One of many of Deming's fantastic quotes:

If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, 

you don't know what you're doing.

A fantastic quote from the man who helped design practical work flow based on customer demand.

He certainly helped Toyota in both:
 - designing cars based on what the customer actually wanted; and a
 - production process that was as efficient as possible.

In a manufacturing environment, this might be distinguished by two clear sets of managers and engineers focussed on:
 - designing the latest car, including engine efficiency, improved comfort, latest colours etc ; and
 - designing the production line, including how the workers assemble the car, where the tools are placed, and how quickly a car can be put together.

So what does that mean in the office environment?  Whether you are processing invoices, clearing insurance claims, or processing benefit claims, who in your office is the expert in:
 - the subject matter; and
 - the production process?

Most don't appreciated the difference, until asked.

Why does this matter? Simple - cost!

Getting the process wrong increases costs through unnecessary re-work and error.  Ensuring work flows in and through the office cleanly, and 'right-first-time', both improves quality from the customer's perspective, improves staff moral, and reduces costs.

It has been shown that efficiency can improve by between 10% and 30%.  Who wouldn't want that on the bottom line?

The Big Society

595or is delighted to be sponsoring VODA Summer of a Lifetime in North Tyneside.  

Summer of a Lifetime is an exciting pilot project delivered by VODA in partnership with the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust and our national network of voluntary sector, Local Authority and Further Education Colleges, as part Government’s National Citizen Service programme aimed at 16 year olds (or older young people in exceptional circumstances).

It is a prestigious, fun, challenging and adventurous project, which gives young people the opportunity to improve skills such as team work, problem solving, leadership and communication. It also helps improve young people's employment prospects by gaining new experiences, networking with others and enriching CVs.

Summer of a Lifetime is a 6-8 week programme for 16 year olds. The first three weeks are full time (with two weeks away from home), then 30 hours part time. It includes exciting teamwork and outdoor physical challenges away from home and will also involve planning, designing and delivering social action projects within your local community.

Summer of a Lifetime

VODA

Think for a moment

Rational behavior requires theory.

Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

@demingSoS

The costs are in the gaps

Arguing for an end to back offices and target driven approaches, John Seddon outlines theories that could permanently alter management approaches.

When I was a young man the term ‘back office’ did not exist. Today it is in common parlance; it is considered axiomatic that back offices are a feature of efficiency; Whitehall extols their virtue; they are springing up all around us. Where did the idea come from? What problem was it designed to solve? Does it solve that problem? Answers to these questions will cause concern to those who have jumped on the back office bandwagon.

It began in 1978. Richard Chase, writing in the Harvard Business Review, lamented the failure of service organisations to be as technocratic as manufacturers. His view – and a view still widely shared amongst managers of services – was that the job of management is to optimise the use of resources – get people working all day – and in services that can be difficult because the customer comes in and ‘interrupts’ the workers.

Chase proposed that we design services to have front offices, where customers are seen or spoken to over the phone, which then send the customers’ requirements to back offices where now, because the activity has been ‘de-coupled’ from the customer, efficiency can be pursued, resource can be optimised, labour can be sweated.

Housing benefits was the first back-office design mandated in local authorities. About eight years ago the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) sent local authorities a three-box set of manuals which promulgated a front-office/back-office design with associated activity targets. The design created backlogs in back offices all over the country and the DWP ‘help team’ recommended that local authorities buy back-log busting services from the private sector. I labelled them the ‘no help’ team, for that didn’t help; it was the wrong answer, adding cost to cost.

As Mark Radford – a housing benefits leader in Swale Borough Council – observed at the time, the problem was not in the back office, it began in the front office. By worrying about seeing people quickly, individual claims became fragmented.

Studying the service also revealed that back-office people took a different view of the claimant than the front-office people; a checklist took over from face-to-face understanding.

Radford was one of the first public-sector managers to learn the error of working to reduce transaction costs, for the true cost of any service is end-to-end: the total number of transactions it takes for someone to receive a service could be as many as ten transactions. In short, he discovered that complying with DWP guidance only served to create failure demand: demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for the customer.

To compound the error, the Audit Commission then bullied housing benefits managers to share their back offices. A problem shared is, in this case, a problem exacerbated.

To further compound the error, we see back offices being outsourced to the private sector, locking in high costs for the long term. Birmingham City Council has, thankfully, woken up to the truth that they are paying their outsource provider, Capita, millions every year for Capita to service failure demand. That’s the good news. The bad news is they don’t know the causes.

And these are they: the separation of front and back-offices, the standardisation and specialisation of work, the management of activity and, in general, the obsession with sweating the labour. Add to this the fact that back-office services outsourced to the private sector are contracted on the basis of transaction volumes and you can see that we have monumental train crashes in the making. South West One, the outsourced back-office deal between Somerset, Taunton Dean and IBM, which is now too expensive to get out of, according to the leader in Somerset, is merely a harbinger.

If you look at business cases put forward for back offices and sharing or outsourcing the same, you see promises of two types of savings: less-of-a-common-resource (i.e. fewer managers, buildings and so on) and lower costs through cheaper transactions.

The first is true, but marginal, and often happens early in the life of a venture, giving encouragement to the notion that it was a good idea; but the second is the big promise and false. Chase was wrong. It is a foolish manager who thinks it is their job to sweat the labour, who believes that costs are in transactions, who believes it is their job is to manage costs. It is the wise manager who learns to manage value, not cost.

No back office, no targets, no activity management, but instead a thorough understanding of citizen demand and staff with the wherewithal to deal with it.

You can buy John Seddon’s book of case studies - Delivering Public Services That Work Volume 2 - from Triarchy Press.

From Localgov.co.uk

http://m.localgov.co.uk/Article/Default.aspx?id=108344

What is Good?

Fans of Only Fools & Horses will remember Dell-Boy’s great line to the supermarket check-out girl, “Did you sue them?” When asked who, he replied “The Charm School!” And many of us will have found ourselves in circumstances when we would have loved to use the same sarcastic wit.

Good customer service is one of those things that is not always easy to define but, when we receive it, it is so apparent; and when we don’t receive it, it is just as tangible. So, why is it so hard to deliver?

One reason would be that it is measured by the recipient and, what works for one will not always work for another. As a result, the tendency is for many organisations to design out variance and to standardise customer experience, or service delivery. The consequence is that most people then receive acceptable service, without it ever being a great experience.

However, in the worst examples, customers get less than acceptable service because of this standardisation, and this is the premise upon which Systems Thinking builds a case to deliver improvements.

Another reason for the inability of organisations to deliver quality customer service is that they can lose sight of their purpose and, when this happens, those within the organisation lose their direction.

Just this week I dropped a colleague off at York Railway Station and, rather ironically, whilst waiting for the rush-hour traffic to permit my onward journey, I heard on the radio about a planned strike by the RMT in Scotland. As a result, rail passengers north of the border were likely to experience difficulty in travelling on two days in the week leading up to Christmas.

Now, as ever, it is extremely unlikely that we will be availed of the true facts about the dispute leading to the strike, so I would be a little foolish to pass too much judgement. It appears to be a dispute about a ticket inspector who challenged a passenger with an incorrect ticket and reduced the passenger to tears; Scotrail have now dismissed the inspector. On the face of it, a very difficult case to resolve, especially if the inspector was merely doing the job he was employed to do.

My point is that these strikes - which are still planned as I write – will, and I quote the RMT, “cause massive disruption”. Surely everyone working in that industry knows that the very purpose for their employment is the service of their customers? Planning a strike at this time of year pays scant regard to those whom they all serve and both management and unions, in my opinion, are all accountable for ensuring that those customers are served. Whatever your politics, I’m afraid that using this dispute as a reason to restrict the level of service to customers at this time is unacceptable.

Meanwhile, in the Benefits arena, I need not remind you that we have some huge and very difficult human challenges ahead of us! However, what I would urge everyone to remember is why we are here, and why we must deliver good quality service in the face of these challenges.

In a general despatch from the Institute of Human Development in 2006, they said: “Keep yourself strong through business and organisational interference and keep people focussed on the purpose of what they are doing. Purpose is the crowning responsibility of those of you who seek to be leaders in any field – purpose is the answer to the question ‘why’ and, therefore, the driving energy in organisational change and growth...Companies and organisations that do have a clear sense of purpose thrive more easily than those who don’t.”

So, for those of you with management responsibility, you need to communicate with your teams the clear, unambiguous purpose for your existence. And, if you think you have, do it again!  

Whilst it is going to be far from easy, it is often through adversity that people work their best. Everyone involved with the service has a duty to be professional and responsible about how to tackle the challenge that faces us.

That responsibility could be articulated as follows:

    Politicians…to make considered decisions about where their service is going without prevaricating to score political points;

    Senior Management…to convert that ‘strategy’ into workable ‘tactics’ and provide effective support to middle management;

    Middle Management…to disseminate that vision through effective operational communication and to support front-line staff to deliver;

    Service operatives…to remain professional, customer and outcome focused.

Many of us will face an uncertain future, but local authorities have a duty to place their residents at the heart of everything they do.

Simply answering the phone in a set number of rings, or meeting a customer within a set number of minutes, may no longer be the most effective way of measuring customer satisfaction. Most people are accepting of getting good quality service, even if it takes a little longer. The key is understanding what ‘good’ looks like!

Sean Langley FIRRV

Benefits & Revenues Consultant, and author of

The phat Controller (A Leadership Handbook)

ISBN: 978-1-4251-6241-2

Published by Trafford Publishing

Go to www.seanlangley.co.uk

14 keys to successful change management

Change is an inevitable part of the modern business environment. But change rarely comes easily.

Organizations, and the people within them, must constantly re-invent themselves to remain competitive. As a result, today’s leaders must do more than manage the status quo – leaders must be champions in change readiness – the ability to continuously initiate and respond to change in ways that create advantage, minimize risk, and sustain performance.

Resistance to change

Expecting resistance to change and planning for it from the start of your change management programme will allow you to effectively manage objections. Understanding the most common reasons people object to change gives you the opportunity to plan your change strategy to address these factors.

A sense of urgency

Failure to create a strong sense of urgency causes a change movement to lose momentum before it gets a chance to start. Establishing a true sense of urgency without creating an emergency is the first objective achieved to overcome the routine of daily business.

Build an emotional and rational case for change

Many leaders excel at building the rational case for change, but they are less adept in appealing to people’s emotional core. Yet the employees’ emotions are where the momentum for real transformation ultimately lies.

Change management require that people feel the problem

Before you can get buy-in, people need to feel the problem. People aren’t going to consider anything until they are convinced there is a problem that truly needs to be addressed.

Involve the people

Whenever an organization imposes new things on people there will be difficulties. Participation, involvement and open, early, full communication are the important factors.

Increase engagement by asking questions

Have you ever been “talked at” instead of had someone “talk with”? It doesn’t feel good to have someone talk at you. It leaves you feeling like you might as well not have been there at all. It is much more powerful asking questions. Increase engagement by asking questions when leading change.

How to deliver bad news in connection with change

Delivering bad news is one of the biggest challenges managers face. How can you deliver bad news in a way that minimizes the damage: Don’t wait too long – do it as soon as possible, give them the big picture, speak candidly and plan for questions.

Culture an important part of change management

All change in organizations is challenging, but perhaps the most daunting is changing culture. But if managers want to build high-performing organizations, they need to address culture change

Storytelling

Storytelling can be a powerful tool when you want to drive organizational change. Good leaders tell stories that “cast” them and their organizations as agents of change, rather than defenders of the status quo.

Change old habits

Sustaining success depends on an organization’s ability to adapt to a changing environment – whether it’s an external change, such as a transformative technology or a changing economy, or an internal one, such as a restructuring or key process overhaul

Change requires breaking down silos

Business silos, just like agricultural silos hold something important and make it hard to get at. That’s good when you’re protecting wheat and corn from rain & snow. But it’s bad when you’re trying to change across departments and divisions. And the bigger the company the more harmful a role silos play. Silos create an environment where sharing and collaborating for anything other than one silo’s special interests is virtually impossible.

Communication is paramount when it comes to change management

Lots of it. Change is unsettling because it brings with it an element of uncertainty. And it is the uncertainty which is a major cause of resistance to change. People can relate to facts – good or bad – but uncertainty and contradicting messages breed unease and resistance. Therefore, it is important to communicate with everybody about everything in relation to the upcoming changes in order to reduce the uncertainty. Use any communication channels available and remember that it is impossible to over-communicate change.

Use social media

Social media platforms are ideal mechanisms to facilitate change because much of change management boils down to ongoing conversations and dialogue in a company.

Change management and the power of small wins

Large change management problems are best broken down into smaller ones with concrete achievable goals. Otherwise it can be so overwhelming that solutions seem unattainable – therefore, people often avoid tackling them or come up with single, grand programs that fail. Don’t forget to pour champagne on it.

Companies most likely to be successful in making change work to their advantage are the ones that no longer view change as a discrete event, but as a constant opportunity to evolve the business.

Author: Torben Rick

Experienced senior executive, both at a strategic and operational level, with strong track record in developing, driving and managing business improvement and development, change management and turn-around.

Original article : click here

Top 10 ways to be influential

A terrific management development essay by Fiona Dent - CLICK HERE

1. Be patient
2. Active listening
3. Flexibility
4. Build, link and develop ideas together
5. Show your understanding
6. Check that understadning
7. Express yourself fluently
8. Be enthusiastic
9. Remember the unextinguished fire
10. Above all, plan and prepare