Re: How to combat ordinal ranking of employees

[jblumberg <activity@mweb.co.za>]

Yes Tony, this is one of those corporate beasts.

If the bosses need to know how much value we add, they need to understand
what we do and why we do it.
The central question is not how much value does one add, but identifying the
object we are trying
to add value to. Filling out forms for the IRS does not add value to the
customer,
but if we don't do them we get a whole lot of penalties. The issue is
understanding that
no-one performs non-value adding activities because they feel like it; they
perform activities
because bosses create systems that create the activities we do. If you find
yourself performing what seems to be
a silly activity, then change the system that creates it. Getting rid of
activities without changing the system
is futile. The system grows the activity back again. This is the essence of
profound cost management.

Now to some practical advice. What we did was this.

1.Submit your list under several categories.
2.Identify the customers (internal & external) that receive services or
outputs.
3.Identify services and outputs/products.
4.RANK THE IMPORTANCE OF CUSTOMERS AND THEIR PRODUCTS, THEN LINK EMPLOYEES
TO THESE.

This step 4 is the trick and it worked for us. There are of course a whole
lot of questions that go with it. How to rank
customers and products, but this I will save for later if you decide to go
this route. What you will find is that filing clerks
then rank alongside production managers because they serve different
customers but both efficiently and effectively.
Remember: efficiency = how well does she/he perform the job
effectiveness = if you stopped doing the job who would care.


regards
JEFF BLUMBERG
activity@mweb.co.za
Check out this site (still under construction) but very interesting
http://www.consultique.8m.com