Archive for the 'measurement' Category

From a host preparing for a dinner party to a country constructing a new national stadium, we all tend to underestimate how long things are going to take - an error that’s been dubbed the ‘planning fallacy’. According to Ola Svenson, contributing to this proclivity for tardiness is our inability to accurately decide between time-saving options.
Consider these increases in speed for a 100km car journey. Don’t work out the detailed mathematics. Rather, for both pairs, just make an intuitive judgement about which jump in speed will make the largest difference to your time of arrival (i.e. save the most time):
a) Travelling at 50km/h instead of 40km/h.
b) Travelling at 130km/h instead of 80km/h.
a) Travelling at 50km/h instead of 30km/h.
b) Travelling at 130km/h instead of 60km/h.
If you’re like most of the participants in Svenson’s study, you will have assumed that option (b) in both pairs is the most time saving. In fact, for the first pair, the time saved is equal (allowing for rounding off), and for the second pair, option (a) saves more time. From analysing participants’ judgements, Svenson found that people seem to be mistakenly comparing the ratios of the two changes in speeds - applying what she calls the Ratio Rule.

It can also apply in other contexts. Consider an administration overhaul at a hospital clinic, such that the number of patients treated by each doctor per day is increased. In each pair, which improvement would free up the most doctors to go and work elsewhere?
a) Each day 11 patients treated per doctor instead of 5.
b) Each day, 8 patients treated per doctor instead of 4.
a) Each day, 8 patients treated per doctor instead of 4.
b) Each day, 16 patients treated per doctor instead of 7.

Svenson again found that her participants consistently applied the Ratio Rule, so that most of them said erroneously that option (a) was more time saving for the first pair, and that option (b) was more time saving for the second pair.
So why do we always apply the Ratio Rule if it consistently leads to the wrong judgement? Svenson said the Ratio Rule works when both options start from the same point (e.g. the same speed, or the same number of patients treated). This may then lead it to become a reinforced and favoured rule applied in real-life experiences.

According to Svenson, this bias in the way we compare time saving options has real-world implications. For example, people who are already driving fast will overestimate the time saved by driving even faster. Meanwhile, politicians may be prone to improving an already fast operation, rather than making improvements to a slower operation with more time-saving potential.

SVENSON, O. (2008), Decisions among time saving options: When intuition is strong and wrong. Acta Psychologica, 127(2), 501-509, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.09.003 Author weblink: http://www2.psychology.su.se/staff/osn/

Jonathan Wilson

Strategy, measurement, people, planning, process improvement | No Comments

I sit blogging this whilst my daughter is in theatre at Maidstone Hospital – yes that one that made all the press for MRSA deaths. So it wasn’t without trepidation that we approached the place. It’s a toe curling place to be – or rather toe uncurling to be precise – that’s the minor operation she’s in for.

Beth’s last lesson on Friday had been doing TLAFSSOS…three letter acronym for social studies or something… talking about hospital infections. Online yesterday I discovered from a contact in S Africa the sad news that someone I met last year died from complications after an operation. One of Beth’s friends was in intensive care for a month 2 years ago after a minor op here.

What sticks in my mind from a few years ago, was the difference between the private hospital in Tunbridge Wells and public hospital there. Yes the other half of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust once run by the infamous Rose Gibb. She that made the news for chasing targets and the resultant dirty hospitals that killed many. She’s still the signature in the “Welcome to our hospital” book today.

But far from being about slagging off the NHS, this is a story of reassurance. Walking into reception at 7.30am this morning, the place was awash ( no pun…) with cleaners. Every corner looks spotless. Every uniform freshly pressed. Every entrance to every ward has disinfecting hand washes and everyone uses them. Whilst sitting in the room waiting, someone has been in and cleaned the toilet. Someone else has waashed down the surfaces, someone else has vacuumed the floors and finally someone else has mopped them. One of the toilets is marked for deep clean 030308 (heh happy 5th birthday to telco 3, launched on 030303 !).

So I can see cleanliness is a top priority. There are no inspectors, just people everywhere paying attention to cleanliness.

There are at least 4 lessons to draw from the tragic history of this place:

- The business of this NHS Trust became focused on its shareholders, the money men, not on its customers, the patients
- The targets set by its shareholders did not reflect the most basic needs of its customers
- Neither the management nor the shareholders would listen to the customers, even when they were dying, because of cost targets that would ultimately cost a lot of money
- The waste of life stands out: the cost now of keeping it clean must be high, but not so high as the price of a death, let alone 100 deaths
 

It’s about the focus and stamina of the leaders really.

I remember hearing Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney talk last year at ECMW. When he ran Universal, he was frustrated that he could never keep the toilets as fastidiously clean as at Disney. So he called the then CEO of Disney and asked what was the secret. He discovered 3 things:

- Whenever I visit a Disney operation of any kind, the first thing I do is go to the toilets. If I have to pick up paper from the floor myself, I do so. But hell breaks loose if I ever have to do it twice
- The secret is cleaning the toilets most when they are most used eg every 15 minutes at lunch time
- It wasn’t difficult. It just had to be a high priority. And stay a high priority.
 

So as I relax and wait for Beth to come into post op, I ask you these questions from the 4 lessons:

1.       Is your business really focused on the basic needs of your customers, not the money? “Show me the money!”, as the film Jerry McGuire illustrated, just isn’t going to cut it in the 21st century.

2.       If you know the most basic needs of your customers, are your metrics about those needs and are they calibrated to match what customers say?

3.       Do you capture what your customers are saying? Yes? And do your management priorities get set by what they are saying?

4.       The cost of waste hopefully isn’t as evident as at this NHS Trust, but do you really know what it is?

Is every customer of your business as relaxed using your business as I can be sat here?

If you’re not sure, type you company name followed by “sucks” into Google and see what comes out.

Get in touch if you’d like to talk

Healthcare, brilliant basics, listening, managing, measurement | No Comments

measurement, netpromoter | No Comments

You may need to be more of a management artist than management scientist to get somewhere as Customer Chief Officer in your business and make things Fast+Simple. At least judging by reactions of many CCOs this week.

At our Executive Breakfast seminar we had some fabulous discussions about what practical people are doing to “stop doing dumb things to customers and people”. Hosted with Darren Cornish of Norwich Union, we had a great time with liked minded people who passionately believe this a mission worth fighting for! Though I’m not sure about the Canon&Ball analogy, Darren… rock on Tommy

“Proving the $ value of what you believe in, steering the ship by numbers, swamping the operations with metrics which are not actionable – none of it necessarily changes anything as far as the customer is concerned” said Peter Massey, Managing Director of Budd. Whoops, thats me quoted in a press release. I could also say that some people just dont care enough about the detail of what happens to customers - they accept poor delivery and poor service, poor management. They substitute training with numbers, personal attention with reports. They just don’t spend enough time at the coal face, or getting the right information to them every day. Chief customer officers are different. They share a mad passion for all these things - they are not prepared to sit back and do nothing, to say nothing. As my colleague Jonathan says “what’s the opposite of honesty?” No its not dishonesty, its silence!”

Some of the practical learnings shared this week were:

• There’s too much emphasis on putting in complicated metrics and measurement, compared to the effort going into “moving the dial” and actually getting things done that change the working and customer experiences people have. The science of managing interactions seems to have taken over from using human skills of motivation and common sense
• Resistance to change across the organisation shouldn’t be seen just as not “getting it”. Often people have been poorly equipped, by their experience so far, to deal with a customer focused world. They need support and coaching - in the boardroom, particularly the middle ranks, not just the front line
• Stop wasting customers’ time with surveys and concentrate on getting their up to the minute, actionable feedback to the people who deliver sales and service at the front line. By the time most feedback gets collected and analysed, it has aged. It lacks meaning to the people who could do anything about it. To people whose behaviour must change as part of their coaching.
• Yes complaints get fixed, but removing systemic problems and changing people’s behaviours is really the focus if you want to “move the dial”.
• Business cases never convince non-believers in management, so stop doing them. It’s by winning hearts and minds of senior people that things change. If they dont believe prima facie cases then how will a logical business case do that. Its a smoke screen. It still wont get believed, said many people.
• “Bringing the customer experience message to the marketeers and financiers is a challenge; it’s about empathy and understanding how the customer thinks – not just about hard measures”, commented one participant.
• “We need more techniques that will help to win the hearts and minds of senior managers. Delivering a good customer experience is not just about numbers in the end”, concluded another participant.
• “If I could only do one thing again, it would be to concentrate on feedback that changes behaviour. This is where we move the dial, where we change the experience”
• We dont think enough about the positive emotional states of the customer and what we have to do to create them
• “Getting the board to accept that their customers’ experience is as important to the company as understanding the financials is key to driving action across the company”, said another champion.

Our 2007 annual Fast+Simple research is going to look further into this last point and the evidence for investments into customer initiatives. If you want to take part talk to marion.howard-healy@budd.uk.com

We agreed we need more cross industry sharing at senior level and so we’ve formed a group, like our US and Australian CCO groups, to meet again in May. By invitation only, so contact us if you think you are a CCO, whatever type of artist you are!

CCO, measurement, seminar | No Comments