Journal Reflections for Modual 3.2 - Managing Performance and Data Based Decision Making

[Editors note:  The following is a journal entry addressing specific questions provided by the CPM course instructor Larisa Benson for module 3.2.]

Write your own reflections on what you learned that had the most impact on your development as a leader. What insight have you gained, and what difference will that make in how you lead in the future?

Here is my list of particular things I would like to remember from CPM Class 3.2.

Letting people want to learn about the system will make them want to improve the system.


Inspiring a culture of learning inquisitively should be the focus. Pushing people through a Taylor time motion study that dehumanizes them is not likely to yield as positive a response.


The instructor presented the formula of value as Value = Quantity x Quality/Cost or written V=Q²/C. To me this would be much more accurately written as V=nQ/$. Since Quality may not be constant for each unit produced and C may include more cost than simply money a further refinement might be:

There is value in being able to express (creatively and compellingly) the values and objectives of your organizations through maps and data.

Other advantages of a mapping exercise include:

1. Identifying the Right people
2. Find Right timing
3. Map before you jump
4. Map from other people perspectives
5. Identify pressure and support points

Miller’s Systems of Work Table:

Factory	Widget	Customer	Outcomes
What we do	What we make	For Whom	Why

(Note that this is not the same as the logic map.)

One of the key components of mapping is being able to identify our “Customers”. This identification serves as a tool to see the path forward in being able to better meet a customer’s needs. In identifying the customer what we are really looking for is the “Users” as the object or customer for our widget.

Assumptions about outcomes and customers can be very deceiving. Resolving these through systematic identification can be a key benefit from the mapping process.

Stakeholders may have hang-ups on using the word “customers”, so alternatives such as “users” or “consumers” may be more appropriate. Most of those hang ups tend to stem from the accepted mantra of “the customer always being right”.


Often in public governance, the electorate fills a role most similar to the shareholder with the legislative body being the board of directors.


There are places in the work chain for both “Brokers” and “Producer”. With Brokers, it is important to identify the value they actually add to the process.


The voice of the customer tends to fall into one of the 5 broad categories: Ease of use, Timeliness, Accuracy, Cost, Choice (Customization).


In assessing the operational effectiveness of a system, feedback and refinement is a crucial component. To incorporate feedback we need to be asking the following questions:

• Are there processes to look for and receive feedback?
• Is feedback being received?
• What do you do with the feedback once it is received? (Do we use it for relationship building. Are we viewing it from a purely Transactional or Inquiry viewpoint.)
• Deconstructing the feedback to make improvements can be very difficult and subjective.

Customer Surveys tend to have very marginal value. Some of the key concerns with surveys are the following:

• What do you plan to do with the data?
• Results are of limited value since the responses may be ambiguous or subject to interpretation.
• Customer responses can confuse, provide misleading information.
• The results may not even provide the correct information.
• If you do not share or react to the information gathered in customer surveys, it always results in a decrease in trust.

Given these impediments to customer surveys, focused customer interviews may be a much better source of meaningful feedback.

The Results Map worksheet questions are a good resource for developing a better system map. They are included in the section below.

Limiting outcomes to a tangible scope is important. When the outcome is “all creation will dwell in peace” you have extended your system to abstraction and likely past the point of usefulness. The outcome needs to be something that people can connect to their motivations.


Striking visuals (collapsed building photo) can be key in effective communicating.


Herzog: Motivation cannot be given. Managers can only connect work to internal motivations.


Synergy can be defined as “focused energy”.

To build team synergy, first you must create the opportunity to accomplish something significant.


Book list relevant to this subject: Creating Public Value by Mike Moore, We Don’t make Widgets by Ken Miller, The First 90 Days in Government by Peter Daly

Write a specific plan for applying one or more of the strategies or frameworks you discovered during class. Which framework or tool will you apply, in what context, with which people? What do you hope to accomplish?

This class has helped me crystalize a picture of what shape my capstone project will likely take. I now envision completing a formal management plan for the Wood department and then supplementing that with a report identifying a list of steps that could be taken to clarify or improve the functionality of the department.

The second report will probably have a couple of logic models included within it. I also anticipate incorporating a the feedback questions into my interviews with the staff:

1. What is your primary product?
2. Who receives or uses your primary product? (= customer or user)
3. What features of your product do your customers care about?
4. What would increase or decrease if you made this better?
5. Who actually does this activity? (Who does the work?)
6. What knowledge do the workers have, that you don’t? (And what do you know, that they don’t know?)
7. What is your strategic or ultimate outcome?
8. Who cares about that outcome? Why? How do you know?
9. In what ways do/could you communicate with the people who care about that outcome (or any other box in your chain)?
10. What factors influence the results? Which do you control, which less so?

Using these questions, hopefully I can better assess the staff’s understanding of their contributions to the whole system.


What will you do differently in comparison to the experience you described in Journal Assignment #1? How will you know whether you are successful or not?

The specific issue discussed in the pre-class journal assignment is not likely to be significantly altered.

One change that I may incorporate into the standards would be a logic flow map based on the information in class about how visual figures are often an effective means of conveying information to certain individuals.

I do have a new perspective on what is happening as it closely corresponds to Miller's description of the 10 steps to a messed up government factory. Quoting from Miller:

Why do our government factories get so messed up? They usually don't start that way. What starts out as a simple task-perhaps licensing a nurse or issuing a building permit-becomes a seventy-five-step nightmare as the following takes place:

1. The organizational structure changes.
2. Mistakes happen, which leads to the creation of new steps to ensure these mistakes never happen again. (The DNA of most processes is usually CYA.)
3. Turnover increases.
4. Micromanagers enter the picture.
5. Computer systems are modified or added.
6. Legislation is passed.
7. Auditors introduce more controls.
8. Special-interest groups emerge.
9. The boss says so.
10. Legal counsel wants to minimize risks.

Behind most of these is the desire for control. (Miller, We Don’t Make Widgets, Page 45)

From my personal reflections, that rings very true. Stopping the process as a “Middle” (see Oshry’s People in Context) is a wholly different proposition than simply mapping the system or finding ways to optimize the system.