Service design How-to Series #10 service design measures
Systemic measures are an element of any systemic design, especially as we know that measures drive behaviours of the managers and staff. This case study describes a team developing measures for a transactional service.
This article describes the measures of a transactional complicated service. If you're looking for measuring in a complex service, you might wish to go Measures for Complex Service Design
TRANSACTIONAL SERVICE MEASURES
Measurement and service design go hand in hand. But, for many of us, the word 'measures' harks back to graphs and numbers. It speaks of a pile of charts arriving on a managers desk, for them to review and assign blame. What we are going to describe here is a very different approach.
This approach uses systems thinking. Looking at the service from end to end, and outside-in, the measures that we can create are different to those that there created by a Command & Control organisation design. This is because the command & control paradigm relate measures that focuses on control and data, and internal departmental efficiency. Measures are almost always used to monitor staff and activity.
So, what are alternative measures? They are those that measure of the performance of the WHOLE service and indicate what is going on in the wider system. As a part of the definition of person-centred they begin with the customer. They are a window for us to peek into the system.
Good Measures
Good measures do more, much more. Measures are part of the behavioural control that are used to prioritise and direct decisions. Command & control measures reinforce reductionism thinking. Good measures encourage systemic operational design. This means that they point everyone in the organisation to focus on the customer, that encourages working across departments, and they encourage managers to design cross-functional teams. They encourage a positive culture within the organisation. They align governance and auditing to focus on the right things. They encourage the design of the service to continue to become person-centred; their correct use starts the journey of learning and improvement. For many of us, they are the secret level that opens up a new way of thinking in the organisation.
We are trying to move away from:
It is old-fashioned performance management that keeps us in a world of humans as resources, as command-and-control takers, with rigid top-down planning, and solid prevention of curious and exploratively-minded cooperation. Corporate-Rebels
Definition; we are going to define what we mean by measures
Measurement and service design go hand in hand. But, for many of us, the word 'measures' harks back to graphs and numbers. It speaks of a pile of charts arriving on a managers desk, for them to review and assign blame. What we are going to describe here is a very different approach.
This approach uses systems thinking. Looking at the service from end to end, and outside-in, the measures that we can create are different to those that there created by a Command & Control organisation design. This is because the command & control paradigm relate measures that focuses on control and data, and internal departmental efficiency. Measures are almost always used to monitor staff and activity.
So, what are alternative measures? They are those that measure of the performance of the WHOLE service and indicate what is going on in the wider system. As a part of the definition of person-centred they begin with the customer. They are a window for us to peek into the system.
Good Measures
Good measures do more, much more. Measures are part of the behavioural control that are used to prioritise and direct decisions. Command & control measures reinforce reductionism thinking. Good measures encourage systemic operational design. This means that they point everyone in the organisation to focus on the customer, that encourages working across departments, and they encourage managers to design cross-functional teams. They encourage a positive culture within the organisation. They align governance and auditing to focus on the right things. They encourage the design of the service to continue to become person-centred; their correct use starts the journey of learning and improvement. For many of us, they are the secret level that opens up a new way of thinking in the organisation.
We are trying to move away from:
It is old-fashioned performance management that keeps us in a world of humans as resources, as command-and-control takers, with rigid top-down planning, and solid prevention of curious and exploratively-minded cooperation. Corporate-Rebels
Definition; we are going to define what we mean by measures
Service measures as: that which helps us to understand what is going on in the service,
and,
how well are we doing with respect to our purpose (our customers),
...so that we can improve
Where so we start? I like to start from the measurement guru's, Dave Wheeler, wise words; Ask ourselves what is the problem we are trying to solve?
Problem 1 - how well is our service performing?
Problem 2 - we want to know how well the new design compares to the old.
Problem 3 - we wish to alter the behaviours of how measures affect managers and staff.
In the description here, all three appear intermingled.
Managers
One of the tactics I use to engage and help managers to participate in a relevant way, is to ask them to participate in the defining and gathering of data, and knowledge, to compile the measures. They have to get connected to the work to undertake this. I ask them to work with the team, and to observe how the team use the measures to learn and improve. In the new design, one of the managers tasks is to identify and remove systemic barriers that get in the way of what the team need to do, and measures are used to identify those barriers and to track the changes.
Problem 1 - how well is our service performing?
Problem 2 - we want to know how well the new design compares to the old.
Problem 3 - we wish to alter the behaviours of how measures affect managers and staff.
In the description here, all three appear intermingled.
Managers
One of the tactics I use to engage and help managers to participate in a relevant way, is to ask them to participate in the defining and gathering of data, and knowledge, to compile the measures. They have to get connected to the work to undertake this. I ask them to work with the team, and to observe how the team use the measures to learn and improve. In the new design, one of the managers tasks is to identify and remove systemic barriers that get in the way of what the team need to do, and measures are used to identify those barriers and to track the changes.