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Performance Drivers, Key Indicators, Results.

The Way of Systems







Solution-Centered Support

Performance Drivers, Leading Indicators, and Results

As a support organization pursues the primary dimensions of success, i.e., increased Employee Satisfaction, increased Customer Satisfaction, and lower Cost Per Resolution, i.e., the Results, it is appropriate for the organization to measure the Leading Indicators for these Results, i.e., increased Proficiency, lower Average Time to Resolution, and increased Productivity.

The difficulty which generally arises is that when organizations seek to manage the Leading Indicators it tends to drive the numbers, yet seldom producing the desired Results. The leading indicators, like the dimensions of success, are the direct result of an organization performing the correct activities and continually developing their proficiency at these activities.

For the leading indicators to continue to improve the organization needs to focus on the Performance Drivers, i.e., Process, Alignment and Learning. By continuing to develop the organization's performance, i.e., effectiveness and efficiency, in the area of the performance drivers the leading indicators will track in the the desired direction, as will the dimensions of success.

The short of it is, "One can't win tennis games by watching the scoreboard. To win tennis games one has to focus on playing the best game possible, while continuing to improve their skill."

The following diagram presents the relationships between the Performance Drivers, Leading Indicators, and Results.

Definitions

Proficiency: Proficiency is a multi-dimensional indicator reflecting staff (engineer) capability and capacity, as influenced by recruiting, hiring, promoting, training, coaching, and management practices. It is a leading indicator of Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction.

Team Proficiency is a measure of the ratio of Apprentice, Journey and Master solution engineers within each product support group. During SCS start up the ratio will be skewed to the apprentice level until nomination and selection for the next skill level is completed. An organization should have a standardized nomination and selection process requiring peer nomination and certification.

We've defined proficiency for the different levels in the following manner:

  • Author: An author is a qualified engineer who is developing technical, content and process skills. Authors require more management, coaching and reviewer time to help them acquire the level of proficiency demonstrated by an editor-level solution engineer. Authors are still developing skills that add value and contribute leverage, both to themselves and to the group.
  • Editor: At this level, the qualified engineer has demonstrated technical problem-solving skills; writes good solutions requiring only minimal modification by the reviewer and exhibits good workflow habits. They consistently add value to solutions they use and are sought out to assist in solving difficult problems. Those editor-level engineers who exhibit excellent interpersonal and mentoring skills may be nominated for training and certification as coaches. Coaches are certified editor-level solution engineers who are qualified to coach other engineers on the team to develop solutions; to develop good workflow habits and to write solutions competently.
  • Publisher: A publisher is one that has mastered the use of all of their tools and exhibits the highest professional standards in technical, content and process skills. The publisher is certified to publish her or his solutions directly into the solution set (public or internal) without review. The publisher mentors coaches and reviews the solutions presented by editor-level and author-level engineers.

Average Time to Resolution (ATR): ATR is a multi-dimensional indicator that reflects the organization's response to customer-driven activity (input). ATR includes elements of (a) first call resolution; (b) call closure rate; (c) hold time & abandon rate and (d) backlog. ATR is a leading indicator of Customer Satisfaction and Cost Per Resolution.

Productivity: This is another multi-dimensional measure that considers the staff required to resolve an experienced call volume. Productivity is a bit difficult to calculate for a specific time because calls are closed over a period of time. What makes sense is to calculate the average time to resolution for calls over a period of time, and then to divide that by the average staff available for the same time period of time. This will provide a sense of the average productivity over the period.

Where to Begin

Organizations tend to focus on those things which are easy to measure, because they're easy to measure. Generally along with a focus on what is easy to measure, targets are set, and management focuses on the targets. What happens it that teams will reach the targets -- though generally not in a manner that was expected or desired. As we have seen repeatedly demonstrated, and quite painfully, is "What gets measured, gets manipulated."

In an attempt to avoid this target / manipulation syndrome there are no targets for the leading indicators and results. Teams should begin by measuring the leading indicators. When the measures are presented to management, management should ask the team about the acceptability of the current values, the trends, and inquire as to current plans to affect the desired change in the number. If one focuses on the number they will get manipulated. One must focus on behaviors that are responsible for producing the numbers. The numbers then provide an indication of the extent to which the focus is appropriate or should be altered.

While all the leading indicators are all interrelated Proficiency is the foundational component. Proficiency, being the foundational component, is the most appropriate indicator to measure and develop first. Once a group has established practices around measuring and developing proficiency, the team should then add Average Time to Resolution and Productivity to their set of measures. Once practices for tracking the leading indicators are established the team should begin measuring the final results they are achieving in the area of Employee Satisfaction, Customer Satisfaction, and Cost Per Resolution.

While the leading indicators provide a sense of the direction in which things are going the organization should not attempt to drive the leading indicators. What the organization, teams, and individuals should focus on is continually developing their understanding and proficiency at doing the right things and doing them increasingly well. This attention to effectiveness and efficiency will result in the appropriate trends in the leading indicators and the desired results.

The diagram below identifies the activities which should be the object of focus throughout the adoption of Solution Centered Support.

Monitoring Leading Indicators

Admittedly Proficiency is the most involved measure for a team to get its arms around. This stems primarily from the fact that this is an aspect of team performance that the team has not addressed previously. Yet, because this component is the foundation of the teams future success it is the most appropriate place to start. And if the team is not profiled how will the manager and coaches understand what areas to focus on for proficiency development and improvement?

Process, Content, and Technology are three dimensions of proficiency. Depending on the extent to which an individual demonstrates and understanding and skill in each of these areas, their proficiency will be characterized as Author, Editor, or Publisher level.

      • Process
        • Demonstrates a solid understanding of SCS processes
        • Demonstrates good problem solving techniques
        • Consistently leverages the workflow to solve problems
        • Consistently displays effective workflow techniques (participation, capture, clarify & statement match, search, link)
        • Manages rework and closes CSRs effectively and within standards
      • Content
        • Consistently develops solid content that doesn't require modification to meet content standards
        • Captures problem-solving approach within the context of the published solution
        • Consistently improves solutions of others when encountered
        • Consistently captures the customer experience
        • Consistently uses statements & terms to increase relevance and connectivity to solution set
      • Technology
        • Fully knowledgeable of the product set they support
        • Demonstrates effective problem-solving skills for the product set they support

Each individual is evaluated from 1 to 3 in each dimension. The items listed above are what a person should demonstrate to rate a 3 in each dimension. The sum of the individual dimension evaluations results in the individual being classified as Author (1 to 4), Editor (5 to 7), or Publisher (8 or 9). The team profile is then displayed as a matrix. As part of this profiling the coach and manager should lay out a plan of development for each individual within the team to assist them in reaching the Master level. This then becomes the individual's coaching and training development program.

Member

Process

Content

Technology

Total

Level
Tom

1

1

2

4

Author
Dave

1

2

3

6

Editor
Alice

2

1

1

4

Publisher
Mike

1

1

1

3

Author
Dave

3

3

2

8

Publisher
Sara

2

3

3

8

Publisher
Richard

2

2

1

5

Editor
Thomas

1

2

2

5

Editor

A Set of Examples

The following charts are intended to demonstrate the appropriate trends for a group which is developing and continuing to improve the results it produces on an on going basis. Each chart covers the same 3 month time period.

With continued coaching and mentoring the group continues to increase the number of members at the Editor and Publisher level while decreasing the number of Author level engineers. The manager of the team should meet with the coaches weekly and assess the development of each individual and update the Team Proficiency statistics based on this meeting.
With continued attention on the resolution of customers problems with the teams developing levels of proficiency it is expected that the Average Time to Resolution will trend downward. This trend is also supported by ensuring resources are appropriately applied to problem resolution as opposed to other activities within the organization which would tend to produce little accomplishment.
Because productivity is simply a measure derived from the Average Time to Resolution and the number of engineers available to manage that Average Time to Resolution the chart to the right projects a continued increase in Productivity as the Average Time to Resolution declines.

Employee Satisfaction should be sampled via weekly survey, with actions taken each week on the feedback. The 5 survey questions are:

  • What we're doing right
  • What we need to improve
  • What we need to start
  • What we need to stop
  • Overall satisfaction level
Customer Satisfaction should be sampled by each team on an ongoing basis. There are essentially two approaches to this. Each engineer can ask a call closure question and the results tallied at the end of the week. Or an individual form the team can sample recently closed calls and request feedback from the customer. These results would then be tallied each week.
Cost Per Resolution is as the Employee Cost / Average Time to Resolution during the week. This isn't exact but it does give a good representative value with appropriate trending.
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Copyright © 2004 Gene Bellinger