A common issue I observe in many organizations - there's no visible goal beyond, "Get this work done," and people don't even see the point in "wasting time to set a goal." The problem: many organizations are just tactical engines generating work and handling exceptions in the generated work. Yet, most of this work has no goal. Goal-setting is not an esoterical exercise, and here's why.
The Hidden Factory
One concept of Lean Management is the "Hidden Factory" - and this concept deserves some kind of explanation. A factory is an institution that applies work to input in order to generate some outputs. So far, so good. A "hidden factory," on the other hand, is a factory within a factory, doing work without generating viable outputs: either nothing - or waste.
To understand the problem of hidden factories, think like a customer.
You get the option to buy your product from one of two providers.
Company A has a straightforward process, turning raw input into consumable output, and Company B has a process that turns the same input into something, then into something else, then into something else, then into the same consumable output.
This extra work makes Provider B's product is more expensive to produce, without any discernable difference to the product sold by Company A.
Company A and Company B thus sell products which are identical in all aspects - except price. Company B has to charge a premium to cover the extra work they do. Which product would you purchase?
As customers, we do not care how much work is required to do something. Given all other things equal, we choose to opt for the cheapest, fastest way of meeting our needs.
And companies are no different here. But how does that relate to goal-setting?
Induced and intermediate work
Many companies are great at inducing work - and once that work has been induced, it becomes necessary, and the people doing it must do it, otherwise the outcome can no longer be achieved.
Let's pick a practical example.
We have chosen to use a Design Process that requires any changes to be made as a sequential series of steps:
- Request the element to be changed
- Describe the change to be made
- Prototype the change
- Validate the change
- Implement the change
- Verify the change
While you may argue that all of these steps are common sense and necessary, our specific process choice has just locked us into a process that turns replacing an image into a full day's work - a change that could be done by a competent developer in a couple of minutes.
How is that relevant to goal-setting?
Confusing Task and Outcome
Referring to our fictional process, an individual may have the specific responsibility of describing changes. Their input is a change request, and their output is a change description. As a customer, I address this organization to say, "I want a new backdrop on my website." Our execution agent of step 2 will say, "I am overburdened. I have too many change requests on my desk. I need someone to help me describe the changes." If we would ask them "Why do you need to describe the changes?" - they might say, "So that they can be prototyped." If we'd press and ask, "And why do they need to be prototyped?" - the answer could be, "So that we can validate the change." - which, of course begs the question, "And then - I get what?" - "An implementable change."
You see where this is going: Everyone has reasons why they do the things they do, and from the way this organization is set up, their reasons are indeed valid. And still, nobody really understands why they do the things they do.
We should assume that everyone whom we ask should answer, "So that you can get your new backdrop." In many companies, however, that is not the case.
And that's where goals come into play.
Goals
Every company has a few - usually very few - first-order goals, and a specific context that provides constraints within which these goals can be realized. Surviving and thriving on the market is a baseline almost all have, and most of the time, the primary goal is to achieve this by means of advancing the products which define the company. That would be an example of a first-order goal.
From that, we get into second-order goals, that is - into derived goals which help us achieve this primary goal. Build a better product. Build the product better. Sell more. Sell faster. Sell cheaper. You name it.
These, of course, would be realized via strategies - which in themselves have multiple subordinate goals. For example: Increase product quality, add features to the product, reduce discomfort with the current product, improve perception of the product in its current state - again, the possibilities are endless.
At some point in the rabbit hole, somewhere deep down in the loop of operational delivery, we may then see a business analyst stating, "I am overburdened. I have too many change requests on my desk. I need someone to help me describe the changes." - but why are they doing it? Are we describing change in order to increase product quality, in order to sell more, or to sell cheaper?
It's easy to realize that "adding people to do the work" may indeed make sense when our goal is to add features to improve our product. And yet, it seems entirely backwards when our goal is to "sell cheaper."
That's why we are setting goals. It allows everyone, on all layers of an enterprise, regardless of their specific responsibility, to quickly and easily determine, "Do the things which I am doing help us achieve our goals?"
If the answer to that simple and straightforward question is, "No" - then this begs two followup questions:
- Why am I doing things which are not helping this company achieve its goals?
- What do we need to change, so that I am contributing to our goals?
The impact of goals
Well-defined goals
immediately expose the Hidden Factories and induced work, and they set the stage for reducing waste in our processes as well as leading employees to do more meaningful, more important work.
Poorly defined goals - such as "to do X amount of work" - encourage establishing and inflating Hidden Factories, and they set the stage for wasteful processes and unhappy employees who may be doing totally worthless work, without ever realizing.
Undefined goals - or the absence of goals - remove the yardstick by which we can measure whether we are contributing to anything of relevance or merely adding waste. Without a goal, work is meaningless and improvement impossible.
The importance of goals
Goal-setting is important for organizations both large and small in:
- Guiding decision-making
- Enabling Improvement
- Eliminating Waste
While a goal itself doesn't do any of these, a goal sets the stage for these. Once you know your goal, you can take it from there.
No comments:
Post a Comment