Engaging The Cynics: How To Build Buy-in To Choose And Use Measures That Matter

by Fiona Issel, Senior Business Analyst, Western Power, Australia Fiona attended the March 2007 Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop and is a member of the Measures & More MasterMind program. This case study is an excerpt of the March 2009 Measures & More MasterMind Case Study Teleseminar. It was too good not to share more widely than with members alone!

I am currently the Senior Business Analyst in Distribution Design Engineering for Western Power. We are responsible for all connections and the maintenance and upgrade for the distribution electricity network known as the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) that covers over 88,000 kilometres of power lines. My role is to provide all reporting needs that use our Design and Quotation Project Management System for our Branch and also provide support to other areas in the business. I first began with performance measurement when I started with the Work Administration branch in 2001. Because I was familiar with the software (Cognos) I was asked to run the automated reports for Works Admin, Distribution Design Engineering and Standards and Policy. Because I could use the data warehouse to create other reports, I just sort of fell into the role and became the source for information and reports. During this time, I also helped to setup balanced scorecards for the branch in conjunction with the strategic management group. When the company restructured, I moved into the support group for Distribution Design Engineering. This group was designed to provide support to the branch for business improvement, training, quality assurance and technical guidance. Here I and my counterpart Sally were asked to redesign the out of date current reports and design new reports that were reflective of the current structure but still had the flexibility to change as required. In this role, I am looking at what we are doing as a group and looking at how we can improve. There is nothing better for me than seeing us isolate an area of concern and taking ideas on how to improve this and then seeing the change in the workforce. One of my biggest achievements in my role is seeing the impact of what I produce and the way that it is applied to how the branch not only does our design work, but foster changes that impact on other branches.

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My role is not only reporting, but also delves a lot into process improvement, software development, mentoring and training. The role that I have is very varied, demanding and sometimes it can be so overwhelming at the moment I am only working two days a week, so my time is very limited but despite this the challenge in this role is very worthwhile. On a personal level, I have increased my self confidence and conquered a few fears, one being public speaking. But the biggest gain is the belief in me to be a valuable asset in what I do. When I first moved into my current role, our company had been disaggregated into four separate companies and we had undergone a major restructure. So the report suite at the time was completely irrelevant, out of date and did not even report on current work streams or processes. So we were facing a huge task in setting up performance measures. I was very lucky though, as the team that I was in helped me immensely. We had a great team leader Steve who had the technical engineering knowledge, but also had experience in project and people management. My counterpart Sally was influential in my development as she had a lot of strategic management experience and was instrumental in the development of previous performance measures. Sally mentored me and gave me the support to excel in my role from the beginning. Kathleen was responsible for our Quality Assurance and provided us with very detailed processes and backup when needed.

The problem at the first for all of us was to be taken seriously in our roles.
Electrical engineering is a very male dominated area our branch alone had around 154 employees out of this 6 were women, so the first hurdle was to be taken seriously in my new role and develop a professional relationship with the extended management team. To get an idea on what was needed we first had a meeting with the General Manager he gave us a rundown on what he wanted to achieve in relation to the corporate strategic plan and what he expected us to provide him with and what he wanted us to achieve. We then had one on one meetings with the Branch Manager, Section Heads and Team Leaders. Before we had the meeting with them, we asked them to fill out a form with six questions: 1. what is your role? 2. what are your processes? 3. what is your output?

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4. what do you want to achieve? 5. how do you want to see it? 6. what can we do to facilitate this? The aim of these questions was to get them to look at how they saw their role in the branch, what they actually produced and what they wanted to achieve. It also gave me a chance to be introduced to them on a professional basis in my new role. You have to remember that I was seen as an intruder on their world I was a woman, with a background in management and administration, I had no degree, I was previously a lowly administration assistant, and I also had the added penalties of being a mother and working part time!

I had to be seen as being a valuable asset to assist them in managing their teams.
The one on one meetings were also very useful as it allowed us to identify which people we could use for champions of performance measurement and ones that we would have to win over. We were also dealing with a few section heads and team leaders that had all the technical knowledge but little or no management training or any idea how to manage people. So we had to be able to coach them in how to manage their team without being perceived as a threat or a hindrance. This was the first thing I learnt in this role was that you have to embrace the persona of being the champion of performance measures and always have this in front of you regardless of what people think or perceive your role to be. You must be strong enough to correct people and say this is what I do and this is the level of professionalism that I expect from you. Also, you will find that this becomes an integral part of your persona, it starts to take over your thinking and you will find yourself constantly thinking about what you do, even at three in the morning sometimes! We call this in our group threethirtyitis.

After we had collated all the requirements, we began to build our reports.
For this we used a guide to make sure that the reports that we building were relevant and useful for the branch. The basic questions that we asked when we build a report are: What is the vision of the report what is it trying to show?

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 Does it fit into the vision of what we want to see? Is it relevant to our processes? Where are our end points and milestones? What filters and business rules are needed? Is the data reliable? We then set out the draft reports with the rules behind them to the extended management team for comment and discussion and boy did we get both! Another important point that I discovered very early on is the adage you live and die by the sword has no truer meaning than when you are doing performance measures. You can guarantee that if you have produced a report that has the slightest mistake or error in you will be basically under siege. This still holds true even now, I have been training someone in performance measurement and she (yes another woman!) is close to a lot of the team leaders and sees most of them socially. She was updating a formula in our project status report and thought it was correct, but forgot to add a final part of the formula, it still appeared to be correct and populated the field, but when she sent it out the team leaders found it was wrong and instead of coming directly to her, they sent out emails to all the extended management team and a few managers outside the branch pointing out her mistake and basically giving her a baptism of fire. She has had a harsh lesson that personal likes do not enter into this. After we had ironed out all the glitches and produced the final copy of the report suite, we presented this to management team with the general managers endorsement. We still had some opposition, so we put out a blanket challenge if you dont believe our reports prove us wrong. This is like bees to honey for these guys a chance to prove us wrong and show everyone how incompetent we were they thought this was the best thing since sliced bread! But we had an ulterior motive what this did was make them come to me and have sit down meetings with me and go through what we measuring and talk about performance measurement.

This was a golden opportunity for me all of a sudden, we were discussing performance measurement and the impact of this on their work and what we could do with this.
They could finally see and understand what our aims were and what it could do for them and their sections or teams. Three out of the four section heads spent at least half an hour with me before going into the branch management meeting every month to discuss

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their reports. The final icing on the cake for me was when they used my report to show the general manager and executive that we needed to hire more staff. Another challenge that I gave them was to tell me five things that they believed wholeheartedly were correct. I said to them I would prove one completely wrong and two or more to be misguided. This had a two fold effect for me, it not only allowed them to show off their technical knowledge and their experience in saying this is how it is, it allowed me to show them that it was safe to question what they did and the importance of measuring it correctly. So it soothed egos and opened up their minds to looking at things from a management perspective. I have found in many areas of my life that praise and reward is the best way to get what you want. When the leaders pointed out an error or came and talked to me I would always thank them for taking the time and I think also the fact that I have lollies and chocolate biscuits on hand when they do come may also be an incentive. An example of this was years ago, I used to work in a cleaning company and we always tried to clean peoples desktops once a month, to do this we would need them to be cleared of paperwork. Now not many people were doing this, so we came up with the idea that if a desk was left cleared, we would leave a lollypop on the desk with a thankyou note, The effect was immediate. Every desk was now left cleared and these were very highly paid lawyers and stockbrokers that made sure that their desk was clear so they would get their lollypop!

Now that we had the management team on board, we then rolled out the performance measures to all staff across the state.
We showed them the reports, what the effects were on them and how their performance would be measured. We still continue this today, whenever I go to a depot or attend a section meeting to discuss other things, I will also go through the reports and discuss with them their performance and how they have improved or what areas need to be monitored. It also identifies other key people in the branch that I have used on many occasions to support me in championing performance measurement. Education is a major component in what I do we have had changes in Director, General Manager, Branch Manager, Section Head and team leaders over the last few years and I see it as my role to help them understand performance measurement and how to use it. I still have many leaders come and spend time with me on a weekly basis to look at their performance. One point that I still stress with them today is there is no such thing as a negative indicator a downturn in performance is a positive thing for a leader to discuss. A negative indicator gives the leader a chance to what happened, what was the impact of

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this, what action they took and the resolution of this action. This has taken me years to drum this into the leaders, it does not matter if you report something bad, it is the action and the resolution that occurred. An example of this is that a team leader approached me to say that his figure for the average days to produce a design was dramatically outside target because of a series of work requests that were not entered correctly and sat in another branch for more than a month before they came to our notice. I said to him fine what have you done about this, I got a blank look back. I then said to him what did you do to ensure that this does not happen again. He looked at me strangely and said he spoke to the team leaders in the other branch to talk to the person who made the mistake and also made a report to look at all their jobs to see if there are any more that should be assigned to the branch and made this to be of no big deal or importance. I said fantastic, got him to write all this in the commentary against the report, including how he is resolving the issue. When he came out of the section meeting, he looked happy that he was able not only to provide a reason to his performance but the praise and acknowledgement on his response to it by his peers made him realise why I kept stressing this as important. He has gone from a main opponent to a sincere champion.

This is another thing you must keep in mind you must be available whenever possible to discuss what you produce, even if it drives you around the bend.
Because I am only in the office two days a week, my time is an extremely valuable commodity, but if I do not make myself available for a quick chat or to attend a meeting at short notice whenever possible, people will discount your message or perceive it to be unimportant as you are perceived to be uninterested in discussing performance measurement. Even now, walking through the door, I can be stopped to discuss a report or a process change or asked a question regarding performance measurement before I have got to my desk or turned to computer on. I also train people in how to develop performance measures in other sections and provide support to other branches and our community liaison staff that deal with all external parties. A key point that I have found is it does not matter if you know what you are doing, if other people cant, it becomes useless. It still gets back to the fact that you must show them that performance measurement is an important part of what a leader must use to manage their team and workload. To this effect, my branch manager asked me to arrange a series of workshops with the different sections to discuss three things our current performance, what is limiting my performance as a manager and what is limiting our performance as a team. This idea behind these questions was to get them to tell me what they thought

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was stopping them reaching their targets and to show them how to use the reports in an effective manner. Out of these workshops, the extended management team had a very clear understanding of how our reports could help them overcome their limitations and also evolved into two strategic initiatives for the branch, one looking at forecast reporting and one looking at stakeholder management.

This may seem to paint a rosy picture that all was fine and dandy in the branch, but I am still facing an uphill battle in one section.
The old adage that you can bring a horse to water, but can not make him drink is true. One section head, even after all the time I have spent with him and the upper management support he will not listen or acknowledge what I do is important to his team management. Two of his team leaders were also clear opponents to anything I did. I even asked for a point to be included on my personal development plan to turn his attitude around and made it one of my clear goals. I was blocked from talking to his section and was told that I was not to do anything but provide reports only on a branch level to the branch manager and upper management. This was frustrating to say the least for me as I had all the other team leaders using a whole raft of reports that helped them manage and had the full support of all the other section heads in helping them develop into managers. This has carried on for the last few years and it was accepted that unless a nuclear bomb was going to go off, it would not change. But I have had a major breakthrough in the last two months that has been the development of the strategic inititatives. One strategic initiative was the consolidation and improvement of the forecast reporting for the branch. Our branch manager made the problem section head one of the project sponsors and linked it to this Personal development plan. The team to work on this project was made up of a team leader from each section and a couple of champions from each area. When we had the initial discussion, the team leader from the main opponents branch was put in as project manager and we had our first meeting. When we were discussing the scope and requirements of the project and he said that we will have to start from scratch, the other team leaders basically said no we dont we just want to modify the current ins and outs report. When they were asked to clarify, the other team leaders showed the problem team leader what they got and how they used them, I thought he would explode! He could not believe how sophisticated the other team leaders had got in their use of the reports and how they applied them in their every day life.

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After a few one on one meetings with me and with some of the other team leaders to learn what we could have, the problem team leader was furious that he had not been aware of what they could have had and how they could have used it. He then went and tore strips of the section head for not allowing them to have access to the information and apologised to me for his behaviour in the past. I still have some problems with the section head, but because I have gained the respect of his team leaders in that area, he is slowly and gradually coming to see that I do provide his section with support that is improving how they operate. Fiona Issel has attended a Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop and is also one of the charter members of the Measures & More MasterMind, a monthly membership program hosted by Stacey Barr, Performance Measure Specialist. You can read more and join today with a 2 month FREE TRIAL in Measures & More, at www.measuresandmore.com .

Stacey Barr is a specialist in organisational performance measurement, helping corporate planners, improvement officers, business analysts and performance measurement officers confidently facilitate their organisation to create and use meaningful performance measures with lots of buy-in. She is creator of PuMP, the Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop, the Measures & More MasterMind Program and the PuMP Facilitator Mastermind Program all designed to make life easier for Performance Measurement Facilitators.

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