8.2. Organizationwide Performance Improvement

Our critique of the four attempted performance improvement programs underscores our belief that any effort that does not address all Three Levels of Performance is liable to produce only piecemeal results. If the president of ABC Electronics were to follow the Three Levels approach, he would take nine steps, which mirror the Nine Performance Variables discussed in Chapters Three through Six:

Organization Level

  1. Goals: Develop a set of companywide customer-driven performance improvement goals linked to the competitive advantages and/or gaps outlined in the company strategy.

  2. Design: Design an organization in which functional customer-supplier relationships support the strategy.

  3. Management: Allocate resources so that the goals can be achieved and establish a system for tracking and improving performance.

Process Level

  1. Goals: Identify the processes that are most critical to the strategy and establish goals that describe the performance required of those processes.

  2. Design: Charter cross-functional teams to find the disconnects in the current processes and to design processes to eliminate the disconnects.

  3. Management: Establish goals at critical junctures in the process and continuously monitor and improve process performance.

Job/Performer Level

  1. Goals: Identify the jobs that are critical to the success of the process and establish goals for the outputs of those jobs.

  2. Design: Design and organize the jobs so that they can efficiently and effectively achieve the goals.

  3. Management: Create a job environment in which capable, adequately trained people have clear statements of, regular feedback on, positive consequences for, and few barriers to goal achievement.

The president might still want to provide awareness training, appoint a quality director, and blanket the organization with posters and badge inserts. However, by addressing the Nine Variables outlined in the Three Levels approach, he would be moving from program-of-the-month symbols to an infrastructure for substantive, long-term performance improvement.

As flawed as it is, the ABC quality program has one major strength-th e involvement of the president. We have found few examples of successful and sustained efforts in which senior management is not actively involved. In exemplary programs, top managers do more than give their blessing and some money. Figure 8.1 describes the five responsibilities assumed by top managers who are activel y involved in a performance improvement effort.

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