As public servants, state employees sometimes think of the “public” as the customer but in fact that is not usually the case because they don’t directly use our products or services. A better way to view the public is to see them as investors, i.e., taxpayers who demand a reasonable return on their investment in the form of tangible mission outcomes like good public schools, safe highways and a clean environment.

The way to maximize the long-term benefit for investors – the public, in our case – is by delivering value to the ultimate external end users of our products and services. This is true for any outwardly facing organization, be it a car company like Toyota, a non-profit like the Red Cross, or a state agency.

The Arizona Management System (AMS) is based in part on principles of Lean management. Fundamental to understanding Lean is knowing who our customer is.

If we’re not careful about correctly defining who the customer is, we can accidentally design waste into our processes because different roles lead to different values and different outcomes.

It’s possible to have more than one type of customer, and they can be both internal and external to your agency, and they may have competing interests. For this reason, it is best to think of our “customer” as the ultimate external end user of our product or service. This way we can distinguish our customer from, say, a colleague who depends on our widget as part of a shared value stream, or a “broker” who does not personally use our product but transfers it to someone who does.

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As previously discussed, choosing metrics that matter is critical to the successful deployment of the Arizona Management System (see https://ams.az.gov/about/ams-focus for details.) It is important to recognize that as Arizona state employees, we do in fact make “widgets” – i.e., our products and services – and the metrics we choose to visually track indicate our ongoing level of quality and service in delivering these products and services.

But we don’t make widgets just to make them. Our widgets’ inherent value exists solely through the eyes of the people who use them. These individuals are our customers.

The management system we are deploying is based in part on principles of Lean management. Lean aims to constantly optimize cost, quality and service by engaging and equipping employees to deliver value for our customers.

Choosing measures that matter should be important to us as state employees because the Arizona Management System is how we approach our work today and visual performance management is fundamental to AMS. As employees who work in a smaller, more cost-conscious government, we need AMS for the capacity it gives us to keep pace with our ever-increasing workload.

Choosing measures that matter helps us to:

• Align our tactical activities around our agency’s strategic direction
• See when we are performing as expected, both in terms of the targets we set and adhering to standards for doing the work
• Take action with disciplined problem solving to close gaps when performance doesn’t meet expectations
• Elevate problems to up-line management when we can’t resolve them ourselves

The following steps may be useful to teams in building visual performance management.

When it comes to choosing metrics that matter, a good place to start is by thinking carefully about:
 

• What do we make? (our widget)
• How do we make it? (our process)
• Who do we make it for? (our customer/enduser)
• Why do we make it? (our desired missionoutcomes)

If you know the answers to these four questions, you will likely have an easier time figuring out the right things to track for visual performance and continuous improvement. Indeed, these four questions form the basis of a successful experience using AMS at all levels of your agency’s operations.

Having good metrics enables teams to have more productive huddles to see how they are performing and discover problems and abnormality in their standard work flow. When you can see problems, you can fix them – using disciplined AMS problem solving tools and techniques – or elevate them to up-line management for help.

Visual performance management is one of three core components of the Arizona Management System (the others are problem solving and leader standard behaviors.) Good visual management allows us to:

• Quickly communicate standards and status so teams and management in near real time can see gaps between actual and expected performance as well as deviation from standard work.

• Direct management’s attention to areas that need support to drive improvement.

• Enhance learning in the workplace primarily by making problems visible so they can be solved with countermeasures.

Collectively, these characteristics of good visual management have the practical effect of getting employees involved, excited and engaged in improving their mission performance. This in turn makes their jobs more meaningful to them because they can see how they support the agency mission and contribute to overall success.

What exactly is a “management system,” and how does the Arizona Management System differ from all the ones that have come before it? The concept of a management system probably originated with cave men, once they figured out they needed to work together in order to survive. As the size of the tribe grew beyond the chief’s ability to personally maintain control, he needed a system for keeping everybody in line.

As agencies proceed in rolling out the Arizona Management System, don’t be surprised if you hear occasional objections like this:
“That Lean stuff may work in industry, but we’re government, not some factory that churns out cars or computers. We’re here to make a difference in people’s lives, and that’s way more important than a corporate bottom line.”

Public service is indeed a noble calling, but let’s not fool ourselves that because we work in government, we are somehow special and that lessons gleaned from private sector best practices can’t possibly apply to us. Such thinking actually prevents us from delivering vital mission outcomes for the people we serve and kills opportunities to improve.