Smart Question #2: How Do We Know That?

(This excerpt is from The Baldrige Edge, an e-Guide from Baldrige.com. You can learn more about the guide by clicking on the black-and-red box on the right.)

Next to blaming people for process problems, making assumptions is a surefire way to miss the right solution. Which of these scenarios is more common in your organization?

(a) Options are debated based on what people think about a problem or issue and how they think it should be handled; or,

(b) Options are debated based on reliable data and information that illuminate the nature and causes of the problem or issue and point to possible solutions.

Most people act as if “a” is really “b”: My assumptions are based on experience and they’re as good as facts. They’re wrong. Guessing that you know what’s going on is not the same as actually knowing what’s going on, and the only way to know what’s going on is to collect and analyze relevant data and information. That’s where the second smart question comes in: How do we know that?

You have to be careful how you ask this question. If your boss says, “We’re getting customer complaints about how long they have to wait for service so we need to put more people on the phone lines,” you can’t just blurt out: “How do we know that?” It’s absolutely the right question to ask. Just don’t say it out loud quite yet.

If you work…

The Vital Few

What one thing does your organization value above all else? Is that clearly communicated?

In most organizations, making things simple is an almost impossible task. There are too many strategies because all of them are important. Action plans abound because they all must be done. Organizational performance measures proliferate because everything is critical.

Dan and Chip Heath, the authors of Made to Stick, argue for simplicity in “Analysis of Paralysis” (FastCompany, November 1, 2007). They describe a research study in which doctors were told of a man with chronic hip pain who had been given drugs to treat his pain but they had been ineffective. The only remaining option was hip replacement surgery, but then one more medication was found. Would the doctors try it or opt for the surgery? Forty-seven percent chose the medication.

Another group of doctors received the same facts except that two new medication options had been found. More options are better, right? Not for the doctors: Only 28% chose to try either medicine. “More options, even good ones, can freeze us,” write the Heaths, “leading us to stick with the ‘default’ plan, which in this case was slicing open someone’s hip. This is clearly not rational behavior, but it is human behavior.”

Too many organizations overwhelm their people with way too many goals, strategies, initiatives, action plans, measures, policies, and other options for guiding their behaviors and activities. That includes values. The Heaths mention a…

The Perfect Question

Anyone who has done the research to write a Baldrige assessment knows what it feels like to ask the perfect question. You’re sitting with a subject matter expert. You ask one of the questions in the Baldrige Criteria. The expert gives you a general answer that provides some of what you need to know, but not all of it, so you ask more questions. How do you do that? What’s the process? Who are the customers for that process? What do they think? How do you know that? Who is involved in the process? How do they know what to do? How do you measure performance? What do the results of those measures show? And so on.

Each of these questions probes how systematically an organization does what it does. As you can see, they sound like fairly standard, basic questions, and that is where they get their power, because very few organizations and very few subject matter experts routinely ask these fundamental questions.

You can see it in their eyes. The question is simple and direct and it gets at the heart of what the expert is describing, but the focus of the question has been ignored or forgotten. I don’t know how many times I’ve had an expert pause, think hard about how to answer the question, and then say, “That’s a really good question,” and then write a reminder to look into it. Those…

Communicate Information Effectively

How do you make data and information available?

This question from the Baldrige Criteria assumes that you have good answers for the questions that precede it on selecting, collecting, aligning, integrating, and analyzing data and information, because if you don’t do these things well, there won’t be much of value to communicate. But if you have sound processes in place, the critical step in an effective performance measurement system is getting the right data and information in the right hands at the right time.

Very few organizations spend time on how they communicate key data and information. For most, it’s numbers on a chart. A few balanced scorecard followers use a stoplight approach alongside the numbers: green light means on target, yellow light means not quite, red light means trouble. A small percentage shows trend lines and benchmarks for their key measures to give users context for current performance. And that’s about it when it comes to communicating data and information, which is why it is always refreshing to discover a creative way to share information.

GE is awarding $200 million to ideas that help build the next generation power grid. It is accepting ideas in three categories: renewables; grid efficiency; and eco homes/eco buildings. You can read about the more than 1,800 ideas that have been submitted thus far—the Ecomagination Challenge ends September 30^th—by clicking here.

GE has taken an innovative approach to communicating this information. Each idea…