• The Extraordinary Leader
• Improving Performance

Improving Performance

by Geary A. Rummler & Alan P. Brache

Maximizing competitive advantage and increasing profitability are a constant demand on today's leaders. Although improving organizational performance is one way to tackle these issues, to be effective you need a systems level or holistic approach which is often lacking in performance improvement initiatives.

"Improving Performance" by Geary Rummler and Alan Brache will give you just such a holistic model. Published almost 10 years ago, it is still as relevant today as it was then.

3 Levels of Performance

The authors start by defining three levels of performance:

1. The Organizational Level emphasizes the organization's relationship with its markets and the basic "skeleton" of the major functions that comprise the organization. Variables at this level affecting performance include strategies, organization-wide goals and measures, organization structure, and deployment of resources.
2. The Process Level deals with the work flow and how the work gets done because an organization is only as good as its processes. To manage the Performance Variables at the Process Level, one must ensure that processes are installed to meet customer needs, that those processes work effectively and efficiently, and that the process goals and measures are driven by the customers' and the organization's requirements.
3. The Job/Performer Level addresses how the processes are performed and managed by individuals doing various jobs. The Performance Variables that must be managed at the Job/Performer Level include hiring and promotion, job responsibilities and standards, feedback, rewards, and training.

The overall performance of an organization (how well it meets the expectations of its customers) is the result of goals, structures, and management actions at all Three Levels of Performance.

Performance Needs

The Three Levels of Performance constitute one dimension of Rummler and Brache's framework. The second dimension comprises three other factors-Performance Needs - that determine effectiveness at each level (and the effectiveness of any system):

1. Goals: the Organization, Process, and Job/Performer Levels each need specific standards that reflect customers' expectations for product and service quality, quantity, timeliness, and cost.
2. Design: the structure of the Organization, Process, and Job/Performer Levels needs to include the necessary components, configured in a way that enables the goals to be efficiently met.
3. Management: each of the Three Levels requires management practices that ensure that goals are current and are being achieved.

Nine Performance Variables

Combining the Three Levels with the Performance Needs results in the Nine Performance Variables. These variables, which appear in the table below, represent a comprehensive set of improvement levers that can be used by managers at every level.

Causes of Failures in Improvement Initiatives

The Three Levels framework provides some insight into the shortcomings of many attempts to change and improve organizations. For example:

• Most training attempts to improve organization and process performance by addressing only one Level (the Job/Performer Level) and only one dimension of the Job/Performer Level (skills and knowledge). The training has no significant long-term impact, training dollars are wasted, and trainees are frustrated and confused.
• Automation is generally an attempt to improve the performance of the Process Level. However, the investment in automation rarely realizes its maximum return because the link is not made between the process and the Organization Goals.
• Programs that establish Organization Goals and train employees usually fail to address the needs at the Process Level and the goals, feedback, and consequences required at the Job Level.

Seven Deadly Sins of Process Improvement

Most failures to realize the potential return on process-improvement investment arise from committing one or more of what the authors call the seven deadly sins (which they also tell you how to avoid):

Sin 1: Process Improvement is not tied to the strategic issues the business faces.

Sin 2: The Process Improvement effort does not involve the right people, especially top management, in the right way.

Sin 3: Process Improvement Teams are not given a clear, appropriate charter and are not held accountable for fulfilling that charter.

Sin 4: The top management team thinks that if it's not "nuking" the existing organization ("reengineering"), it's not making significant improvements.

Sin 5: Process designers don't sufficiently consider how the changes will affect the people who have to work in the new process.

Sin 6: The organization focuses more on redesign than on implementation.

Sin 7: Teams fail to leave behind a measurement system and other parts of the infrastructure necessary for continuous Process Improvement.

Rummler and Brache also address how to link performance to strategy, provide an extensive list of typical questions as a checklist in this activity and then discuss how to implement strategy at all three levels. If you are thinking of undertaking a serious performance improvement initiative, "Improving Performance" will provide you with valuable perspective and insight as well as the steps to take you there.

——————

To unsubscribe from our mailing list, click the link at the bottom left of this page. Or simply reply to this message with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.

©Copyright 2004
All Rights Reserved
T: (416) 657-2331 --------------- F: (416) 385-9808
www.management-transitions.com -

The Trouble with Competency Based Programs

Zenger and Folkman maintain that the competency movement has suffered from several major flaws:

1. It was too complex
2. It was based on some faulty assumptions
3. It produced several unintended consequences
4. It suffered from poor execution

However, they provide specific methods by which to correct these flaws and believe that through the proper application of competency based programs you can create extraordinary leaders.

They present compelling evidence that:

1. Not all competencies are equivalent to each other and some are far more important in creating highly effective leaders
2. Leadership behaviours are all interlinked with a great deal of interdependence between them. They identify 16 competencies that are most powerful in separating the great leaders from the mediocre or poor and each of these competencies is, on average, correlated with half of the others.
3. Effective leadership demands a balance of competencies from 5 different groupings
4. Combinations of competencies, not any single one, produce great leaders.
5. The more individuals have of the 16 competencies the more likely they are to be perceived as great leaders

Now Zenger and Folkman are well aware that leadership is a highly complex activity. But one of their primary objectives in the book is to reduce that complexity to a model of leadership that is more easily understood and applied. The charge they levy that the competency movement suffered from excess complexity is typified by a large public sector organization that defined 175 competencies for each of three separate pay bands. As they point out, few people could be expected to understand this amount of complexity let alone put it into action.

A New Metaphor

The conceptual model they propose groups the leadership competencies into 5 clusters:

1. Character
2. Personal Capability
3. Interpersonal Skills
4. Focus on Results, and
5. Leading Organizational Change

They then show how the metaphor of a tent can be used to understand the true nature of leadership and how it is developed. Each of the 5 clusters represents a tent pole - strength in a pole lifts the tent accordingly - and multiple poles are required to completely lift the tent. The amount of three-dimensional space under the canvas represents the leadership effectiveness of the individual.

Character

The center pole in the tent is Character because it is the component that is at the core. It is so important that many authors have written about it as if it were synonymous with leadership.

Personal Capability

The skills grouped under this heading are not skills typically described as leadership skills but the authors' research has clearly shown that their possession is absolutely crucial for people to be highly regarded by peers, subordinates and bosses. Without them you will not be perceived as a strong leader. Typical capabilities are: technical knowledge, product knowledge, professional skills, innovation and initiative.

Zenger and Folkman also identify how the competencies manifest themselves in leadership behaviour for each of 3 different focus areas - personal leadership, local leadership, and organizational leadership. For example, in the grouping Personal Capability an individual is operating at the stage of:

• Personal Leadership when considered an expert in his or her field
• Local Leadership when clarifying complex data or situations so others can comprehend, respond and contribute
• Organizational Leadership when identifying and helping to quickly resolve ill-defined, complex problems that cross organizational boundaries

They provide comprehensive lists of such examples for each of the 3 focus areas for each the "tent pole" groupings.

The next two tent poles, Interpersonal Skills and Focus on Results, require that Character and Personal Capability be in place before they have any impact on leadership effectiveness. However, it doesn't make any difference what order they are developed in as long as the Character and Personal Capability are in place.

Focus on Results

Although there are a number of ways that leaders can focus on results, here are some of the behaviours that the authors found separated the top 10 percent of leaders from the rest:

• Brings ideas into action
• Pushes to take the next step forward
• Brings enthusiasm, energy and urgency to his or her work
• Looks for ways to improve his or her job and overall function

In other words - taking action, causing things to occur, pushing forward and continual improvement

Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills includes more "differentiating competencies" that any other cluster and are extremely important to the success of any leader especially in a world where the "command and control" style of leadership no longer works effectively. Typical competencies in this cluster are: communicating, inspiring others to high performance, resolving conflicts, building positive relationships, and so on.

Leading Organizational Change

In today's fast paced world, change leadership is a critical capability and some of the typical skills in this cluster include:

• Is able to champion for change in the organization
• Leads projects, presenting them so that others support them
• Has a strategic perspective
• Translates the organization's vision and objectives into challenging and meaningful goals for others

The authors provide a self test that enables you to determine what your change leadership style is - directive or participatory. They point out that neither style is inherently better than the other, that either can be detrimental if used exclusively and that the best leaders are able to effectively combine the two styles.

Fatal Flaws

If we were to rate our competencies and then decide what competencies to work on, the general tendency would be to pick the weakest ones. However, Zenger and Folkman make the interesting observation that the biggest bang for the buck might instead be found in picking some of the stronger ones and making them exceptional.

The premise here is that a great leader does not result from bringing all weaknesses to a mediocre level - rather it will come from a combination of strengths that is outstanding. However, they do state that any weakness that a leader has cannot be one of these five fatal flaws:

1. The inability to learn from mistakes
2. Lack of core interpersonal skills and competencies
3. Lack of openness to new or different ideas
4. Lack of accountability
5. Lack of initiative

Key Insights

Zenger and Folkman deliver 20 key insights in The Extraordinary Leader:

1. Great leaders make a huge difference when compared to merely good leaders.
2. One organization can have many great leaders.
3. We have been aiming too low in our leadership development activities.
4. The relationship between improved leadership and increased performance outcomes is neither precisely incremental nor is it linear.
5. Great leadership consists of possessing several "building blocks" of capabilities, each complementing the others.
6. Leadership culminates in championing change.
7. All competencies are not equal. Some differentiate good from great leaders, while others do not.
8. Leadership competencies are linked closely together.
9. Effective leaders have widely different personal styles. There is no right way to lead.
10. Effective leadership practices are specific to an organization.
11. The key to developing great leadership is to build strengths.
12. Powerful combinations produce nearly exponential results.
13. Greatness is not caused by the absence of weakness.
14. Great leaders are not perceived as having major weaknesses.
15. Fatal flaws must be fixed.
16. Leadership attributes are often developed in non-obvious ways.
17. Leaders are made not born.
18. Leaders can improve their leadership effectiveness through self-development.
19. The organization, with a person's immediate boss, provides significant assistance in developing leadership.
20. The quality of leadership in an organization seldom exceeds that of the person at the top.

If you are developing leaders in your company or are interested in developing your own leadership capability, you can't afford not to read The Extraordinary Leader. And for anyone involved in competency-based development programs especially, this book is a must study. Five stars out of five.

——————

If you'd like to purchase The Extraordinary Leader, just click on this link to get it from