During a recent presentation of our The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: A Six Sigma Approach to Human Capital Management we were at the point of bringing all the concepts together and we were discussing a pyramid of thoughts to wind everything up. One of the blocks in the pyramid states " Focus on the process, not people--avoid the blame game."
One of the seminar participants indicated that teir organizastion had just hired a continuous process improvement guru who constantly says if there is a problem in the organization it is the fault of an employee. But that is not the way it works. That is not going to grow your department. Wait I misspoke, that tactic will not grow the entire organization.
We all want everything to be perfect. But in real time this is never true. The processes we use to manage human capital are far from perfect. The processes have build in stumbling blocks. Some are small others are large as the sinkhole that just swallowed your neighbors home. In each of these events the problem has nothing to do with the person involved. Primarily the humanbc apital assets are doing exactly what they were told to do. It is the process which is flawed. You want to improve the performance of the organization. Concentrate your efforts on improving the process.
In their book The Workforce Scorecard, Mark Huselid, Brian Becker and Richard W. Beatty make the argument that HR needs to be judged not on what you do but what you deliver. Delivery is a process, so if the delivery is not there it is the way you deliver the expected KSA"s to your organization, it is not the person who is operating within the system.
When we function from the point of view that it is the person's fault the message we are sending is that the human capital asset that we so very much need in this competitive glob al workplace is niot valued for what they contribute to our organization. We are sending the message that we do not want them engaged in our organization because they can never deliver the process to the customer. Concentrating on the person instead of the process means that we do not recognize that what the voice of the customer is telling us has nothing to do with meeting the client's needs.
Understand we are not discounting that there are times when a particular employee just does not get it, when it comes to what the customer needs.Further, we are cognizant of the fact that this needs to be resolved quickly and efficiently. The employee's skills may not match what the process requires. But it is wrong to issue a blanket statement that if the process is not working the operator must be at fault. Continous process improvement case studies have proved that this approach is not only wrong it is dangerous to the organization.
You make the decision - Are you there to ensure the future of your organization or are you there to be the source of singling out those who are attempting to perform the way you expect but has to learn how to climb this rock wall before they can do so?
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