Quantifying and Improving Human Performance

John McNeil, GP Deltapoint

Four of our reviews this month ("Capitalizing on Capabilities", "Achieving Deep Customer Focus", "Effective White-Collar Teams", and "Developing a Performance-Based Culture") focus on the human performance side of operational excellence. General Physics has used a number of tools to improve human performance that mesh well with any process improvement initiative. Indeed most process improvements are doomed to failure if the appropriate people issues are not tackled early and effectively. This increasingly widely recognized issue is at the root of many of the improvement programs that fall short of the mark or succeed initially, only to wither over time, with performance regressing to prior levels or worse.

A key component of many of the tools is breaking work down into specific individual tasks and accomplishments and measuring them across time, across locations and between individuals. These methods have their origin in the pioneering Taylor studies of almost 100 years ago, but have been updated and adapted to reflect the most recent learning from modern successful organizations.

The linkage between work and business processes can be stated in this manner:

1. Workers are provided resources (information, tools, equipment, training, knowledge, etc.)
2. Workers perform task (turn a wrench, clear a jam, etc.)-These are verbs
3. Workers complete an accomplishment (Completed audit, Restarted Machine, etc.)-These are nouns
4. Accomplishments result in business performance

We analyze business performance in the opposite direction:

1. What are the business goals?
2. What accomplishments result in meeting those goals?
3. What tasks need to be performed to complete the accomplishments?
4. What resources do the employees leverage to perform these tasks?

A major reason the business goals are not met is that the accomplishments and tasks that lead up to the goals are not communicated to the workforce. Once this does take place though, differences will always exist among employees. A worthwhile intervention is often to observe, analyze and document what average performers are not doing that exemplary performers are doing for each of those tasks.

Process analysis can tell us that certain tasks and activities are taking long or variable times while analysis of human performance can often pinpoint specific skills, resources and education that will reduce average times to do work and reduce variability. Once a target area for focus is determined, we can define associated accomplishments then determine relevant tasks and whether they are being performed. By reviewing the work of superior performers at this task level we can also arrive at realistic targets for the target area and quantify the benefit of reaching those goals.

Experience in observing employees in multiple work arenas gives practitioners the ability to design and implement interventions designed to rectify issues arising from a few recurring patterns of shortfalls in human performance. This then becomes a core part of standardizing work and correcting deviations, which is in turn a fundamental component of lean process implementation. In our practice, we find that tools like these help to drive concrete implementations of the concepts presented by Graham above.

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