PMA Conference Papers
For ease of reference, papers submitted by Landmark Consulting to earlier PMA Conferences are downloadable as follows:
(1) PMA 2004 (Edinburgh): Getting The Most Out of Performance Measurement (see Paper for PMA 2004 (Final))
(2) PMA 2006 (London): ‘Plumbed-In Performance Improvement’: Accelerating Improvement and Adaptation in Organisations (see Paper for PMA 2006 – Alan Meekings – v1.1)
Performance measurement and management in Contact Centres
Everyone knows that contact centre activities are highly measurable, using a plethora of KPIs.
Yet little is known about where contact centre managers currently see themselves in the important field of performance measurement and management (PM&M) in terms of excellence on a spectrum from poor to outstanding.
Nor is much known about future aspirations or intended timescales for improvement.
Alan Meekings and Simon Povey of Landmark Consulting and Paul Weald of ProtoCall One worked together to design and analyse a specifically tailored survey, based around Landmark Consulting’s PM&M maturity model for contact centres.
A brief summary of our findings is at PM&M Brief Survey Findings.
Details of our maturity model and the survey questions are at PM&M Self-Assessment Questionnaire.
Avoiding problems with target-setting
Advocates and critics of target-setting in the workplace seem unable to reach beyond their well-entrenched battle lines. Advocates point to what they see as demonstrable advantages, while critics point to what they see as demonstrable disadvantages. Academic literature on this topic is currently mired in controversy. Neither side seems capable of envisaging a better way forward.
We presented a paper on this important topic to the PMA Symposium in 2010 (and since published in Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2011). It can be downloaded at PMA Symposium Target-Setting Paper v1.4.
Connected Performance™
While performance measurement remains an important topic, what really matters in organisations is performance delivery.
Operational performance improvement, in particular, depends not only on improving how the work gets done but also on how organisations are managed. Performance measurement and management can help in both respects.
For instance, our experience in working with over half of the ambulance services in mainland England and Wales – all implementing the same new software and management process – has given us some unique insights around performance delivery.
To read an earlier paper describing Connected Performance, please see below:
Connected Performance™ – Reprint (PDF, 268k)
To read the paper Alan Meekings submitted to the PMA Conference in Edinburgh in 2004, please see below:
Connected Performance™ – Paper for PMA (MS Word, 100k)
New typology of waste
Advocates of Lean Thinking are fond of defining categories of waste in manufacturing operations, most of them derived from Taiichi Ohno’s original list of seven categories of waste, namely: defects, inventory, over-processing, waiting, motion, unnecessary transportation and over-production.
In a service context, more types of waste can be described, not all of which fit neatly into Taiichi Ohno’s original listing, for instance:
- Multiple customer contacts to resolve a single issue;
- Missing, incomplete, inaccurate or irrelevant information;
- Imbalances between demand and capacity (bearing in mind that unused capacity in a service context cannot be stored as inventory and hence is lost forever); and
- Customers not receiving what they wanted when they wanted it, and then switching to other suppliers (often online, at the click of a mouse).
In recent discussions with public sector managers, reviewing the positive and negative impacts of the former Labour Government’s reform agenda for public services, we have discovered two broad categories of waste that seem highly relevant to the current debate about central control versus local autonomy, quasi-markets versus co-ordinated planning and so on. These two categories are Complacency Waste and Competition Waste. They are essentially polar opposites but paradoxically can sometimes be found together.
Please follow this link to download our paper at 11-03-30 A New Typology of Waste.
Integrated development
Our experience, over many years, has taught us the dangers of pursuing ‘point solutions’ or functional change initiatives, in contrast to the benefits of integrated developments in the realms of strategy, process, structure and culture. Failure to take a systemic approach inevitably leads to disappointment: broken processes preventing the implementation of new strategies, process improvements blocked by structural conflicts, re-structuring resented and resisted, attempts at culture change deemed irrelevant because they do not address concrete work issues and so on…
Our approach to integrated development is informed by leading concepts in terms of Lean thinking, systemic thinking, change management, leadership and organisation development.
This diagram illustrates how the key elements of structure, culture and process are interdependent. Lean thinking focuses primarily on process transformation, but will not succeed unless it is supported by strategic commitment, well-designed structures and a participative culture.
Development can start in any of these aspects, but needs to lead to a benign cycle, strategically driven, in which:
- optimised processes provide the basis for the design of enabling, rather than disabling, structures
- holistic structures create the context for genuine empowerment and supportive, stimulating relationships
- a culture of continuous challenge and improvement constantly increases the value-to-waste ratio in all processes.