I recently toured the Autoliv facility located in Ogden, UT.  This manufacturing plant produces airbags for the automotive industry - and has won the highly coveted Shingo Prize Award not once, but twice!  What really stood out for me during the visit was the robustness and maturity of the firm’s employee suggestion system.

True Lean practicing organizations appreciate the fact that a high performing employee suggestion system is the cornerstone of kaizen.   Autoliv is no exception.  Ogden-based employees “manufacture” 90+ implemented suggestions annually.  Autoliv’s approach to leveraging the collective wisdom and knowledge of their workforce led me to reflect on a number of practices that seem to be present in high flying suggestion systems.

• Ideas that relate to improving a work process in an incremental way are encouraged.  Big ticket, Mickey Mantle tape measure-like home runs, while not discouraged, do not have as much payback as lots of small ideas that are easier to implement;

• Paying for suggestions is not necessary – as most people receive a great deal of reward in simply knowing that their ideas have been used;

• Quick implementation of ideas is critical.  Idea bottlenecks and WIP spell the death knell for many systems;

• Suggestion system performance must be measured, as what’s measured is treasured - and tends to get done.

• Advancing suggestions is not an option.   It’s an expectation - a goal for every employee.  An employee who never advances an idea is akin to being dead – and no company can afford to have dead people on the payroll!

Mr. Jack Haffey is a former senior executive of the Montana Power Company (MPC) - and a former Montana legislator.  He currently leads his independent consulting practice that specializes in organizational development and renewal.  Jack and I worked together for a number of years at MPC, where he was known throughout the organization – and the state of Montana - as a principled individual who could be counted on to take the “high road” in his decision-making process.  Through his daily actions, he demonstrated - and as much as anyone that I have been associated with in my career – that a high concern for people and a high concern for operational results can be complementary goals in a profit seeking enterprise.  He currently resides in lovely Anaconda, Montana - and IS the original purveyor of kitchen table wisdom and street corner logic.

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The Verdict Is In On Organizational Excellence - What It Is, How To Achieve It & How To Improve On It – Over The Long Term

Jack Haffey, Jack Haffey & Associates, www.jackhaffey.com

 Author’s Introduction and Purpose

The thoughts and beliefs in this brief paper are presented in a humble and learning spirit. At the same time, they are presented with a firm conviction that stops just short of being dogmatic. I would hope for at least two outcomes for readers:

1. Take away an intention to give serious consideration to the messages; and
2. Respond to the author for the purposes of clarification, discussion and even debate - for mutual learning. 

Continued…

Try to remember the last “non-numbing,” cinematic-quality Powerpoint presentation that you’ve enjoyed.  All too often, the presenter has a really good story to tell, but either does not have the time, inclination or savvy to juice up the presentation enough to captivate the audience.  Twenty-eight point Arial on white background is a sure recipe for a sea of bobbing heads.  Yes, the whole experience – especially in those cases where the presentation spans 15 slides – feels as lame and classless as being served a charred piece of filet mignon on a paper plate with an exquisite glass of boxed wine, complete with plastic utensils.

Robert Lane and Robert Wright, two researchers who have conducted formal studies to examine the effects of interactive, media-based presentation in higher education and business, offer four key principles for using Powerpoint more effectively:

Principle # 1 – Interactivity

Principle # 2 – Rich Media

Principle # 3 – Hierarchical Organization of Content

Principle # 4 - Media-enhanced Presenter Dynamics

For more insights, here’s a great Slideshare presentation by a Moscow-based consultant, Alexei Kapterev, on how to avoid death by Powerpoint. 

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like, “this is the way we have always ridden dead horses.”
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses there.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a stealth team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today’s environment.
10. Changing the requirements.  Declaring that “this horse is not dead.”
11. Hiring contractors to ride the dead horse (aka outsourcing)
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that “no horse is too dead to beat.”
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.
15. Declaring that the horse is “better, faster, cheaper” dead.
16. Forming a kaizen event to find uses for dead horses.
17. Promoting the horse to a research position.

A recent post dealing with pay for performance that appeared in the HR blog, Compensation Force, rekindled my thinking on this well-worn topic.  The blog’s author, Ann Bares, outlined very convincingly the need for ratings in performance review documents, especially if the review is being undertaken for salary administration purposes.

 As I reflected on her short piece, it struck me that few in the world of work would question whether pay and performance should be linked.  Any suggestion to the contrary would be tantamount to questioning the American flag, motherhood and apple pie.

 However, that being said, the article, “Doing More with Less:  Paying for Performance in the New Economic Reality,” which appeared in the January 2010 issue of Workspan, does a very nice job in pointing out the futility in attempting to pay for performance though traditional salary budgets.

 While it seems necessary to continue to espouse pay for performance, and to at least attempt to differentiate pay increases based on performance assessments, no organization should delude itself into believing that a 1.5% to 2.5% differential in the overall rate of increase between a high performer and an average performance will produce significant motivational effects.  The organizations most astute at recognizing and rewarding superior performance will leverage a variety of mechanisms, and approach the entire matter in a more systematic way.  More to come on this topic……

There are two levels of commitment – intellectual commitment, and emotional commitment.  Leaders who are sufficiently educated and conversant about the change effort can be intellectually committed – that is, they would acknowledge that the overall direction for change makes sense.  In comparison, emotional commitment suggests a higher level of bonding or alignment with the change.  Individuals who are emotionally committed to a cause will expend more discretionary effort – and will be more apt to sacrifice to do whatever it takes to realize the new vision. 

Here are some signposts that I have used over the years to analyze the overall level of commitment among leaders:

1. The level of intellectual curiousity among the leadership team.  In short, if the leadership team is emotionally committed to the change, they will, on their own volition, without coaxing, reach out to learn more about the change initiative.  Their appetitive for learning will be voracious.  Look for the indicators:  (a). number of books read; b. frequency of visits to other organizations to benchmark and to learn from others; c. attendance at workshops, conference and symposiums.
2. Integration into communications.  Observe how front and center the change effort tends to be highlighted in “normal” communications in the leader’s business area or department.    What is the frequency of discussion on the topic?  Is the change effort given cursory treatment in communications – or do status reports and employee presentations include the topic front and center.
3. Evidence of leaders’ proclivity or tendency to advance change.  Have leaders pretty much been a “dull boys or girls” most of their careers, working each day with blinders, and pretty much taking guidance or original thought from others – or have they advocated and led a new way of conducting business that’s truly transformational?  It’s rare to see a 20 or 30 year veteran of “traditional organizations” to change colors in a sincere way. More often than not, the change is superficial, and only deep enough to keep the change masters off their tail.
4. The list would not be complete without mentioning the classic - “do they walk the talk?”  The term is hardly fresh, but it still resonates.  If the organization is striving for greater innovation, look to see to what extent leaders are taking steps to systematically solicit (and use) fresh ideas from their organizations.  If the organization is implementing a lean business philosophy, then to what extent are leaders personally leading improvement within his or her organization?

 I’ve become even more convinced that the ability to recognize others’ efforts is a simple barometer of leadership effectiveness.  Yes, I realize that many psychometricians will take issue with this statement, and may comment on intervening and confounding variables being at play, but bottom line, I see a very high correlation (empirically derived by the way) between a leader’s ability to recognize and their capacity for developing an in-depth understanding of what “makes their people tick” – in short, being able to “connect” with their people.  Leaders skilled at recognizing others are usually “naturals” at connecting with people and getting the best efforts from them.  It seems fundamental to me that if you do not “know what makes your people tick,” how in the world can you lead them? 

 The research is pretty convincing that employees who feel appreciated - and who believe that their contributions are noticed and recognized - are more apt to expend more discretionary effort than employees having supervisors who are clueless as to what they are really getting paid to do.   

 I know that some of the passages above may produce yawns, and probably a muttering of “OK, what’s your point?  We all know this.”  Well, my point is that one may obtain a very quick read on another person’s leadership ability by establishing the degree to which they can ‘walk and chew gum at the same time” in recognizing others.  Some well thought out questions spliced into normal conversation (or doing an employment interview) will provide volumes of clues.  Here are some examples:

• How do you feel about employee recognition?  If the person indicates: “why should I recognize someone who is already getting paid to do what you would be recognizing them for,” further test for other neanderthalic leadership tendencies.
• Ask them what they tend to recognize others for, and how often that typically occurs.  Last week is a good sign.  Last decade is a bad sign.
• Ask them what they find to be effective in delivering the recognition.  Do they send emails – or do they meet with the person face to face (or at least call)?

 For more good information on the topic of recognition, review this research monograph entitled, “The Value and ROI in Employee Recognition.”  For pragmatic tips and insights on recognition also see Dr. Bob Nelson, Paul Hebert and the folks at Globoforce.

Another thought provoking look at the future of work.  This seventy-two (72) slide presentation makes a strong case that knowledge-based workers will increasingly find a workplace that’s transparent (performance more tightly measureable), flat (work will no longer be considered a place), competitive (no one is going to pay you for having a degree), and on-demand (work will become more of a contractual relationship characterized by its fluidity).

 One section related to the “pensioner boom,” and how aging societies in the US, Western Europe and Japan will place a heavy burden on their respective economies.  Provides further corroboration of the notion that seismic-level forces in our economy will delay retirement for many Boomers.