In the real world there is never enough time to do everything. That is why urgent items take priority. In organisations where management firefighting is "institutionalised" there may be little time to do anything else.

 What can be done to break out of the cycle of failure and how do those with industry leading performance manage to avoid the siren call of reactive management?

 The Scope of Performance Management

In award winning organisations, the scope of performance management aligns strategic top down goals with bottom up front line deliver of improved performance.

  

 This is designed to put responsibility for the solution close to the problem by allocating resources to three categories of problem/improvement are described below.

 Operational Problems and Improvements

 "Normal conditions" occur when a process is in control, experienced operators and engineers will generally be able to spot when a process deviates from normal conditions. Industry leading organisations use visual management and flow techniques to provide early warning of deviation from normal conditions so that problems are spotted early. 

 

The countermeasures to problems which impact on normal conditions are usually low cost or even no cost operaitonal improvements such as procedure development/training, simple problem prevention techniques or setting standard for activities such as cleaning or asset care.  The development of these solutions is best carried out (with support) by the front line teams.

 Technical problems and Improvements

 With complex problems involving multiple factors there can be a need for in depth investigation and analysis to evaluate solutions and develop a preferred option. Technical or Support problems and improvements usually require the creation of a cross functional project team.

 Support problems and improvements

Where the problem lies with underpinning systems and processes used by more than one department, there is generally a need for the involvement of cross functional teams. This may also require specialist support.

Making CI a Part of Daily Management

The hub of performance management is the daily management process (see below) which also provides the vehicle for developing management capability to add the value that only they can add and remove barriers to operational value added.