ALIGNING THE FACETS

Serious improvement involves much more than improving processes. Organizations are multifaceted organisms (as the name implies) and many factors must come together for success. Similar to the marathon runner who is in excellent condition except for a foot blister, although everything else is perfect, that one weak area may result in an unsuccessful outcome. Organizational facets, too, can be clearly identified. For example, consider an organization with the major facets of leadership, strategy, project management, the management of project management, process, and environment. It is easy to see how, for example, the best processes will not excel if project management is poor, or how a poor strategy will not succeed even if all other facets are at their best. Usually, these relationships are the overlooked correct answers to questions arising from the lack of results after significant investments in one or more facets. A fortune can be spent on process; however, if the environment in which that process is expected to perform is not aligned properly, the process will not perform as expected.

An effective measurement program identifies all necessary facets for success and works toward evaluating the alignment of these facets. This point is significant in establishing expectations for improvement activity, both in estimating the investment to achieve success and in understanding the results from such investment.

Measurement is important, but deceptively simple-looking; a misguided venture into measurement can easily create more problems than it solves. Misadventures in measurement often make subsequent endeavors that much more difficult to undertake. “We tried that here and it did not work.” A good illustration is in a classic W.C. Fields movie where he entices a “mark” into a game of cards. The soon-to-be-victim says, “A game of chance?” In his famous stage whisper, Fields says “Not the way I play it.” Examples abound for things that were “tried here and didn’t work.” Total quality management (TQM), benchmarking, business process reengineering (BPR), and numerous other approaches would fit this improvement opportunity characterization where the appropriate response is “not the way we played it.”

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