Guerrilla Tactics

Guerrilla Tactics

Journey Journey with me to a “High Performance” Organization, where performance improvement isn’t needed … because the performance is already there!

Here’s my ideal! Leadership is great! There is clarity about organizational direction and the expectations of groups and individuals. Folks know what the heck they’re doing and why! There is a constant “improvement buzz”. Everyone in the organization continually looks for ways to improve products, services, timelines, processes - and ultimately, outcomes and client satisfaction. There is little fear of change; there is a willingness to do new things; people are open and readily share insights and information. People are rewarded for taking acceptable risks and enhancing organizational and personal performance. Every team is world class, and the organization is competitive in its existing and emerging markets. Every individual can achieve his/her potential, while contributing to the success of the business. Everyone in the organization is striving to maintain and develop the most advanced resources and infrastructures to support individual and group performance.

That’s where we want to go. How do we get there? • There are several different approaches. The most popular PI approach is “rationalistic”: It suggests you • Measure, • Model, • Gap, • Train/implement, • Evaluate, • And begin again. But, the impediments to performance improvement are less issues of clean models, measures and training your way out of problems. That trail usually leads to a vicious cycle of “new and improved” programs, with, often, little or no change in organizational and individual effectiveness.

BREAK THE CYCLE • My experience has suggested a different approach. It is more incremental and borrows from Organizational Development principles. When you find yourself in the cycle, you have to go beyond the traditional approach. • You get there by • Understanding the “generalized” variables that most impact performance. That is, the kinds of issues common across organizations which account for the greatest marginal impact on performance. • Identifying the obstacles to changing those variables and improving that performance, • Pulling those obstacles out of the way.

Barriers What are the barriers you face in your performance improvement efforts Let’s take a minute to brainstorm!

Generalized Variables What basic ingredients are common to all successful performance improvement projects? My experience suggests: • Leadership Commitment and Clarity (at all levels) • Trust, Sharing and Commitment (an “improvement culture”) • The “Internal Creation”, Efficient Use, and Rapid Access to Resources and Infrastructure • An Explosion of Shared Information • A Succession of Successes

Barrier Clusters My work with others has suggested the following clusters of barriers Succession of Successes B3: Personal Hearts and minds of individuals and teams Lack of Trust, Commitment, Sharing B2: Organizational Turf wars CYA protecting vested interests cost shifting no coordination no sharing of information. B1: Infrastructure Technical Systems Information Systems Training Processes and Procedures B 1 - 3 Leadership

If you do not already have the initial ingredients for success, • Leadership Commitment and Clarity (at all levels) • Trust, Sharing and Commitment (an “improvement culture”) • The “Internal Creation”, Efficient Use, and Rapid Access to Resources and Infrastructure, • Then no amount of measuring and modeling can save you. PI initiatives are dead in the water. Life is real tough. Your work becomes a constant struggle. • It is from this observation that I began devising another strategy for working improvement projects:

Guerrilla Tactics

Environment Seen As A Series of Battlefields Creative resourcing, shared information via technical systems The Succession of Successes X Turf wars, CYA, protecting vested interests, cost shifting, no coordination, no sharing of information. B1: Infrastructure X A struggle for the hearts and minds of individuals and teams B2: Organizational B3: Personal X

Concepts of Guerrilla Warfare These are tough campaigns. That’s what makes it seem like Guerrilla Warfare. There are some basic concepts of Guerrilla Warfare that can help us understand how to win! In Guerrilla Warfare: • Turn your weaknesses into strengths. • Rely on cunning and skill, not brute force. • Trust a small cadre of highly loyal troops. • Gather intelligence. • Know the terrain better than any others. • Pacify the countryside. • You choose where to strike. • Conserve resources. • Live to fight another day. • Its not the battle that’s important, it’s the war. • Achieve small victories, advance incrementally. • Strike many places far apart. • Use propaganda to bolster credibility • If you meet resistance, drop back, if not move forward. • Use surprise. ImprovementCommandos

Model Information Reassess and Decide Impact on Pressure Points Reevaluate Lessons and Regularize Lessons and Regularize Impact on Pressure Points Reevaluate TARGETTWO‘S Lessons and Regularize Impact on Pressure Points Reevaluate TARGET TARGET Data Landscape Situation Objective Target Selection Fact Find and Pressure Point Intelligence Pressure Point Importance Gather Intelligence About Leader Start Develop Your Cadre Go out on Patrol Cadre PP Assignments First Key Battle Exploit Victories Propaganda Regroup and Reassign Cadre Work PP Relationships Second Key Battle Regroup and Reassign Cadre Third Key Battle Work PP Relationships Regroup and Reassign Cadre Fourth Key Battle Work PP Relationships Action Relationships

Gather Intelligence on Leader • What are the interests of the leader (WIFL)? • How can you build credibility with him/her? • What are the alliances and politics around the leadership? • What is the vision/mission of the organization? • What quality strategies, if any, are now in place? • What are his/her feelings about them? • How can you use these feelings to your advantage?

Develop Cadre of Young Turks • Who else in the organization might have the same ideas and perspective as you? • What are their interests? • How can you approach them? • Find them. • Share your initial intelligence estimates. • Bond informally and share your vision (note that the organizational vision may be vague and unclear). • Develop the Young Turks Mini-vision: What kind of quality system do we want to see? (note that this vision, may be different from what is now in place). • Develop close personal ties among the “Young Turks”.

Fact Finding and Reality Time • Develop an initial list of the Young Turk’s strengths and weaknesses. • Create a realistic assessment of where the quality initiative/ quality system now stands. • As a close-knit group, understand the obstacles you will face. • Bond and promise support in the face of the facts.

Pressure Point Intelligence • Survey the organizational landscape to determine the pressure points in the organization • What are the particular critical business functions (the lifeblood of the organization)? • What are the particularly strong and weak work groups or individuals. • What are their strengths, weaknesses, organizational loyalties, and paradigms? • From which groups or individuals can you expect resistance? (watch out for surprises here).

Go Out on patrol • Knowing the pressure points, develop relationships with critical • Data holders • Resource controllers • Make nice to the leadership • Divide these duties up among the cadre. Make the best use of each Young Turk’s established relationships. That person takes the point in that relationship. • What is the patrol all about? • Probing to verify your intelligence estimates. • Establishing additional intelligence and WIFM lists. • Pacification and support • Begin scuttle-butting, testing the waters, loosening them up.

Gather Intelligence: The Data Landscape • Come back to HQ. • Begin critical functions process mapping (the terrain). This should not be highly detailed, but done at a broad or macro level. • Lay out the data landscape: • Who’s got what? • Who ought to have what? • What kind of resistance or assistance can we expect? • What will we be to use (in our data system)? • What could we use if we had a more advanced information system? • What’s worth doing and what level of sophistication do we want to shoot for?

Reassess: Situational Objective • Lay out the current systems situation: • What do we have in place? • Are there narrow interests attached to the current system or its pieces? • If so, who, and does this mean resistance or support? • Given the processes and information, what should we try to optimize? (note that this can change). That is, armed with the information and the possibilities we have at hand, • What kind of performance level(s) could we strive for • At what cost? • What are the principle “technical” impediments to that performance level? • manpower? • information systems? • resources?

Target Selection • Step back from the information on critical processes, data and information, and ideas about reasonable expectations of quality levels. • Incorporate your information about pressure points and organizational personalities. • Begin Chunking: • Disaggregate the major processes into sub-systems. • Give each a rough score based on how well they seem to be doing in terms of meeting your • Quality level (see previous slide). • Cost of technical needs. • Level of organizational resistance or support for change. • (See “Target Selector”, next page)

Target Selector Critical, Low Performing Strategy, next page

Break Out of Critical, Low Performing units

Recruit Include any new recruits you feel you can bring into the cadre. These can be from anywhere in the organization and from any level. But keep things low key at this point.

Exploit early victories • Areas where performance levels are high: • Strike here immediately with the goal of increasing participation in expanding performance. • Especially in High Critical, High Performance Sub-Systems, begin to • Regularize by working with them to develop and enhance EPSS’s • Probe for lessons to share elsewhere. • Especially the not very critical areas where performance levels are acceptable, • Use as a testbed for information systems and team techniques. • For instance, Team-based job analysis and work instruction development, and real-time training are perfect for the little department that runs well. Try them out here. • Also use these as a place to test new information and EPSS systems (parallel to the existing system). • Develop propaganda that holds these successes up as the kind of behavior you want others to copy.

First Key Battle • You will be forced by circumstances to attack in a sub-system whose importance is high and whose performance level is low. The cadre should make every attempt to ensure that you • Hit the sub-system among these where organizational resistance and costs are low. • While this is the ideal place to strike, odds are that costs and resistance are at least moderate. None the less, if the opportunity presents itself, nab a quick victory here. Use it to • Increase the size of your alliance, by increasing participation. • Increase your own resource base by obtaining a quid pro quo for every success (snowballing). • Check your techniques (ideally you will have tested some of them in the Low Crit, High Performance Sub-system).

Lessons • The battlefield will have been tough, in any case. After your first real victory, • Pause your active campaign to assess • Successes and failures, • Strengths and weaknesses, • Resources and advantages have you gained, • Capabilities have you developed. • Crucial here is the fact that you need to go all the way back to the beginning and redo your basic intelligence work. This includes: • Assessing your position relative to the leader’s interests and the alliances of which he/she is a part. • Assessing your cadre’s casualties (there will be some), and re-bonding the Young Turks. • Reevaluating your “intelligence network” (it changes once you come out in the open). • Reviewing your map of processes and pressure points (things always change). • Smooth ruffled feathers with data holders and resource controllers. Make sure they are getting some praise and a piece of any pies that were created (you can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg). • Re-assign, if necessary, point persons from the cadre to data holders and resource controllers.

Regularize and Exploit Propaganda • While your cadre is reassessing, make sure noise is being made in the areas that are working well. • Exploit this for propaganda purposes. • Regularize what works. Ensure that documentation procedures are being written and institutionalized where you have working systems. select from the “terrible two’s “ and begin the cycle again.

Guerrilla Tactics