Organization performance management - Key questions and current conversations - TRB 01-14-19
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Presentation on key questions and important conversations taking place at the Iowa DOT connected to creating as organization performance management mindset and approach. Given Jan 14, 2019 during the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting.
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Organization performance management - Key questions and current conversations - TRB 01-14-19
- 1. Organizational Performance Management Key Questions & Current Conversations at Iowa DOT David J. Putz, Ph.D. – Iowa DOT david.putz@iowadot.us TRB 98th Annual Meeting – Jan 2019
- 2. Organizational Performance Management Not again! We already have: • Transportation performance management • Asset management • Project management • Change management • Workforce management • Knowledge management
- 4. Organizational Performance Management Simple, Practical Definition: Using information to understand and improve your work
- 5. Using Information to Understand and Improve Work Using A mindset and approach of utilizing information about our work, not periodically, but continuously NOTE: This requires having the knowledge, tools, ability and authority to act.
- 6. Using Information to Understand and Improve Work Information Data, in context, related to our work that is useful for understanding performance. NOTE: The word “context” is important. A number, with context, is just a number
- 7. Using Information to Understand and Improve Work Understand To grasp the purpose of, to be familiar with How well do you understand: • The expectations of those you serve • Whether you are meeting those expectations • The flow of work • How what you are doing fits into the “puzzle”
- 8. Using Information to Understand and Improve Work Improve To change with purpose – to monitor, adjust, and validate performance to be more in line with expectations. NOTE: Requires knowing where you are and where you are going.
- 9. Using Information to Understand and Improve Work Work The tasks, processes, programs, and systems we engage in to fulfill the mission of the department. NOTE: Given not every one does the same work (same purpose, same customers, etc.), the information they need will be different.
- 10. KEY QUESTION HOW CAN WE BETTER SEE AND UNDERSTAND THE DOT?
- 11. Use of “Models” • Models are intended to “represent” something • If you “understand” an organizational model it should help you understand an organization • Attributed to statistician George Box, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” • Translation – Models can be useful, but no one of them is perfect.
- 12. Many Ways to Display
- 13. Generic “Tree”
- 15. “Cascading” – Repeated Effort
- 16. KEY QUESTION HOW SHOULD WE DISPLAY THE INFORMATION?
- 18. Outcomes - “Proof of Concept” Mobility SAFETY FLOW SUSTAINABILITY ACCESSIBILITY ULTIMATE OUTCOME (RESULT) Tier 1 OUTCOMES Working Definitions The transportation system is safe to use and minimizes crashes, injuries, and fatalities. The transportation system reliably and efficiently moves people and goods while minimizing delays and costs. The system is available and in good condition, meeting the needs of today and the future. Users can access the transportation system without unnecessary barriers. How will we monitor progress towards this outcome? Fatalities, Injuries, Crashes Reliability, Usage Condition, Cost Access to Systems, Service Delivery Measures being considered * Number of fatalities * Fatalities per 100 million VMT * Number of serious injuries * Serious injuries per 100 million VMT * Number of non-motorized fatalities and non-motorized serious injuries * Availability (Uptime) * Usage (VMT) * Reliability (Avg Planning Time Index) * Response (Time to Normal) NOTE: Areas “set,” measures TBD TBD TBD
- 19. Use of Outcomes Mobility SAFETY FLOW SUSTAINABILITY ACCESSIBILITY The transportation system is safe to use and minimizes crashes, injuries, and fatalities. The transportation system reliably and efficiently moves people and goods while minimizing delays and costs. The system is available and in good condition, meeting the needs of today and the future. Users can access the transportation system without unnecessary barriers. Outcomes and Measures for “Lines of Business” Outcomes and Measures for “Support” &/or “Management” Workforce Culture Other... SUPPORT/MANAGEMENT RESULTS TREESUPPORT/MANAGEMENT RESULTS TREE LINES OF BUSINESS RESULTS TREELINES OF BUSINESS RESULTS TREE Management Team “Dashboard” Outcomes and Measures Management Team Chooses to Monitor Created, in part, from outcomes and measures developed in results trees Currently developing prototype for discussion/feedback Will need to be developed
- 21. (Better) KEY QUESTION WHAT PERFORMANCE INFORMATION DO WE NEED?
- 22. ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING – Basic Model Adopting a PDCA approach and the need to identify both operational focus and change efforts, we get: Organizational Planning Review & Set Objectives Performance Plan Strategic Plan Implement Plan per Annual Objectives Implement Strategic Initiatives Review Results of Performance Review Progress on Initiative Implementation Set Change Objectives Set Performance Objectives
- 23. ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING – Basic Model The cycles, when taken together allow for management of performance AND change. Organizational Planning Review & Set Objectives Performance Plan Strategic Plan Implement Plan per Annual Objectives Implement Strategic Initiatives Review Results of Performance Review Progress on Initiative Implementation Set Change Objectives Set Performance Objectives PerformanceManagement ChangeManagement
- 24. ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING – Basic Model Organizational planning consists of reviewing performance & progress and setting objectives. Organizational Planning Review & Set Objectives Performance Plan Strategic Plan Implement Plan per Annual Objectives Implement Strategic Initiatives Review Results of Performance Review Progress on Initiative Implementation Set Change Objectives Set Performance Objectives
- 25. ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING – Basic Model Both cycles are on-going, providing information on the “health” of the organization. Organizational Planning Review & Set Objectives Performance Plan Strategic Plan Implement Plan per Annual Objectives Implement Strategic Initiatives Review Results of Performance Review Progress on Initiative Implementation Set Change Objectives Set Performance Objectives
- 26. Org Planning – Another View
- 27. Org Planning - Responsibility
- 28. Org Planning – Focus of Work
- 29. KEY QUESTION HOW DO WE KEEP FOCUSED ON WHAT’S IMPORTANT?
- 30. KEY CONCEPT – HORIZONTAL ALIGNMENT NEED TO CONTINUALLY IMPROVE We must improve how we deliver our products and services. To improve, or “change with a purpose,” clear expectations and outcomes must be set.
- 31. KEY CONCEPT – VERTICAL ALIGNMENT NEED TO FOCUS ON WHAT’S IMPORTANT To ensure efforts mutually support each other, we must improve our evaluation of outcomes at all levels. It is no longer enough to be a “silo” or pocket of excellence.
- 32. KEY CONCEPT – INTEGRATION GOAL: INTEGRATION Ultimately, our responsibility is to make sure efforts underway to improve performance are focused on those things we know are the most important.
- 33. PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT – CURRENT STATUS The department is continuing conversations about organizational performance management – both in terms of information needs and practices • Work group tasked with “proof of concept” • Result of past starts/stops at organizational level • Think: research and development • Current work of work group is two-fold • Continued development of outcome framework • After comfortable with set of deliverables, develop RFP for assistance in implementation
- 34. In Summary What does organizational performance management really mean? DEFINE How can we better understand and “see” the department? MODEL & COMMUNICATE What performance information do we need? MANAGE PERFORMANCE & CHANGE How do we maintain focus? HA & VA
- 35. Thank you! David J. Putz, Ph.D. – Iowa DOT david.putz@iowadot.us TRB 98th Annual Meeting – Jan 2019
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. I will be sharing of the conversations currently underway at the Iowa Department of Transportation related to organizational performance management. The work so far has identified some key concepts we hope to incorporate into any organizational performance management effort. I’m guessing some of these questions are ones you’ve either addressed or are working on. I welcome you to share your thoughts.
- The first thing we ran into is the reality that everything and everyone is talking about some kind of “management” We were going to have to work through what we meant and how to communicate it.
- Success in communicating and implementing any effort is correlated to the clarity and depth of it being understood. If we learned anything from our previous attempts, it was that everyone has a different opinion on what performance management was. Often, there were rooted in functional areas or responsibility, measurement efforts, or a focus on tools & technology. What the Iowa DOT Strategic Initiative Team, the first group to explore this within the department, came up with was a much more conceptual definition.
- One of the early contributions of the strategic initiative study group was the creation of a lay person’s definition that captured the intent behind many of the conversations that were taking place. While this definition looks simple enough, there really is a lot behind it
- Too often, performance management is boiled down to performance measurement and analytics, followed closely by discussions of technology and automation. Having a personal and organizational mindset that says it’s okay to invest the time and effort to be both efficient and effective is critical. A potential long-term negative impact is the development of an attitude that says, “We’re doing the best we can. We can only get better, do more, etc. by being given more resources.” This can become an excuse and hinder organizational improvement efforts. Our director has identified creating and supporting a supportive culture as one of the primary responsibilities of leadership. Culture is important. It defines both who we are and influences our ability to get work done. Culture can be slow to change – supporting and incentivizing desired behavior is necessary to progress from good intentions to an established way of doing business. Consideration should be given to: Adopting performance management – the use of information to improve our work – as a fundamental way of thinking Supporting behavior that creates a measurement-friendly culture, where information is seen as an asset Utilizing formal organizational recognition to support measurement, improvement and innovation Supporting opportunities for more informal recognition among employees and work unit
- Have you ever been in a meeting where people argue over the meaning of a measure? Ask yourself whether the argument is over the actual value or what the value represents. A recurring scenario: 1) performance measures are created, 2) data are created, 3) then the discussion starts on how to interpret them (not in terms of level or trend), but purpose. Doing the “mental front-loading” should help with post collection issues. NOTE: DIFFERENCE MEASURES FOR DIFFERENT NEEDS
- Personal and positional bias is ever-present. Involvement of many perspectives can help combat tunnel vision. Remember to view the work from the inside and outside.
- Change is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for improvement. There are many practices that can be utilized to improve. Most include aspects such as: affirming purpose, documenting current condition, determining desired future state, creating plan to make the adjustments, evaluating progress. Organizationally, this meant getting a better handle on our mission and vision.
- The organization and structure of work is critical to the long-term success of any organization. Emphasis is often more on process and program improvement: TQM, CQI, Process Improvement, Lean There are organizational assessments (Baldrige, Business Excellence Model (EFQM)), and models (Business Model Canvas, Business Process Framework) The idea of understanding the work of the department when everyone is busy doing their work everyday may seem counter-intuitive – but “stepping out” and looking back into the mission of the department, overlaid with basic organizational practices is what I would like to share next.
- If our definition of organizational performance management is “Using information to understand and improve our work,” then how can be go about identifying our work in a way that would support this?
- It is always our goal to create something useful. We have to remember that what we create WILL NOT BE PERFECT. It will require constant attention. Organizations are constantly changing If the model is any good, it will change as well.
- There are many different ways to display results for an organization. I’m betting most of you have seen one or more of these. For a number of reasons, our current focus is the use of a “tree.” Share, “rolls down hill”?
- FRAMEWORKS – Connecting the Pieces – Whether making a meaningful connection from “Result” to “Outcome” at roughly the same level, or at a major transition – like levels of responsibility – identifying and putting together the key pieces creates the “results chain” or “logic model.” Just like the old saying – a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link – the work to build a framework is about finding the right pieces and fitting them together. This connection between levels, some call alignment, could be accomplished by focusing on measures, structure, or outcomes. METRICS: Measures are often the most fickle, with initial measures facing a host of issues – a lot of change STRUCTURE: Aligning to structure will likely result in the solidification of the structure, not the flexibility needed to address today’s work. OUTCOMES: Though certainly open to change, the mission-related outcomes of the DOT will likely not undergo significant change. With form following function, a focus on function seems appropriate. At this point, we’re working to identify outcomes as the connection between the levels.
- FHWA Office of Operations - Figure 14. Diagram. Illustrative objectives tree for corridor-based transportation systems management and operations. Highest level of NCDOT Value Tree – Shows mission, key values, and areas of focus. Uses “value” instead of result or outcome
- Cascading – A Repeating Process – As a framework is created, some models use similar terms (short-term outcomes, mid-term outcomes, long-term outcomes) and others adjust based on the level of the model (goal, critical success factor, necessary factor). The example above highlights how the process of cascading is usually the same from “level to level” – even if different terms are used.
- To be honest, we’ve just started. Current efforts are on building outcomes working down from our primary mission (MOBILITY). Shortly, we will turn our attention to building capacity. We need to be able to provide the skills to create and understand “their” part of the tree – regardless of where “they” may be.
- Dashboards are often a topic of conversation when it comes to monitoring performance. In this “generic” example, the top portion is often what folks think about they envision a public dashboard.
- The performance management work group has started down this path, with various iterations shared at leadership sessions. You will see this isn’t that far removed from dashboard work over the past 15 years or so. We are hoping to take this basic dashboard concept and modify it to meet the information needs for our leadership team.
- But as you could already tell from the “generic” example, we are hoping to create a more comprehensive dashboard for our leadership. As in the case of the previous outcome “tree,” (which we are current calling “lines of business,” outcomes in the areas of support/management would be added. Combining this with information in areas such as workforce, culture, strategy implementation, and other areas of interest, our leadership team can get a holistic view of organizational health (culture, workforce) and performance (outcomes, implementation).
- This is actually a trick question.
- So if organizational performance management is, “Using information to understand and improve our work,” and everyone’s work is different, we come to two conclusions: Different types of work may require different types of information, and this information may need to come from different measures. How do we identify the different types of work that need to be accomplished? Let’s start with a high level few of the types of work the DOT need to accomplish
- As may well be true in other states, Iowa has legislation called the Accountable Government Act. The general planning and management model behind the State of Iowa’s Accountable Government Act (AGA) is shown here. All executive branch agencies are requires to have both a performance plan and a strategic plan. The performance plan is a structure of core functions, under which services, products, and activities are listed with associated measures. The strategic plan is cookbook strategic planning in nature – Identification of things needed to be address, and initiatives to accomplish them. So, in answer to the question, “What work does the DOT need to accomplish,“ – the answer is we accomplish our performance objectives (mission) and monitor progress on our efforts to change/improve (vision).
- It shows the setting of objectives for performance and change - each of which are incorporated into a plan for implementation and monitoring. The AGA places the performance, or operational, objectives into a “Performance” Plan and change initiatives into a “Strategic” Plan.
- It is this level of the organization, top management or leadership, that reviews performance information and set two sets of “objectives”: Performance Objectives and Change Objectives This is not unlike supervisors have done for employees since – forever. Clear expectations are identified for the work that need to be accomplished, and (if necessary) an improvement plan to address deficiencies or create opportunities. The interaction of performance and strategic plans is the same thing, but at the organizational level. Managers work with employees to set performance objectives and change goals. Leaders work with organizational performance information to set performance objectives and change goals.
- The cyclical nature of the two planning processes can provide leadership with regular information on the health and performance of the organization. Information from the two plans fed to leadership is different – remember, different work, different information. Performance Information: progress toward outcome attainment, perhaps some info on key process/system performance. Strategic Information: Initiative progress, degree of implementation, impact
- The Project Management Institute put out a book a few years back titled, Managing Change in Organizations: A Practical Guide. Source: Managing Change in Organizations: A Practical Guide (2013), pg 47. In it was this diagram. I offer it as one of the pieces we’ve used to guide and confirm some of our thinking. It stops at the top with the usual vision and mission, then moved on to a separation of work into: 1) Organizational Objectives and Organizational Strategies.
- A critical concept that runs through all aspects of organizational performance management is the notion of role and responsibility. Not only does it help identify the focus of ones work, it also helps delineate pieces of the organization. In doing so, it helps identify components that should / shouldn’t be connected to each other to accomplish an outcome.
- Within an organization, there are areas with specific function or focus. In this diagram, there are three main components: The setting and monitoring of organization objectives and goals, The management of organizational performance, and The management of organizational change. The primary tool for leadership to monitor performance is through portfolio management. Progress on both management and change projects and efforts, helps keep leadership informed of the organization’s ability to deliver on outcomes as well as implement necessary change. This work incorporates the information monitoring performance of operations and progress on change initiatives.
- The CEO of Netscape, Jim Barksdale, is attributed with having said that, “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing!” Of course, that sounds good, but I would offer there are at least two aspects to this notion: 1) How do you identify the outcomes to focus on and 2) how do you arrange the organization, processes and people to accomplish those outcomes? The Iowa Strategic Initiative Team identified a key concept connected to this: Alignment. If fact, they identified 2 types of alignment. They align to: 1) our need to continually work to improve, and 2) our need to focus on what is important.
- One of the key concepts pulled from the development team’s work was HORIZONTAL ALIGNMENT. Those of you with familiarity with improvement techniques have seen this or a similar model SIPOC. The notion here is that the focus of improvement is on doing the best job of reaching the outcome. This is what most would call PROCESS IMPORVEMENT. Keeping a focus on the outcome (what) would leave more freedom on how the work should be done. The team did not endorse and specific methods or tools (Lean, 2-Sigma, TQM, etc).
- Another key concept was that of VERTICAL ALIGNMENT. Not knowing what is important, or how to prioritize work, is a problem. Even if every program, process or project have clearly defined outcomes, there is no guarantee the outcomes (or the work being done to accomplish them) are mutually supportive (or at least not counter-productive). It is vital in today’s world of diminishing resources that organizations continually review the degree to which WHAT they are doing is important. This alignment is not based on measures (TOO MUCH CHANGE), or STRUCTURE (limits flexibility). It is based on mission-related outcomes.
- The concepts of “horizontal” and “vertical” alignment are not new, they’re just how the development team chose to communicate the notions of “doing things the right way” and “doing the right things” The concepts are not that dissimilar to discussions of efficiency (HA) and effectiveness (VA) brought forward by folks like Peter Drucker. A workforce with the ability to understand and improve its work can hit any outcome put in front of it. Leadership that can identify, communicate, cascade and modify mission-aligned outcomes ensures the workforce and the organization will be successful. So the work to keep alignment is a means of staying focused. Staff works on keeping processes and programs focused on identified outcomes, and leadership works to keep the organization focused on the key things.
- In summary, what we’ve been talking about is likely what most of us want and know about effective performance management systems. But the attention needs to be trained on the organization’s performance rather than the transportation systems we are responsible for or the individual processes that are often the focus of measurement and improvement efforts. We believe it is critical to: Be clear about what is meant by, and what the expectations are, in regard to organizational performance management. There is a need for information to guide our work, but given work in an organization varies, we should expect our information needs to vary as well. Data needs context in order to leverage its value. A “model” or “framework” or some sort will be useful in communicating. Communication down through an organization is important, perhaps through cascading outcomes. Organizations often struggle to balance demands for delivery of products & services with the to adapt. It will be important for organizations to be able to management both performance and change. Alignment, in a world of diminishing resources, is vital. There is a need to both: 1) do things the best way possible (HA), and 2) focus on the right things (HA).