en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en fr en en en en
I wrote a blog a little while back that was a crossover between my one of my personal hobbies, guitar building, and my profession, business consulting around people. When I initially wrote the blog, I had quite a few pictures and it didn’t translate into the blog format very well. With this version, I have all the pictures and a fraction of the words. Let me know which you prefer. The blog can be found here.
Measure Twice, Cut Once from Harrison Withers
58 Quotes, Facts, Benchmarks, and Best Practices on People and Analytics
Why Creating a Sense of Urgency Is a Terrible Idea
Several times in the last few weeks, someone has told me that I have to “create a sense of urgency” in the context of change management. Typically this was said within a sentence or two of also telling me I needed to be “open” and “transparent.” It occurred to me somewhere along the way that creating a sense of urgency is the worst kind of cliché. Management experts have been saying it instinctively for years without actually thinking about what it means. It’s like when the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer, and you have no choice but to kick.
Got a change management issue?
Let’s break it down a little to illustrate my point.
Create – We create solutions, ideas, art, fiction, but in the context of change management, what is it really we are trying to create? If you’re trying to get people to help create a solution, you really should engage them well before the need for a sense of urgency. If your change is really at the point where you’ve thought it through and can prove it’s the right thing to do, then what you need to do is communicate, not create.
Sense – Sense is a vague word that alludes to a feeling. It’s that little tingle at back your throat that gives you the “sense” that you may be quite possibly may in fact be getting a slight cold, or maybe you just need a drink of water. The problem here is the interpretation of what it is you were trying to create is highly dependent on how in touch the receiver of the message is with his or her feelings. There’s nothing concrete about it. What you really meant to say is that there is an expectation that you want to set. Expectation clearly states there is a specific action, behavior, or thought pattern (gasp) that you will follow.
Urgency –Urgency is not as vague as the word “sense,” but it also implies a personal interpretation. The fact that something is urgent does not necessarily mean it’s important. If you think of it in a time management context, Stephen Covey, came up with a great visual matrix in First Things First:
Truth is that change may not be urgent at all, but that doesn’t make it any less important. With any change, lasting effects occur only when the change is important to the business and the individual. That’s the point—that it’s important—not the timetable.
Without specificity, human beings tend to be quite literal. I don’t think it much of a stretch that:
Create a Sense of Urgency
A fictional account that will make me feel uneasy and that I need to take care of immediately, but that probably isn’t important.
If we really take our own medicine and are changing the way we think about people in our organizations, we’ll see that they deserve far more than a tired, irrelevant cliché. What we all need for today and lasting change is to communicate an expectation and explain the importance. Make a new cliché if you must, but let go of language that is misleading and vague.
Why Creating a Sense of Urgency is a Terrible Idea from Harrison Withers
Thoughts from Performance Excellence Week 2014 (PEX)
January 23, 2014 / Harrison Withers / 1 Comment
Having just returned from a few days at PEX Week 2014, I would like to share a few of my thoughts. This will not be a blow-by-blow recap, but rather an attempt to collect my thoughts into a set of themes and takeaways that I left the conference with.
Visually, I was struck at this conference by how many people were wearing suit and tie, buttoned-down business wear. I know that seems like a shallow impression to lead with, but I think it speaks to how seriously people who are engaged with process excellence take themselves and their craft. I admire the pride, but I can’t help feeling that particular display is getting a bit dated.
There was a tremendous focus from the vendor community on tools and software for the process mapping or process tracking standpoint. As a first time attendee of the conference, I was impressed with the functionality of many of the tools, but as someone who is also interested in usability and user experience, there were some really abhorrent interfaces and design schemes.
I believe that some aspects of the software design reflect a continued undervaluation of the people side of process improvement. While black belt and green belt professionals are the primary architects of process improvement, the vast majority of the users of those processes are blissfully unaware of the intricacies of continuous improvement and the language it uses to describe itself. We must never lose sight that even when we seek automation, the human aspect of change is still our ultimate goal. As Brad Power said in his keynote on the first day of the conference: “Build people first, get results second.”
The truth is that if you don’t build people first, you will still get results; they just won’t be the results you were looking for.
Another theme that I noticed was that technology driven disruptors continue to affect process excellence and improvement. Mobile, Social, Cloud, and Big Data technologies are all causing many to reevaluate some long-held and stable processes. However, it is up to us to look at these disruptors as either threats or opportunities. Some process can still be leveraged through continuous improvement, while others are disrupted to the point where we really should start over.
My primary interest in attending PEX was to network and get a sense of where companies are with process improvement as it relates to people and more specifically, traditional “HR” roles.  As I talked to people, I got a lot of reactions that HR was “really broken” and I saw a lot of light bulbs go off that HR could really use a process improvement touch.
One of the best sessions of the entire conference for me was Christina Gasperino from Cott Beverages, who spoke about HR service Delivery transformation. She’s doing at Cott what I had hoped to see more companies doing—a series of people- and process-centric improvement projects aimed at bettering employee’s experiences with service delivery and reducing cost and waste at the same time.
Process improvement in the HR space is clearly something most companies have a large potential to benefit from. While there weren’t a lot of HR practitioners present, I don’t think the topic should be out of bounds for anyone who is focused on the betterment of their business through process excellence.
3 Ways People Analytics Go Beyond Talent Acquisition
November 27, 2013 / Harrison Withers / 0 Comments
The Atlantic – They’re Watching You Work
Last week The Atlantic published “They’re Watching You at Work.” by Don Peck. It’s a catchy title that implies that your employer is spying on you, watching your every move. But the subtitle is much more Insightful: “What happens when Big Data meets human resources?” The result is probably the most complete look at people analytics that’s been published today. The article paints an excellent picture of how analytics can help in the Talent Management process, especially in helping identify potential and overcome bias. It also features some very good examples where people analytics were applied with a positive result. The article is not brief, but it is worthy of your time.
What Happens After Talent Aquistion and How Can People Analytics Help?
Most of the article deals with the Talent Acquisition portion of the Talent Management cycle. As you read the article, consider this: What if we do use people analytics and we recruit the best people with the highest statistical potential, but then the one of these three things happens?
They don’t accept the job
They fail to meet business metrics
They leave (when you don’t want them to)
How can Big Data help human resources if any of those three things happen? The truth is that Big Data still can help quite a bit, but we have to develop and push how people analytics can help us all the way through the talent management and the career cycle.
Examine the first proposition, “They don’t accept the job.” It may be that the person was the right fit for you, but you may not be the right fit for them. This happens to some extent today, but as people analytics becomes more open and transparent, the door will swing both ways. As you gain more insight into your candidates, people will increasingly gain more insight into your company. The companies that will thrive over time will use analytics to look at themselves and make changes so their top picks return the love.
What about the second proposition: “They fail to meet business metrics”? In that case, the first thing you have to consider is whether you hired the right person but for the wrong job. And by that we mean;
Does the design of the position actually take advantage of the strengths your data supported recruiting hired for?
People Analytics can tell us a lot, not only about that person, but also whether or not our business process and job design actually allow people to succeed and thrive. What good is hiring for a behavioral attribute if the person you put that position in only gets to exercise that muscle on rare occasions?
Finally, imagine if we do use great people analytics as part of our talent acquisition strategy. We save a lot of money by hiring the right person and realize greater profit by having high performance, but then that person quits? We will have spent more on acquisition, and the loss realized from attrition of a high performer is huge. People Analytics can and must help us predict—and ideally prevent or reduce—high-cost turnover.
The bottom line is that People Analytics will have a huge impact on HR well beyond Talent Acquisition. In fact, if we only pay attention to the acquisition side of the equation, it will actually expose shortcomings in other areas of the employee life cycle. A balanced approach to the use of analytics is the right course to take.
Return On People: Why It’s Good for Employees
October 10, 2013 / Harrison Withers / 0 Comments
We all understand from a business perspective the concept of getting returns. We spend dollars in order to make more dollars. However, as an employee of a business sometimes the concept of “returns” gets a little cloudier. Sure, we all earn a paycheck but sometimes it’s hard to see in the “here and now” how helping our organization makes more, benefits us and it rarely shows immediate returns in our paycheck. So when we talk about “Return On People”, it’s really easy for employees to relate that concept with just another way for employers to make more money off harder work, more hours, or fewer benefits.
As much as adopting a Return On People mindset is about making more back from your investments in people, it doesn’t work if those people can’t see or don’t understand where they fit in, or what they will get out of it.
A huge component of getting better Returns on People is increasing the amount of time spent on activities that generate profit, as well as decreasing or eliminating activities that have no measurable, or even a negative impact (more cost), on profitability. While the benefits to the employer of better job design are obvious, the net effect for employees is better, more meaningful jobs.
If you asked one of your employees how much time they spent doing actual work in a day (and they answered honestly), what would they say?
It is safe to say the answer would be less than you would like, but the real challenge is identifying what they did with the remaining time and why they didn’t consider it “real” work. Chances are at least some of the time is doing activities that is a requirement of their job that they just don’t see value in.
We all want employees that are engaged with work. It’s much easier to get that level of engagement when the majority of the time spent at work is on activities that have meaningful outcomes and align with that individual’s skill sets. It creates an atmosphere of value. It says to the employee that you value what they are good at far more than the activities that don’t produce returns. You have involved them in something larger than just themselves, and have shown the relationship between work and the success of the company.
Conversely, if we treat employees as costs and draw direct-line relationships between that cost and productivity, that productivity will be limited to the spend associated with it. If they don’t see you trying to make meaningful work for them, your get just what you paid for, labor in exchange for money.
Paying attention to Return On People isn’t just the right thing to do for your business, it’s the right thing to do for your people.
Measurement and Trust for HR (2013 Remix)
September 19, 2013 / Harrison Withers / 0 Comments
Back in 2011 I wrote series of articles on measurement that focused in performance-based measurement for training professionals. At the time, Media 1 was focused in on the transformation of the training function to a performance mindset. In subsequent years, we’ve reframed that performance mindset for the HR professional. The following is an update on my thoughts from the original post.
Far be it for me to hold back on how I really feel about something. So, here goes:
Measuring HR as a justification for HR is an utter waste of time.
It’s like giving style points to the 50-yard dash. It may be interesting, but the only thing that matters is who crossed the finish line first. In other words, the performance or result mattered; the style in which it was achieved is barely noteworthy. Yet, when you measure HR in and of itself, that’s exactly what is happening.
I think Charles H. Green hits it on the head with this quote from his blog:
“The ubiquity of measurement inexorably leads people to mistake the measures themselves for the things they were intended to measure.”
Why do we keep using measures instead of actual performance as justification to ourselves and our organizations? The answer to that question in many cases is rooted in why we are asked to measure HR in the first place… that is, to prove that it has some kind of meaningful, measurable impact on the organization’s results.
Many of our organizations do not believe that HR as it is currently defined contributes to profitability. Or they do not trust that you or your immediate organization can execute HR in an impactful way. The requirement for measurement comes from a place of distrust—not from a defined need to measure results. Consequently, measurement is demanded to “prove” HR has value. Trust is not impacted or improved through this exercise, but regardless, time and effort is spent generating measurements that don’t really tell us anything about the business.
It is not my intent to write a primer on the effects of trust in business. I think Stephen M.R. Covey has done a good job with that in his book the Speed of Trust and the follow-up Smart Trust. The point is that a lack of trust affects our relationships and results in demands for measurements based on volume that are intended to justify the existence of HR in an organization. It’s a closed loop with no obvious business value. That’s why old-school HR departments are usually viewed as a cost centers, not as a strategic business partners or even a source of predictive intelligence.
So how do we as HR professionals earn trust and show that HR can be a source or profitability within the enterprise?
In short we have to make the paradigm shift into measurements that help the business make better, faster decisions based on the analytics of human performance. When business sees we are measuring things that concern them and aren’t self-serving, then that’s a great first step in assuring the business that we’re all in this together.
What to Measure First, Key Performance Indicators for Supporting the Business Case
September 12, 2013 / Harrison Withers / 0 Comments
It’s easy enough to come up with meaningful HR generated data that should be meaningful to business stakeholders.  After all who wouldn’t want to know revenue and/or profit by FTE, loaded costs by function, or engagement levels? The problem is that those measures while valuable may not align to what is most important right now. The first step in aligning the measurement of HR to the needs of the business is to align to corporate goals and initiatives. From there we should be able to identify specific measurements or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) when building the case for an initiative.
Resist the temptation to use measures based and volume and time alone. These metrics generally serve as justification indicators, but fall short of a true performance benchmark.  Good KPI’s rely on multiple sources of data that allow for calculating true costs and profitability. At minimum good KPIs support direct correlation to cost and profitability.
Once your KPIs have been identified, you are well on your way to generating a measurement of your current operational state, also known as a baseline.  Now all you need to do is figure where you left all that elusive data…
Don’t Confuse a Benchmark with a Goal: Video Blog
September 10, 2013 / Harrison Withers / 0 Comments
The following is a video perspective on the blog post “Don’t Confuse a Benchmark with a Goal,” released last week:
Don’t Confuse a Benchmark with a Goal
September 5, 2013 / Harrison Withers / 0 Comments
I recently worked with a client that was very insistent on getting benchmarks from a fairly narrow scope of companies on a specific set of cost measures.  I found out that getting benchmarks from the really high performing companies is often difficult because they believe that they have achieved something with their measurements and that it is a competitive advantage that they don’t necessarily want to let out of the bag. I also found that companies don’t like to disclose cost information unless it’s a pretty nebulous range.
However the good news is that the benchmark isn’t the end-all-be-all. Don’t get me wrong, a benchmark can be important, but don’t get it confused with a goal. Benchmarks are best used as indicators; they can tell you how you compare to other companies, and if the gap is wide enough, it may help you prioritize an initiative. However, while it’s a good start it should never be used as an indicator of the end.
You don’t stop when you hit average, so don’t stop when you hit a benchmark. No one would ever be “best-in-class” if they just shot for a benchmark.  That doesn’t mean chase perfection without payback either, last time I checked best-in-class didn’t come with a guaranteed paycheck. Performance improvement has to always be scaled to match the potential return and the investment needed to get there.
It’s OK to look at a wider range or larger sample size for your benchmarks; they are only one indicator of many you’ll use in evaluating potential opportunities for improvement. Ultimately you’ll need to set achievable goals that meet your internal capability, that’s the measurement that will matter.
« Older posts Newer posts »
Select Month January 2017  (1) November 2016  (1) July 2016  (1) February 2016  (1) December 2014  (1) November 2014  (1) October 2014  (2) May 2014  (1) April 2014  (1) March 2014  (1) February 2014  (2) January 2014  (1) November 2013  (1) October 2013  (1) September 2013  (4) August 2013  (1) July 2013  (1) May 2013  (3) April 2013  (5) March 2013  (1) January 2013  (1) October 2012  (1) September 2012  (2) July 2012  (2) June 2012  (1) May 2012  (1) April 2012  (3) March 2012  (1) February 2012  (1) January 2012  (2) December 2011  (2) November 2011  (1) October 2011  (1) September 2011  (2) May 2011  (1) April 2011  (1) March 2011  (1) January 2011  (1) November 2010  (1) October 2010  (1) August 2010  (1)