The Arizona Management System (AMS) is an intentional, results-driven approach for doing the work of state government so that every employee reflects on performance, reduces waste, and commits to continuous improvement with sustainable progress.

Operating within AMS, all agencies in the Governor’s cabinet submit monthly scorecards, conduct monthly business reviews, and report progress on agency breakthroughs. 

But what is a “breakthrough”?

Agency breakthroughs represent our most wanted improvements. According to the Government Transformation Office (GTO), which is helping the Governor’s Office deploy AMS in state agencies, all breakthroughs have the following characteristics:

• They align with and are represented by one or more performance measures in an agency’s strategic plan,

• They are expressed as metrics on an agency scorecard,

The annual statewide Employee Engagement Survey begins April 2, and Arizona state employees can once again take the opportunity to provide state leaders insight into how engaged we are in our work.

The Department of Administration has been doing the survey since 2014, and each year, the state has seen slow but steady improvement in the engagement ratio. The ratio is calculated by dividing the total number of “Strongly Agree” survey responses by the sum of “Disagree” and “Strongly Disagree” survey responses. Last year, the statewide engagement ratio was 2.6:1, a slight improvement over 2016 when we scored 2.3:1.

Top performing organizations typically average a ratio of 9.0:1, while average organizations have a ratio of 1.8:1, so our recent scores are encouraging. The news is even better among the agencies that have been fully deploying the Arizona Management System.

Workplace organization means more than keeping our office space tidy and clean. When done effectively, it is a powerful visual performance management tool that lends order, safety and standardization to work flow, which in turn helps reduce waste and lower costs.

A means to workplace organization is “5S,” a methodology popularized in 20th century manufacturing, particularly automotive mass production, to create a clean, organized and visually controlled work environment. Though industrial in origin, 5S methods are readily applicable in service-sector settings, including government agencies. Let’s describe each step and consider its value.

As noted in our previous newsletter, team huddles offer numerous benefits to employees and agencies alike. Chief among them may be the informed, two-way communication up and down the management chain that occurs when management can readily see and gauge staff performance, and employees know they will have their leaders’ support when problems surface.

Agencies deploying the full suite of Arizona Management System core elements are expected to have a defined structure for connecting the various tiers within the agency where team huddles occur. This tiered connectivity ensures that alignment and flow of information occurs seamlessly and continuously throughout the entire management chain, from front-line (Tier 1) teams up to the agency director, and ultimately, the governor. See image below.

Agencies deploying the full Arizona Management System (AMS) effectively use team huddles at all levels to drive performance, identify problems and continuously improve their business processes.

Team huddles are intentionally designed to be brief, structured check-ins conducted at a regularly scheduled time and interval (usually daily or weekly) to assess the team’s performance since the last meeting, surface problems, determine countermeasures, and plan the team’s work to be completed by the next meeting.

In this sense, huddles are the practical embodiment of AMS: our results-driven approach for doing the work of state government so that every employee, at every level, with discipline, reflects on how they did, finds the waste, and decides how to do better going forward with sustainable progress.

Visual process adherence (VPA) is a way to quickly see if the people doing the work are following standard work, which is defined as the documented, current one best way to perform a process. When done correctly, VPA should indicate if a given process flows
as expected by quickly and easily revealing when it’s not.

VPA assumes that standard work exists for a given process because without a standard, what are you adhering to? If the process is designed properly and standard work is followed, then positive and accurate outcomes should result. If not, the process needs to be improved.

The Arizona Management System (AMS) is an intentional, results-driven approach for doing the work of state government so that every employee, at every level, with discipline, reflects daily on how they did, finds the waste, and decides how to do better going forward with sustainable progress.

AMS, in theory, is really quite simple, involving just four key steps:
• We identify what we do – the core processes that most impact our agencies’missions and deliver customer value;
• We set targets and standards for doing this work well;
• We measure how we’re actually doing relative to the targets and standards; and
• Where our performance comes up short, we use disciplined problem solving to implement counter measures to get our performance back on track.

Standard work may be defined as the documented current one best way to perform a process. It is the foundation for the Plan-DoCheck-Act cycle of continuous improvement and ensures that we sustain our gains over time. Without a standard, teams have no way to know if they are backsliding. There can be no sustained improvement without adherence to standard work.

Agencies that are deploying the full Arizona Management System have been asked to use the following minimum core standards that the Government Transformation Office developed to guide them in creating their own standard work for creating standard work.

Step 1: Identify the core processes that require standard work. A team’s core processes are defined as the work that consumes most of their time and are most critical to a team’s customers.

Problem tracking and success tracking are vital visual management elements of the Arizona Management System. In agencies that are deploying the full AMS, it's expected that they have standard work for actively tracking problems and successes at every level of the organization.

Problem tracking is posted and actively used to collect and manage problems associated with a team's metrics, daily activities, internal and external customer feedback and cascading/ escalating issues. In turn, success tracking allows teams to see that problems are being solved, and this then feeds the agency's recognition and celebration of positive AMS behaviors.

In our efforts to radically transform the culture of state government as a continuously improving enterprise, uncovering problems and celebrating successes reinforce the consistent outcomes that result from having good default mindsets and habitual behaviors.