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)

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If you know the answers to these four ques-tions, 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 prob-ably 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 main-tain control, he needed a system for keeping everybody in line. Over eons, as societies became increasingly complex, they required ever more sophisticated systems for tend-ing business, achieving common goals and solving problems. Thus was born the modern bureaucracy, complete with its complicated sets of rules, policies and procedures, and methods for holding people accountable for performance as well as compliance. Fortunately, humans are an evolving species capable of learning from experience and adapting to changing needs.

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.

Every organization has a culture, and it exists whether we want it to or not. Culture is the shared beliefs, values and practices that both define and distinguish an organization. Unplanned and left to evolve freely over time, organizational culture can become an odd mix of both good and bad habitual behaviors, the tangible evidence of culture.

But we can also create an intentional culture – one we can be proud of, which is exactly what we’re doing by deploying the Arizona Management System (AMS) in our agencies. It’s an intentional culture built upon continuous improvement.

Culture embodies the default mindsets and habitual behaviors that combine to deliver consistent outcomes. These outcomes can be good and bad, too, but either way, they result directly from the way people think about and do their work.

Because every state agency has a vital mission, it’s our responsibility as state employees to continuously improve our ability to deliver mission outcomes for the citizens we serve. We maximize this long-term mission benefit for Arizona by delivering value to customers, and by engaging employees who do the work to reflect daily on how they did, find where the waste occurred, and figure out how they can do better going forward. The Arizona Management System provides us the methods and tools to drive continuous improvement.

When we say “continuous improvement,” what we mean is everybody, every day, everywhere reflecting on how we did yesterday, finding where the waste occurred, and figuring out how we can do better going forward. Obviously, tracking performance is critical to our success. At its most basic level, the Arizona Management System is about:

As an Arizona state employee, how engaged are you in achieving your agency’s mission? It’s an important question to ask ourselves as we are deploying the Arizona Management System, and it’s also timely because the annual statewide Employee Engagement Survey is coming soon.

Because every state agency has a vital mission, it’s our responsibility as state employees to continuously improve our ability to deliver mission outcomes for the citizens we serve. We maximize this long-term mission benefit for Arizona by delivering value to customers, and by engaging employees who do the work to reflect daily on how they did, find where the waste occurred, and figure out how they can do better going forward. The Arizona Management System (AMS) provides us the methods and tools to accomplish both of these objectives.

Every Arizona state agency has a vital mission that gives urgency, direction and purpose to all that we do as state employees. Because our missions are vital and continue to expand with each passing year, we have a responsibility to get faster and better at doing the vital mission work that Arizona’s taxpaying investors expect and demand. Consider this our burning platform for continuous improvement.

People are the greatest resource any organization has, but too often agencies don’t realize the full potential of the people who work for them. Perhaps they don’t know about a staff member’s prior knowledge or experience, or they’ve assigned him or her to particular role and close off their input to the overall process.
 

This is not only a terrible way to treat people, but it can be the doom of an organization. For Arizona to truly transform and develop a real culture of continuous improvement, we must unleash the creative, problem solving potential of every employee. Everyone contributes to making sure our vital mission succeeds.