KPIs are dead, long live KBIs!

Project succeeded?

The head of Logistics and Purchasing asked me to carry out some observations on the floor. Their new ERP system had been implemented about two years ago and he wanted to know where knowledge was still lacking so he could use the information as input for a training plan. So off I went to talk to some of the employees.

I asked an employee to tell me exactly what she did while she was working on something, a bit like TV-chef Jeroen Meus. "And now I change this printer to the correct printer ... This has been wrong in the system for a long time." She felt no regrets to report the issue and get it solved once and for all, instead she solved the problem herself on a daily basis. And she was certainly not the only one I noticed doing this during my observations.

The employees certainly knew what the final output should be, but they were less concerned about how it should be achieved, or even how efficiently it should be achieved. Is this the behaviour, and the consequent results you want to achieve as an organisation?

Do you manage your culture or does your culture manage you?

The implementation of a certain tool may bring about on-time and on-budget performance, but the tool must also be used efficiently once it has been implemented. While having great tools is important, the ultimate results rely heavily on the behaviour of both leaders and employees. An insight from the Shingo Framework explains it beautifully: ‘Only via ideal behaviour we can achieve ideal results.’ If we want to have a 100% safe environment, we want to see the staff talk to each other if they see unsafe behaviour.

Do you want to achieve a culture of continuous improvement? If you do, you should be looking for new items to be constantly placed on the improvement board, and you should be seeing tips and tricks being shared spontaneously. As leaders, we want to set a good example; and if a leader sees inefficient behaviour among his/her employees, he/she must speak to them about this in the correct manner. But how do we get the ideal behaviour that we want to see in our organisation?

The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening. - Professor Edgar Schein of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Key Behaviour Indicators: five steps in the right direction

Step 1: The very first question you must ask as a leader is: what culture do you want in your organisation?

The desired culture is a collection of all the desired behaviours you want to see, from the CEO to an operator.

Step 2: Translate the ideal behaviour so that it is relevant to the entire organisation.

Co-creation is a success factor: involve managers and employees in the decision-making process. Communicate about the kind of behaviour you expect within your organisation and work with the employees to determine how this ideal behaviour translates into their daily tasks within the department/team. People can only be expected to display this desired behaviour if they really understand what is expected from them.

Step 3: While measuring results, also measure the ideal behaviour that you want to see.

Performance is often measured using KPIs: for example, growth in market share, customer satisfaction, turnover, etc. We find it perfectly logical to implement the ideal process from a blueprint and to measure the performance using performance indicators. But do we also find it logical to do the same for the most basic element of our organisation, our culture?

Of course, it is very important to measure results and to monitor KPIs, but is it also important to monitor how our behaviour is evolving in the right direction? For example, it is possible that zero safety incidents occurred at a particular production site in the past year; but if no safety inspections have been carried out, or preventive measures taken to ensure safety (or even increase safety), this historical figure has no predictive value. It is certainly very interesting to know the extent of any savings that have been made as a result of the implementation of improvement ideas, but how many of these ideas were initiated by employees?

Besides the usual KPIs, we should also have KBIs - Key Behaviour Indicators. These should be used to see the extent to which the behaviour we want to see in the organisation is already present. An additional advantage of these indicators is that they often have a “leading” character: they are a predictor of future performance.

Step 4: Visualise these Key Behaviour Indicators as measurement points

As a result of our intention to visualise, our success rate increases from 4% to 40%. Visualising makes it clear what is important. Hang a white board with the measurement points on the wall in all departments; take the measurement points to existing platforms such as the daily start-up meeting or weekly/monthly performance meetings. The Key Behaviour Indicators are signposts showing the way to the ideal behaviour that will achieve the ideal results. So it is very important that they belong on your Balanced Scorecard.

Step 5: Go to the Gemba

A presence on the floor is important, but simply being present is not enough. Now the ideal behaviour is known, a Gemba walk no longer has to be an unstructured walk around. Look and observe whether you perceive the ideal behaviour, and try to find out whether there is a difference between the current behaviour and the desired behaviour. Your Gemba walk is actually a manifestation of your belief and subsequent behaviour: that value is created on the floor and that managers should spend a significant amount of their time walking around: observing, asking questions, appreciating.

Do you know what behaviour you want to see in your organisation already? Do your employees already know it? Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world". We can start with, "Know the change you want to see in your organisation".

The Shingo Model is not just another initiative, it's a new way of thinking.

Find out more here.