CHAPTER 8 IMPACT

“You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of the referee.”

Napoleon Hill¹

To impact means to have a marked influence, a strong effect on someone or something.² Assessing the impact of action is the third pillar of the 31Practices framework.

WHAT IS IMPACT?

Impact is often associated with measurement and reward in organizations, and the phrase “What gets measured gets done” has been attributed to Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Edwards Deming, Lord Kelvin and others – it is true. Impact is only seen historically, after the fact.

And measuring something does not always lead to the intended impact. There have been some disastrous examples. Here are two of our favourites:

Case 1

A call centre was focused on the speed with which calls were answered. A standard was set that calls must be answered within three rings and this was measured and reported on. The call centre operatives were bonused on their performance. Then somebody pointed out that while the targets were met and bonuses paid, there were a large number of customer complaints about the poor quality of service.

Further investigation revealed call centre operatives had a singleminded focus on meeting the three rings standard… and yes, you’ve guessed it, in order to answer incoming calls, they were cutting off existing calls mid-conversation!

Case 2

A bus company chose to actively manage the timeliness of its service by putting in place a performance indicator stating that drivers would not be late for more than 10% of bus stops. To meet this targeted measure, bus drivers missed out stops completely to catch up time rather than miss the target.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

Barack Obama³

It’s easy, very easy, to reward the wrong things, and have actions and behaviours emerge that run counter to what you are aiming to achieve.⁴ It’s also possible to get it very right. Consider the case of Zappos: in their call centres they will measure time per call, but reward satisfaction and loyalty measures.

What kind of impact will the actions arising from your 31Practices have?

MEASURING AND SUSTAINING BEHAVIOUR

The two examples above demonstrate the risk of over-reliance on simplistic measurement by numbers. Impact also needs to be assessed at a less quantitative, more qualitative level. A combination of carefully considered metrics or quantitative measures (to provide direction) and a collection of qualitative data (narrative, story, open comments) clarifying the impact on individuals and groups of stakeholders provides a much richer picture of impact and the context within which this happens.

While stories might not seem “measurable” by numbers, Henry Mintzberg, the sanest of management educators, proposed starting “from the premise that we can’t measure what matters”.⁵ Mintzberg suggested that this gives leaders the best chance of realistically facing up to their challenge. Stories are a particularly fruitful way of communicating (see Chapter 15, Storytelling).

To build your awareness of the impact you and 31Practices have, here are some core principles to follow.

Reflection

To see the impact that you have had so far, look behind you and see what kind of footprint or impression is left: on your profession, people you interact with, teams, departments or organizations you have led. What kinds of impact do the actions and behaviours that you pay attention to have across the organization?

This process of reflecting back is key to learning and to moving forward, to create new meaning and understanding as to how to act in the future.⁶

Ongoing feedback

Organizational processes for exploring impact, resetting goals and agendas at a systemic level generally suffer from a significant time lag between the behaviour and the review process, with six-monthly to annual review processes being the norm. This approach does not build the habits that you want to see at play in the organization in a practical and responsive time frame.

If you have identified your core values and set up a series of daily Practices, six months is too long to wait to explore the impact those changes have had. Instead, gathering immediate feedback and immediate stories keeps the values and Practices real and relevant to daily work life, and more quickly builds them into “business as usual” behaviours.

“What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated.”

John E. Jones⁷

31Practices is about daily practices, not setting big goals with distant timescales that can be hard to reach. Rather it’s about paying attention to the incremental impact of living those daily Practices. It’s so simple, taking about five minutes a day to notice and record the impact of your Practice.

For example, let’s say today’s organizational Practice is “We offer help and assistance”. You notice a colleague (that you do not know) struggling with a heavy box in the lift lobby.

It IS a heavy box, as you discover when you help him carry it through to his desk.

When you reflect on the Practice for that day, you remember how your colleague felt when you helped with his heavy box, what he said, how his appreciation made you feel. In this example, there was an instant “recognition” or “reward” for the Practice because the colleague was very grateful for the help. Reviewing the project team you are about to start managing, you may well notice that this very individual is someone who will be a very useful resource in that project – and you’ve already struck up a positive connection.

For other Practices, it may be necessary to think more about the value or benefit of the Practice. What came from connecting with five colleagues from other departments? What happened as a result of you saying thank you to everyone? What impact did taking special care about your appearance or spending time with a new employee have? Understanding the impact and benefit reinforces the behaviour and makes it “worth doing” again, eventually becoming a habit.

With 31Practices, the Practice for the day (“We offer help and assistance”) becomes the cue that triggers the routine behaviour (behaving in line with the Practice of the day) that is rewarded by the attention from colleagues and others in the organizational system. This view of habits as consisting of these three core elements (a cue, a routine and a reward) is described powerfully by Charles Duhigg in his book, the Power of Habit.⁸

Rewarding success

This final step to habit formation, reward, has been clearly documented by behaviour specialists over the decades. Perhaps two of the most well-known scientists are Ivan Pavlov⁹ with his work on conditioning, and BF Skinner¹⁰ whose experiments around reinforcement are well documented. Behavioural psychology, including theories of conditioning and reinforcement, plays an important role in learning and the core ideas are frequently embedded in organizational systems.

“Reward is the most important part [of a habit] - that’s why habits exist”.

Charles Duhigg¹¹

From this perspective, to build new behaviours, it is important to create a reward system that enables people to gain a quick insight into the impact of 31Practices, through the choices and actions that they and their colleagues take. This positively reinforces the value of using the Practices.

In the 31Practices methodology, the organization’s “heritage”, folklore and culture is created through communication of stories, data and accounts sharing what people have done to live the core values through the daily Practices.

As we shared in Chapter 3, Journey, once 31Practices goes live, employees are able to nominate colleagues who they see displaying the 31Practices excellently (they can even nominate themselves). This works best when a cross-functional group (non-management) is responsible for selecting the best examples on a monthly basis. Nominated employees are recognized and their actions and stories are publicized through the organization and become part of the culture, the “way things are done around here” that is central to an organization’s impact and brand.

One thing to note, when we talk about reward: it’s not necessarily monetary reward that we are referring to. While financial reward is nearly always welcomed, it is recognition that has the more significant and sustainable impact. It is often the act of a senior person making a presentation, a photograph in the newsletter or intranet posting that has the biggest positive impact rather than the value of a reward. We remember a young man who worked in the post-room at a financial institution: he was nominated for going out of his way to track down the right person to receive a package and when he was presented with the recognition certificate was moved to tears.

Sincere, heartfelt recognition has a major positive impact.

You might be surprised at how quickly a powerful catalogue of examples builds. One 31Practices client, a major shopping centre, captured the nominations on a simple Excel spread sheet and reviewed these on a regular basis with everybody in the business. Appreciating impact and what has been achieved is part of the cycle. We would love to identify and develop an official research project using 31Practices. A collaborative initiative with interested partners (organizations and academic experts) could evaluate the impact of 31Practices in a very practical, business focussed way and also promote the power of practice-based evidence in organizations.

CREATING A UNIQUE AND SUSTAINABLE VIRTUOUS CIRCLE

Some evidence exists to suggest Practices become easier over time. The more we practise, the more tuned in we become to the cues or triggers that indicate an opportunity to practise (would we previously have noticed the new starter looking for a meeting room, the person struggling with the photocopier?). The more we practise, the more comfortable we become with the behaviour. As Shannon Phelan, Assistant Food and Beverage Manager at one of our client organizations, said “Over time it’s just become natural”

“The brain can be reprogrammed. You just have to be deliberate about it”

Charles Duhigg¹²