Establishing measures and clear accountabilities is the second step of any Operational Excellence management cycle. Measures provide us the means to assess progress towards our goals/objectives, they help align the efforts of individuals or teams, and they serve as a basis for data driven decision making. Taking the time to define our measures and understanding how we contribute to them creates a sense of purpose, motivating individual or teams, and fosters accountability for results.
At the Department of Corrections (DOC), they are building quality assurance into every initiative they work towards. Operating under the W. E. Deming mantra, “what gets measured, gets managed” the Strategy and Planning team includes a QA/QC team in every project going through the LEAN lifecycle. This helps develop the structure to support accountability and provides the decision authority necessary to support those core LEAN teams. Team members have fully accepted this part of the process and now expect QA representatives on their initiatives.
The Office of Administration (OA) focuses on SMART goals to help initiative teams measure how they are hitting their project goals. Using Tableau, OA creates dashboards of initiative progress that allows executive leadership to make data driven decisions regarding agency operations and future goals. Not only do dashboards host information for reference, but they also allow for team transparency – meaning the initiative team is held accountable for the project progress that is showcased to leadership. OA provides support to initiative teams that need it and gives team members kudos for their hard work along the way.
Accountability is a willingness to accept responsibility or to account for ones’ actions. Unfortunately, the word accountability is often associated with punishment or negative consequences. By using measures to both celebrate our accomplishments or progress towards our goals and recognizing opportunities to improve, fosters a culture of accountability. Learn more about defining performance measures in the Show Me Excellence Yellow Belt. Once these ways of working are established, Agencies and their initiative teams can start making measured progress towards a better Missouri for its citizens and work force.
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