Part 2:
Switch the Story.
Setting Continuous Improvement targets is misguided. The concept of CI targets implies that these are different and distinct from real business outcomes, and therefore it pits these 2 areas against each other. People mistakenly believe that if they focus on their CI target, then the business outcomes will suffer, and vice versa. Business outcomes are things like customer service, quality, costs, sales. Front-line managers can be very protective of one or more parts of this. Generally, front-line managers who are good at what they do are more concerned with service and quality than they are with costs. And, like it or not, most Continuous Improvement targets are primarily financially driven.
So how to change the story on this?
How to performance manage someone if they’re hitting their business targets, but miss the CI target? It’s even worse when they don’t have any real business targets.
Continued in Part 3