Of change, progress and a kaizen story

Let’s start with a kaizen story, that I heard a long time ago. A particular organization had rolled out kaizen (continuous improvement). An incentive scheme was also launched to reward the employees who make any such improvement in any part of work. So, one person successfully claimed a ‘kaizen’ for putting some flowerpots in the work area and thereby ‘improving the work environment’.  After sometime, another person successfully claimed a kaizen for removing those flowerpots and thereby ‘improving the flow of people and materials in the work area’. So, we were back to square one though it counted as two kaizens (making the organization appear ‘continuously improving’) and both the employees received their incentive payout!

While the above story might come across as a caricature (and not a portrait) of what actually happens in business organizations, it has more than a grain of truth. The biggest source of waste in many business organizations, that so deftly escapes even lean six sigma and productivity improvement efforts, is that results from frequent changes in direction and the tendency to equate ‘change’ with ‘progress’. Yes, rapid changes in direction, including fast U-turns, helps in creating some sort of illusion (or even a convenient collective delusion of) progress and of taking 'decisive action'. The point here is not that one shouldn’t change the direction when it is required or that one shouldn’t correct one’s mistakes. It is just that one should have some accountability for one’s decisions and the organization and human costs associated with them.

This works well in Human Resource Management (HR) also. One of the great ‘advantages’ of being in HR is that one can get credit for both hiring and firing the same person, that too in rapid succession. Similarly, we can get credit for adding a reporting layer to ‘integrate’ and also for removing that layer to ‘increase efficiency’. Yes, this leads to the HF² model of HR, where HR is reduced to Hire (sourcing), Feed (payroll) and Fire (exit). Of course, one can have other (more ‘fashionable’) functions in HR. But they are more of ‘show horses’ than ‘plough horses’!

Postscript : This post, especially the 'kaizen story' at the beginning of this post,  generated quite a bit of discussion on social media. It left me wondering why such an old story could connect so well. Now, I realize that it is because the story almost perfectly matches the definition of a 'myth'. A myth is a story that keeps on happening again and again in various forms, because it contains a deep truth (a deep truth about the nature of reality in organizations, in this case)!

Any comments/ideas?

Talent's progress

Is there a perspective that can throw light not only on the progress of  employees, but also on the effectiveness of people management in the organization? Tracking the changes in the positioning of employees on the talent grid over a period of time can be an excellent option!

There are many ways in which the progress of an employee ('talent') in an organization can be depicted. The most concrete one is in terms of the roles the employee takes up in the organization. Then there are aspects like compensation, responsibility level etc. that can also be used to track the progress of an employee in the organization.

In this post, let's look at the progress of employees in the organization in terms of a more abstract (though very widely used) representation - in terms of the changes in the mapping of the employee to the performance-potential grid. This grid, often called the talent grid, is typically a 9-box one, with box 9 corresponding to high performance coupled with high potential. 

If we track the changes in the positioning of the employees on the talent grid over a period of time, say for 3-5 cycles of talent review process that lead to the mapping of the employees on this grid, the trends emerging from the same can give us very interesting insights on the effectiveness of Talent Management in the organization. 

Ideally, employees should shift right and/or up on the grid. This would mean that the Talent Management in the organization has managed to help the employees to improve their performance and/or potential. Similarly, if the general trend in an organization is that employees would shift left and/or down and then out of the grid (and the organization!) it can be an indicator of lack of effectiveness of people management in the organization. 

Of course, these movements are also dependent on the employees (their performance and demonstrated potential). However, the overall trends in the movements on the grid (for a group of employees) can provide valuable indications on the effectiveness of people management in the organization.  These employees went through the selection process of the organization before they started featuring in the talent grid and hence the organization can't easily disown them or their movements on the talent grid! 

Yes, there could be other factors at play. For example, if the organization has imposed some sort of normalization on performance ratings and/or on potential ratings, this would limit the percentage of the employees who can be in box 7, 8 and 9 (the boxes in the talent grid that denote the best talent positioning). Also, if 'long term' performance (and not recent performance) is what drives the positioning on the performance axis of the grid, the degree of  'fluctuation' along the performance axis of the grid is likely to be lower. 

There is also this interesting phenomenon of stickiness of the ratings, especially potential ratings.  The extreme case is when the organization takes the stated or unstated position that the 'potential' is a non-modifiable factor, in which case no movement on the potential axis would be possible. Mercifully, most organizations consider potential to be some sort of a combination of ability, aspiration and leadership and somewhat modifiable. 

All this assumes that the definition, the rating scale and the calibration norms for performance and potential (that lead to the positioning on the talent grid) remains consistent over the years/over the period used for trend analysis. Else, there is a possibility of scenarios similar to that of 'reducing poverty by redrawing the poverty-line'!  

There could also be deeper factors like the tacit definition of 'what good looks like' and  the unstated assumptions regarding people management in the organization  (e.g. 'we hire a person based not only on the fit to the current role but also on the fit to the future roles' or 'we hire people mainly to solve a particular problem at a given point in the organization's journey'). 

As we have seen in 'Type N and Type O Organizations', in  the case of 'Type N' organizations, the relatively new employees have a great advantage over the other employees, though this advantage vanishes quite quickly as they become 'old' (tenured)! This can lead to rapid changes in the grid positioning as the employees tend to get over-positioned on the grid initially and then shift left and down (and out!) very quickly. This creates a lot of action (and an illusion of progress) on the people management front, though over a period of time it might become apparent (if the organization is open to see it) that quality of talent in the organization hasn't improved and that 'the new is not really outperforming the old'!

 So, where does this leave us? Though Talent's progress (or lack of it) on the performance-potential grid is a rather abstract way of capturing the Talent trajectory', it can indeed provide very useful insights on the effectiveness of people management in the organization! While the movement of a particular employee on the grid is mainly a function of the performance and demonstrated potential of the employee, the trends in these moves at the group level points to the effectiveness (or lack of it) of people management in the organization. These organization level trends can also be very useful in unearthing the unstated assumptions that the organization has made on people and on people management!

Any comments/ideas?