I work for the U.S. Department of Labor on a project called "Simply
Better!" SB! has created a series of great products for improving
services, focusing on customers, understanding the "big picture" of an
organization, empowering front-line staff, and energizing organizations.
We work closely with our direct customers (employment and training
organizations) to make top-quality products, and have received great
feedback from our world and from quality professionals in the private
sector who have come acr oss our tools in the past year or two. The
examples in the products are employment-and-training based, but thee tools
are easily used by any type of organization.
The Self-Assessment System and Service by Design (both described below)
use a number of concepts found in learning organizations. Without
explicitely saying so, they are designed to stimulate system thinking,
come to a shared vision, and communicate thro ugh dialog. A number of the
activities were adapted from The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. Many
organizations have told us that they were revitalized by using these
products, which certainly makes us feel great!
All of these products can be downloaded from our web site at
www.simplybetter.org. They are in .pdf format, which can be read with an
Adobe Acrobat reader (also downloadable for free). For those of us who
say *nothing in life is free,* they have really been paid for by the
Department of Labor, and are under open copyright. We encourage you to
use them, copy them, give them as gifts, and very importantly, tell us
what you think about them.
We plan to create a new home page which will become a vibrant
communication hub for people in all types of organizations using our
tools. If anyone has suggestions for effective sites which support
communities of learners, please let me know.
***The Self-Assessment System (Second Edition)***
The Self-Assessment System (SAS) is an organizational self-assessment
based on the seven Baldrige criteria. The original SAS has been very
successful, and we have heard wonderful stories from our customers and
from quality professionals from the private sector. The Second Edition is
the result of extensive work with our customers and a re-write to reflect
the 1997 Baldrige criteria.
The SAS is a team-based tool. It is not done by consultants or top
management. Rather, it is done by the entire organization or, if it is
too large for full involvement, a true cross-section of the organization.
This leads to a deep understanding of ho w the organization functions and
how the work of different people and teams is part of the complex whole.
The SAS can be used in many ways to meet the needs of any organization.
The general process is seven dimension teams form, with members from a
cross-section of the organization and a cross-section of layers. Each
team goes through a process of answering a series of questions, scoring
the questions, and brainstorming strengths and opportunities. The teams
summarize their results and bring them back to the larger organization to
share what they learned and to decide how to tackle the opportunities for
im provement. A dimension team usually spends eight to fifteen hours,
possible over the course of several weeks, completing the dimension.
Many organizations have not been able to make such a large commitment of
time or energy; the SAS is flexible enough to meet their needs. Some have
chosen to do only one or two dimensions. Some have decided to spread the
process over many months. Some h ave used the questions as guidelines for
strategic planning. The bottom line is, the SAS is an exceptionally
flexible tool that can be adapted to many situations.
***Service by Design***
Service by Design is a strightforward 7-step process improvement tool,
designed for front-line staff in their interaction with customers.
Am SxD team, made up mostly of front-line staff who actually work with
customers on a regular basis, follows the SxD workbook. The workbook has
all of the steps and instructions for a basic SxD project, and the
Guidebook has more detailed instructions, e xamples, and more
sophisticated tools. The Workbook also serves as the permanent record of
the team*s work.
SxD has seven steps, built conveniently around two rhyme schemes:
The Opportunity: Select a cycle of service for improvement
Thought to be: Describe the quality attributes of the service as you
perceive them
Ought to be: Find out what customers want from the cycle of servie
Reality: Understand the gaps in your cycle of service between what you do
and what your customers need, expect and want
Generate: Create promising solutions for satisfying customers* needs,
expectations and wants
Evaluate: Test the most promising improvements, measure the results and
fine-tune
Avtivate: Implement the improvements
Front-line staff cannot be pulled away from their work very often.
Service by Design can be completed over a series of regular staff
meetings. Each of the steps can be done in an hour or so, with some work
in between. The Opportunity step is where the team chooses the project
(if they didn*t start out with a specific one in mind). In Thought to be
the team will describe the service from their perspective and identify
quality attributes if the service. In Ought to Be the staff will ask 24
customers to complete brief surveys. The Reality step is about finding
out what is really happening; guest shoppers will go through the service
to create an accurate picture. In Generate the team will use analytical
and creativity tools to discover root causes to p roblems and to develop
possible improvements. In Evaluate and Activate the team will test and
implement their solutions.
***Customer in Focus and Voice of the Customer***
Customers in Focus is a handy step-by-step guide to conducting customer
focus groups. It covers the uses of focus groups, designing the session,
selecting and recruiting customers, conducting the sessions, analyzing the
results, and making improvements b ased on your results.
Voice of the Customer is an overview of state-of-the-art customer feedback
technique, focusing on how to choose different types of tools, some of the
common mis-uses of customer feedback, and examples of customer surveys
from employment and training servi ce providers. The Second Edition (late
1997/early 1998) will include a workbook which can also be used by
front-line staff to get quick and powerful customer feedback.
Barak Rosenbloom
Troublemaker
Simply Better!/U.S. Department of Labor, Seattle
206-553-4543 x8030 rosenbloomb@doleta.gov
--BARAK ROSENBLOOM <ROSENBLOOMB@DOLETA.GOV>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>