Management and professional development

Tactical and adaptive management techniques

Sometimes overly managing a person can do more damage to an organisation than under managing staff.

This has been proven in numerous studies and of these probably the most famous is the Harvard Business School (HBS) analysis of assembly-line workers in southern China.

This company which shall remain nameless, had built up a huge business and was the second largest in the world. It also had instituted a monitoring process that oversaw every aspect of the company with specific reference to how employees could be measured and watched.

Each production line could be seen in total by managers from a single point, so that if workers slackened off or changed a simple process like grabbing a battery from the left instead of the right, a manager would be alerted. Everything was measured and real-time information was used consciously.

The workers were virtually automatrons, they followed processes laid out in detail and were not allowed to deviate from these processes.

The study by Ethan S. Bernstein of HBS found that when management looked the other way, workers shared ideas about how to speed up or improve their specific tasks.

Increasing productivity

In fact, the Bernstein study showed that when parts of the production line became invisible to the managers, productivity climbed by up to 15 percent.

The HBS research has been carried out for many years and in a sample of over 20 000 workers in various jobs, it found that management tends to focus on a single performance number but there are really TWO that are vital to increase productivity.

Initially its tactical performance or making sure that your government department sticks to strategy.As we know, this drives consistent responses, staff know the rules, and performance is easy to gauge.

The second is called adaptive performance and is really the divergence from the core strategy. Now in government this sounds counter-intuitive, but think about the examples we're going to describe.

When the world is full of volatility and uncertainty, strategy needs to change rapidly.

As the HBS finding stated: “Adaptive performance manifests as creativity, problem solving, grit, innovation and citizenship”.

Adapting in a changing environment

Public sector management techniques need to reflect the changing environment and find a way to deal effectively with volatility.The best managers make things work despite a shortage of resources because they deal creatively with the challenge.The worst sit back and complain to their colleagues about how bad things are because “there's no money” and then leave work early to go to the local bar.

So think about tactical performance during your appraisals, and how well your staff understand the basics, the strategy. Then apply solutions that your staff understands that change something and make it easier and quicker to apply while still conforming to all the necessary documentation and laws.

This is far more true of executives and senior public sector managers

than their staff, because they are in a leadership position. People mimic bad behaviour or laziness, incompetence and carelessness. So the idea is not to throw out consistency in favour of bad practices, merely to change bad practices to improve consistency.

The research also showed a number of other really interesting results based on the actions of managers. For example, if employees were productive, they received weekly bonuses based on their performance targets. But these could backfire. In one instance it was based on the number of people phoned for assistance. However the test was not conducted to show how HAPPY the customers were, merely the numbers that were contacted.

You can imagine how poorly the customer felt about the government department concerned if the person tasked with helping the client was tested merely on a pure metric like a number and not a satisfaction quotient.

So this test then eliminated the pure metric and the workers felt less like pen-pushing robots and more like human beings.

They began to treat their clients, the citizen, like human beings too.The staff members who used adaptive performance by changing daily regimen slightly, having their work potential reviewed creatively, or their ethical behaviour rewarded, increased productivity significantly.

The case study involved the following changes:

1. Ending the practice of just answering calls in order and gave them a spreadsheet of customers. This increased a sense of purpose.

2. Renaming scripts from 'mandatory manuals' to 'useful guides' which meant staff could alter processes based on lateral thinking.

3. Rebuilding performance metrics to track impact not pure numbers.

4. Eliminating pay-for-performance and gave everyone a fair salary equal to their average earnings over the preceding quarter.

Now clearly in government we can't really produce the third as a creative management technique. But we can use the idea of a consistent positive trend.

Performance adaption included: 1.Weekly problem-solving meetings were implemented to share better ideas.

2.Guest experts from other parts of the business visited and spoke about their learning.

3.Groups or teams would work with managers to resolve unexpected problems quickly and the risk manager sat with the teams instead of riding solo.

4.Team leaders were shown how to develop their staff skills instead of focusing on their deficiencies.

So to become a more effective public sector manager here are some techniques to improve

a. Identify where you should institute either a tactical or adaptive performance.

Sometimes it's not possible to allow adaptive performance, but you need to know where it is possible. Have a meeting with staff and find out what they think will improve productivity.

b. Don’t fixate on the metrics. While metrics like our key performance areas cannot be changed, what we can do is use numbers to allow people to self-correct.

Understand the conditions that underlie poor performance and focus on changing these. Don't weaponise numbers, linking them to high-stakes bonuses, rather create learning goals within the period under review for performance appraisals.This means people can self-correct.

Set learning goals.

Often members of our staff don't meet our expectations, but instead of trying to force them to catch up with everyone else, set learning goals and then track these more closely. Ask the person who's struggling to think of a number of ways to alter their processes for improved performance.