Journal Reflections for Modual 3.3 - Process Improvement and Project Management

[Editors note:  The following is a journal entry addressing specific questions provided by the CPM course instructor Dr. Wendy Fraser for module 3.3.]

1.Briefly describe what you learned from the activities, instruments and discussions.  What stands out for you?

I found the readings for this class very good, particularly the Maleyeff article “Improving Service Delivery in Government with Lean Six Sigma”. That article made a couple of points that will correlate directly to my project.

Most performance data are designed to evaluate effectiveness by focusing on metrics that represent how well and how efficiently services are provided. While these “outcome” data can be valuable in highlighting areas of concern, their role is often less valuable during improvement projects that require “process” data. (Maleyeff, p. 11)

And

Management commitment to a Lean Six Sigma process improvement program must go beyond slogans, banners, or motivational speeches. The leadership team should exude a constancy of purpose, along with discipline and patience hat allows the program to take root. The management team must be made responsible and accountable for both managing the organization and improving its effectiveness. The creation of an infrastructure that sustains requires attention be given to the following four actions… Develop a sound, consistent, and robust methodology. Build trust by removing fear. Initiate long term cultural change. And Communicate the vision to all stakeholders. (p. 18)

The concepts of instilling a culture of continuous improvement, having senior management lead and demonstrate foundational commitment to that culture, and the basic introduction to the tools used for assessing continuous improvement were adequately described in the reading.

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

Advantages of Sub-Optimized Systems

In thinking about system configurations as presented by Dr. Fraser in the first module of the Certified Public Manager course, one aspect seemed worth exploring further.

The general principle of system structure theory is shown in the graphic below and states that as effective systems are developed, issues progress from being handled as events, to patterns, to structural systems. The potential for managers to positively impacting how an issue is addressed is maximized in the ability to create and implement the effective system structures before issues arise.

What seemed most interesting would be to explore the potential advantages sub-optimized systems could have to various stakeholders.  When system structure is either not effective or has not been developed, thereby requiring issues to be dealt with on the event level, what if any tangential advantages might there be to various stakeholders.


Three scenarios are presented to explore this question.

Scenario #1 - Business Genius or Project Management Wacko

"Either the architect was a certified genius or an authentic whack-o!" - Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Ghost Busters, 1983

At one point in my professional career, I was working for a construction contracting company in a very frustrating environment.  My role consisted of assisting two very competent project managers and all of us were perpetually frustrated with the systems the senior managers had implemented on our project.  The systems in place were by all accounts an impediment to progress and made our work extremely cumbersome.

Below is a flow chart to depict the steps between when an issue was identified to when work could be formally authorized to address the issue.

Somewhere in the middle of the project Kevin Koening, one of the very competent project managers, came to the realization that whatever we thought of the leadership’s inefficient and sub-optimal “system configuration” sense, they were certifiable business geniuses.

They had effectively developed a business model in which they could bill a client an astronomical amount to carry out an inefficient and cumbersome system with a small army of minimally skilled labor.  


The system was sub-optimal for accomplishing the project, but it was optimized around creating billable work.

Scenario #2 - The Commission Without Policy

Consider a somewhat hypothetical public commission whose approval is being required for some necessary action.  If that commission fails to adequately adopt regulations to define what does and does not meet their requirements, and instead deals with every issue on a case by case basis, we have the potential for a sub-optimized system.

Specific sub-optimized effects include the inability of support staff to develop “structural” (referencing the systems graph depicted above) systems to deal with issues generatively.  Entities appearing before the commission also lack clarity in what will be required to gain approval.  And the commission’s work is further encumbered by the necessity of needing to address every matter before them as an individual event.

The net effect is that the commissioners become the critical stakeholder in any project needing commission approval.  There any few limits as to what can be brought into the purview of the commission thereby expanding their power. 


So this sub-optimized system has the advantage to the commissioners of effectively maximizing the political power of the commission at the expense of the actions it is intended to oversee.

Scenario #3 - The Emergency Oriented Employee

The third scenario, devised in discussions with my fellow classmate Casey Rice, considers the motivation of an individual employee.  Although neither of us could pinpoint specific examples, it seems possible this scenario could occur.

If your workforce derives more value from responding to the "Event" level incident than addressing an issue on the structural level, an inverse incentive to avoid carrying out the routine of the “structured” system could be developed.

Incentives for dealing with “Event” level issues could include the adrenaline thrill of operating in crisis mode, the potential to address crises outside of bureaucratic decision making “systems”, the opportunity for overtime pay, or appreciation of an employee’s visible efforts to fix the emergency by the larger community.

Taken from this vantage point, the underlying employee motivation theoretically favors minimizing optimized system structures and in order to direct issues to the more rewarding Event level.

Analysis and Conclusions

Within each of these scenarios, one group of individual stakeholders gains advantages by placing their own interest ahead of the larger objective that the “system” is designed to address.

Therefore the incentive to the manager seeking leverage issue response by building system structures is to ensure that all of the stakeholders within the system are committed to and motivated towards achieving the system outcomes. 


In the specific cases described above this likely entails ensuring that contractual relationships support structures that foster system success (Scenario #1), or that individuals are rewarded for and motivated towards achieving the ultimate ends the structure of the “systems” are trying to achieve (Scenario #2 and #3). 

Discussion Topic #1 - Bureaucracy's Primary Function

The primary function of any bureaucracy is self preservation. – Steve Solters*, circa 1998


After a brief discussion of this statement in class today, it seems that this was a statement suitable for further exploration.  Perhaps it shouldn’t seem so surprising given that the class consists of government employees might take offense at disparagement of the concept of general bureaucracy.
In the hopes that this will be a subject suitable for raising an initial discussion, I present it here for my classmates further development.  Particularly since the last arguments presented in class on the subject seemed to me entirely unpersuasive.

If I recall the final argument was that if some hypothetical state commission or agency announced to the legislature that it wanted to cut its mission and budget in half, the legislature would immediately dismiss the suggestion and perhaps the messenger too.  Specifically, because we assume the legislature finds the public service being provided by such agency to be of such vital importance that cutting it in half would jeopardize the health, safety, security, prosperity… of all state residents, economies, cultures, environments....

This argument almost makes my point in the following ways.

First, is anyone claiming that the any commission or agency as currently structured, is of such optimal size so as to eliminate all of the bad/evil/ill that it was created to thwart.  I find that difficult to fathom.
Second, given that some bad/evil/ill in the targeted area remains, it would seem that the people of the state (as represented by their duly elected representatives) have accepted a level of functionality based on a cost/benefit analysis factored against a law of diminishing returns.

So under what scenarios would we anticipate any agency advocating for a lower standard of service. This entails individuals with vested interests in a cause not wanting to advance that said cause. Especially if that decision were to imply that their job was un-necessary.

Linking this thought to other concepts discussed today almost develops a theme. The inability of “Smart” people to find their own weaknesses and to naturally act defensively when challenged. Or the inability to institute "True Change" without being acted upon by an external force in the quote by Demming? [sic] as Dr. Fraser alluded to.


And yet, given a finite amount of resources (my tax dollars), it would seem at least plausible that in many cases, the ideal cost/benefit ratio for most of the state residents would be at cost levels below those presently employed.

Not that many taxpayers or even elected representatives would be knowledgable to assess what that ideal ratio would be.
Of course, accepting a reduced level of service by a legislative body, has feedback loops of its own. The appearance of historically overfunding an agency would not be attractive. Or that any governing body would be willing to oppose whatever vocal minority would be impacted by any marginal reduction. Or that a governing body would want to be tied politically to whatever bad/evil/ill may potentially have been prevented by said agency without the reductions.


Hence, even in this argument, it would still seem that the primary function of any bureaucracy would be to justify its own existence and to preserve itself. Making other arguments to support the statement and extending them to beyond the applications to public governments would not likely be difficult, but is beyond the scope of this particular article.


Conclusion and Challenge

Is it then any wonder that we have a governmental system that tends towards growth and expansion? Are we then surprised that one of the few ways of cutting government size within our system has been indiscriminant cuts across wide swaths of government driven by rather extreme crisis?


So how would this relate to students in a Certified Public Management Course? One of my reflections on the excellent Supervision Essentials I course I took a few months ago, was that this subject was never even touched on.

I would propose, that as leaders in public service, seeking to manage resources entrusted to us by the public (or extracted from the citizenry in the form of a tax), we need to be always challenging ourselves to do the un-natural. We need to be asking ourselves “How can we do less?” or “Why is it so imperative that my agency undertake this function on behalf of every taxpayer?”



*Steve Solters was a friend and favorite project manager of mine when I was working in NY. I doubt the thought is original to him, but with the high esteem I hold him in, I appreciate the chance to mention his name and give him as much credit as possible.