I was having a great email chat with my former vice president the other day. The original conversation was about how a process improvement team should be organized and we got onto the topic of the virtues of a centralized or decentralized model of process ownership.
While centralization seems to make sense, I argued that the change management challenges created by disassociating the improvement work with the teams who had to improve wasn’t worth the added value of defining common processes across silos. In fact, in our organization, the silos don’t share that many common processes, so even if centrally defined, little would be shared.
From there, as our conversations often do, we wandered over to Agile software development. My friend is a huge proponent, while I am an outright non-believer (as if you couldn’t tell from my other posts). And the discussion became about whether one of the main tenets of Agile – that the team decides the process – was a good idea. In a separate post, I’m going to tell you why no team should ever be allowed to decide the process for themselves, but let’s ignore that for the purposes of this post.
For whatever reasons, valid or invalid, having a team decide their own process makes me uncomfortable. It may be that I’m a control freak, but something is unsettling about it. However, over my years I have mellowed from a strict dictator about process compliance to someone who is willing to take some input (the operative word here is some). So I conceded that I could be supportive of a Toyota-like model, where those who want to improve the process have to prove its value and cause the change to be socialized with the entire organization. Local sub-optimization is not acceptable.
Well, I don’t know about Toyota and their proof process, but it’s certainly better than the appearance that Agile gives, which is the team collectively decides what the right process is. No data, just gut decisions. And then it struck me – the act of allowing change may simply be all you need to create superior performance. It has nothing to do with the quality of the change! It’s the Hawthorne Effect at work. By allowing teams to control their environment, they get the value, the excitement, of trying something new. And as a result, if they like it, it becomes part of their process. The value of that particular change may fade. In fact, it may even be damaging, but offset by the value of enthusiasm. At least, until the enthusiasm for that change ends. And then they make another change, which has the same short term benefit, and another, and another and another. Each change is good or bad, or hopefully evenly distributed, so that once the Hawthorne Effect fades any damage the change might really do is offset by some positive real change that was also made. Not that you’re really getting anywhere ever, one step forward, one step back.
Of course, I wonder if the constant change eventually loses its magic, the act of improving becoming no longer exciting. And then of course, all those steps backward will come to haunt you.
September 10, 2008 at 1:55 pm |
In industrial psychology we were taught, as you point out, that making any kind of perceived local improvements leads to performance improvement for some longer or shorter amount of time. But we were also taught that employees who FEEL more in control of their daily work life like their jobs better. (I don’t know how long that effect is supposed to last.)
I have no idea if job satisfaction correlates with any performance data, but if it does then it seems easier to promote the perception of self-control than to have to concoct constant change.
September 10, 2008 at 10:54 pm |
What’s interesting to me is that the Hawthorne effect, particulary the study of lighting on workplace productivity, had little to do with people controlling their daily work life. It seemed that simply the act of change, regardless if it was self-controlled or not, changed productivity.
There are certainly process oriented types, me among them, who believe that by laying out a clear process with clear definition of success will lead to people feeling in control of their work life. When you know where you’re supposed to be going, at least you can formulate a plan to get there (ie, be ‘in control’). But perhaps you’re right, simply allowing people to play around with the process is another way to give them that sense of ‘control’ they were looking for.
If that’s the case, I’d much prefer giving control via a well defined process with clear goals rather than letting people muck with the process. Same effect, zero risk of creating a sub par process along the way.
September 13, 2008 at 12:36 pm |
I totally agree.