If you read the agenda for the 9th June 2010 cabinet that will be held this coming Wednesday, you will see it is full of things like “implement check list”, “targets for individual areas”, “make managers aware of absence costs” and “put up poster”.

Put up poster!

Nowhere is any mention of improving the work so that people feel they are doing a job with a purpose (serve the local community?) and doing it well. That is the thing that will lower the absence rate. All the other things are futile or will make the problem worse.

The most likely root of the problem is that staff are dissatisfied at what they do and at management constantly getting in the way of them doing a good job. Check lists and return to work interviews will simple antagonise the staff further and continue to reduce any motivation they may have to jump out of bed in the morning.

Give them a good job to do and they will love to come to work.

I wonder if anyone will raise this on Wednesday…

Best,

Rob

The programme described the current travails of Toyota, telling of the accidents and reported incidents that led to the recall and the testimony to Congress in the US. There was a history of Toyota as a loom company before starting a motor division in the 1930s.

There was a nice little description of the Toyota Way and in less detail, the Toyota Production System.

The basic thrust of the message was that Toyota grew on the principle of quality and that in the last few years has lost sight of that to pursue the goal of growth. This led to quality standards not being maintained since fast expansion means that it was more difficult to keep the culture solid as they spread out quickly.

Given that most of us are not manufacturing cars, what can we learn from this story?

1) It shows that even if you are an example to others (and Toyota has been an inspiration to organisations in virtually all sectors across the globe in the past thirty years) it doesn’t mean you are infallible.

2) Culture is a slippery thing. It is something that is hard to get right and even when it is right, it will fizzle away if you don’t look after it.

3) Culture comes from purpose. They changed their purpose from quality to growth and the behaviour changed accordingly. In a sense, with that change in purpose, some trouble was inevitable.

4) We learn from mistakes. Toyota’s principle of continuous improvement is based upon that. Bring the faults to the surface as early as possible so they can be learned from. This mistake is a big one. If it had been caught early in line with Toyota’s ethos, it could have been dealt with easily, but because they didn’t deal with it quickly enough, it has now ballooned into massive damage to Toyota’s reputation. Hopefully we learn the most from the big mistakes.

5) Purpose is everything. To paraphrase Russell Ackoff, “It is better to do the right thing badly than do the wrong thing well.”

I bet that the other car makers around the world are a little bit glad that Toyota has been slowed down by this. However, they have the history of decades of quality behind them and while they will take a hit as fewer people trust their product for a while, they are in a much better position to learn from times like these than many other companies would be.

The final lesson is that in order to not to have to learn from the big mistakes you need to get very good at continuously learning from the small mistakes and then implementing what you have learned.

Best,

Rob

Simplistic
Meaningless
Arbitrary
Road blocks
Torture

Simplistic

Targets are simplistic. Targets are a sledgehammer to crack a nut and they come with no context or method. Targets are imposed by managers and governments and they walk away thinking by setting a target that their job is done.

Meaningless

Targets don’t have any relation to the system they are meant to apply to. They can’t have. Targets are not related to purpose. Hitting or missing a target does not give you any new information. Having a target set does not give you any new method to improve it simply gives you something to focus on. And not anything useful. Aiming for a target does not give staff or managers any new understanding of the system. They will be so absorbed trying to hit the target they may well be even more oblivious of what is happening around them.

Arbitrary

An understanding of variation gives the insight that any level at which you set your target is wrong. A study of common cause variation for any measure will give you upper and lower limits within which the system will exhibit predictable variation. Setting a target above or below the limits means the target will always/never be hit (depending on whether higher or lower is better or worse). Setting the target at a level between the limits means that it is virtually random whether the target will be hit in any given period. Therefore there is no reliable way to set a target and hence all targets are arbitrary.

Road Blocks

Targets distract from genuine improvement by sapping energy toward the collecting, analysis and reporting of useless data. Worse, targets also actively get in the way and drag down performance. Think of the 4 hour A&E target that induced one hospital trust to keep patients in ambulances outside A&E, only letting them in once they were sure they could hit the target. Schools are measured and ranked on exam results and so they cheat to get the brightest children in their intake. This is not improving education for all, this is a road block to improving education.

Torture

Targets mean pressure to achieve meaningless, arbitrary, numbers. This is tortuous for staff, managers and inspectors alike.

Staff are judged, rated and rewarded by whether they hit arbitrary targets. They know that they have to apply their minds to hitting the targets when that means they have to degrade overall performance to do so. When staff have to cheat to hit targets that has an effect on morale, self-esteem and respect for their managers who are putting them in the position of having to do these things.

Managers are ravaged by the constant hitting and missing of targets in a seemingly random way. They can never seem to get a good explanation about why a target was missed even though when it is hit they tell everyone they can.

Inspectors often know that what they are doing is ruinous to the performance of the organisation that they are trying to judge. They know that most of the time they are simply assessing compliance to a standard and not looking at an intrinsic ability to give good service. This knowledge must eat away at a person.

Targets are tortuous to users. Using a target driven service will be boring, annoying, frustrating and perhaps dangerous and yet they will be constantly being told that the organisation is hitting or making good progress toward its targets.

So let’s get rid of this culture of the target, SMART or otherwise, and move toward measures that are VVAPID.

Value
Variation
Aligned
Purpose
Informative
Deliver

Best,

Rob