My wife and I discussed that point yesterday driving home from the fair (talking on topics like this may be the reason why no one wants to drive with us) but to no conclusion. My fault: I just couldn't think clearly. One too many times on the Hurricane perhaps?
Last night I started a new book, Harvard Business Review on Entrepreneurship (I should probably get out more), and there, on page 27, were the words (the answer) that I wanted:
Telling empolyees how to do their jobs ... can stifle initiative. Companies that require frontline employees to act quickly and resourcefully might decide to focus more on outcomes than on behavior, using control systems that set performance targets for employees, compare results against objectives, and provide appropriate incentives.Focus on result, not process, that is the key. It is where all training should start, at the end. Employees must understand 100% what the desired result is (and why), and only then be trained on the current process that achieves the result.
Regarding creativity and initiative, the key word is current, the key concept being that changes to the current process are allowed as long as the desired result is achieved, as long as customers (internal and external) are happy with the result. The "desired result" becomes the boundaries within which change is allowed.
It sounds easy, but isn't. Here is an example I scribbled on a ripped brown paper bag while sitting outside a MacDonald's in Hsin Chu ("new bamboo," literally) in Taiwan 15 years ago. (I have the brown paper scrap in front of me. Not only should I get out more, I should throw out more.)
MacDonald's served more than hamburgers in China, it also served systems (I think it changed China more any political movement, but that is a story for another day). Staff were always well trained: to do the complicated cooking, supplying, monitoring, filling, requesting ballet, staff had to be well trained!
My turn. I ordered my meal, double cheese burger, medium fries and ice tea. The young counter girl understood (I ordered in Mandarin after all) and began to pick and serve my meal. Ice tea on tray: check. Fries on tray: check. Burger on tray: whoops, not ready yet. I saw all this and told her I wanted my fries and burger "together," going so far to explain that I did not my fries to cool down while they sat on the tray waiting for their burger partner.
No way. There was no way she was going to do that! Why? Because she had been trainied to pick and place meal items as they were available, period. Fries were available, so pick and place now; burger not available so wait.
Not wanting cold fries--I could see the burger was still minutes away from ready--I tried again to explain the result I wanted, to a blank face (the true great wall of China, the Chinese mask). I eventually talked to the shift supervisor--I really like hot fries!--who, grudgingly, put my now near-cold fries under the warming lights, basically to help them stay at that nice near-cold temperature. I digress.
The problem, repeated all over Asia, is that staff are trainined in process, not result. Often extraordinarily good at following complicated "how to" procedures, yet unable to alter the process even a little bit if such is needed to satisfy a unique customer request.
The MacDonald's problem (it still happens) is mistaking process for result: staff are only trainined in process, whereas the true goal of the process is not that all steps are slavishly followed but that the right result is achieved. In my cold fries example, the desried result is a satisfied customer, munching happily on hot fries. To achieve that result the young employee had to have been allowed to be creative and to show initiative, to pick and place my ice tea immediately (thanks: it was hot!) but to wait until burger was ready to pick and place fries.
That only happens when training begins with students understanding the desired end result, and then trained to achieve that, not simply to follow the process rules.
Back to Dick and Acme. He and I have discussed setting measureable SOPs, then training new hires to follow such. All well and good, but not enough. Along with the "do these steps" training must be effort to explain the desired end result, and that the current process is just the best way Acme has so far to achieve it.
If this is so bloody obvious--it should be obvious--why don't companies do it? Because of the difficulty in measuring end results, especially subjective, "customer happy" results. It normally, almost always, is easier to measure adherence to procedure, far easier.
Sigh. I know this from experience. Back in the day I struggled (and succeeded, often anyway) to measure customer end-result satisfaction. I hope my next book, Douglas Hubbard's, How To Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business, will give me more insights into this difficult but critical step.
Oh yes, MacDonald's and cold fries. I still like hot fries but have given up trying to get the counter person to change their process. Instead I now look to see which burgers are being wrapped and I order them, thus getting hot fries and a hot burger. Marvelous.
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