Staff Performance: Stop Blaming People, Start Fixing Systems

Introduction

You know how I go on and on about the importance of systems in enhancing employee performance. But do you realize just how much poor employee performance can be traced to a poor system?

Recognizing A System Problem

The reason we fail to recognize a “systems problem” is that we don’t look for it. And sometimes, even faced with a glaring systems deficiency, we ignore it. We look for someone to blame, some hiccup in processing, some temporary “hitch” that “won’t occur again”. But we don’t look for a systems flaw. Consider these issues:

1. Recurring Errors

These may be big or small. But they keep on happening. They irritate us. We ask someone to “look into it”. Nothing much happens.

2. Consistent Problems

This is the “Why can’t we get this right” problem. It’s not just an error. It’s something that hasn’t been right for ages and no matter what we do, training, reprimanding, counseling, reviewing, we still can’t sort it out properly.

3. Recurring Customer Complaints

Customers keep complaining about the same thing. We train, encourage, even introduce incentives: B106 improvement is minimal.

4. “Back Burner” Issues

We all have these: problems that have been around for so long that we’ve “learnt to live with them”. We put them on the “back burner” to “fix them later“.

5. The Accepted Culture

We accept that “sales and production always disagree”: “the chefs always blame the wait staff”: “accountants never understand marketing”. We accept these cultural constraints and the negative consequences.

6. Deadlines and Submissions

You notice that most staff don’t meet deadlines for regular reports or fail to submit reports by the agreed due date. Despite consistent requests they continue to fail.

7. Stagnating Figures

Whether it’s sales, revenue, waste, margins, maintenance or whatever: your figures are static. Nothing’s wrong. But nothing seems right either.

Some Examples

• A large whitegoods manufacturer received many complaints about poorly fitting refrigerator doors. Complaints handled by customer service made no difference. Phone complaints were then connected directly to the operators on the line who assembled the doors. Complaints reduced by 90% in a month.

• A medium sized company required salespersersons to complete nine – yes 9! – forms after they’d made a sale. Sales were slow. Sales improved remarkably when the company reduced the number of forms to three.

• A plumbing company emphasized the quality of its plumbing work. They struggled along competing with all the other plumbers who did good work too. They changed the emphasis from plumbing quality to incomparably high levels of customer service. Within 3 years they became market leaders in their region.

Steps To Take

• Stop looking for people to blame.
• Look for systems deficiencies rather than “people problems”.
• Have a regular, say six monthly, review of all systems.
• Review use of forms, do you really need all the forms you use?
• How can technology improve your systems?
• Count everything you can. It’s hard data that you need.
• Don’t accept standard excuses especially these based on flaws in other areas, people or terms.
• Resist pressure for more “training“ unless it can be established indisputably that training will solve the problem.

Conclusion

Most performance problems are caused by people. But what people do is dictated by the systems they operate. Live by the old adage “If the systems are poor the people will fail”. It won’t solve all your staff performance problems: just most of them.

What To Do Now

Choose the most irritating, frustrating or seriously limiting performance problem you have. Examine the systems that underpin it. Look for systems improvements you can make.