse?
   • Focus in dialogue on all red flags
4. Standardize the format for your findings
   • Methods
   • Concerns
   • Findings (general and specific; changes; problems)
   • Trends
   • Supportive narrative
   • Population/stratification
   • Recommendations
   • Steps (sequence)

Productivity Measurement

A naive measure of productivity is quite easy to calculate. The formula is given by: Productivity = output unit/input unit.

(Anybody can determine their own personal productivity by determining the value of their production (revenue), and divide it by the their cost (salary, benefits, etc.). If the revenue the worker generates is not available, at least measure the output of work. This can't be used to compare workers.)

Besides output, consumption of inputs can be measured:

• Labor
• Machines
• Materials usage
• Technology

There is one big problem with measures of this type. The focus on one productivity measure-- which focuses on one type of resource-- may lead to a shift in dependence to another resource. Labor productivity may improve, but investment in technology skyrockets. This problem is the best argument for global or "balanced" measurement. The investment in technology must return more revenue greater than the cost of the capital expended. This is known as Economic Value Added analysis (EVA). It is not without its critics, but the notion that equipment or personnel should return revenue greater than their cost is valid.

Some common productivity measures found in many text books include:

Capacity = equipment or resources (potential output) x yield (less down time, set up, etc.)/ cycle time (period of time needed to process inputs)

Efficiency = standard units of output/ resources spent

Yield/utilization = Resources used/ resources available

Productivity = standard of output produced (Efficiency x utilization)/ resources available.

Other measures:

• Measure profitability of each project;
• On-time delivery of reports;
• Customers provide detailed feedback on each project;
• Self-assessment data.

This free download page is from Gustafson's Training and Development web site. (C) 1999 W. N. Gustafson. Permission is granted to print or save for personal purposes.