An Excellence Agenda Conceptual Model

In a discussion with a colleague recently, I started sketching a conceptual model of An Excellence Agenda.  I decided to turn it into a proper slide that can be shared in presentations.  So here it is.

An Excellence Agenda is a high level umbrella that articulates an outcome oriented mandate that describes the enduring status that an organization wishes to maintain.  This approach allows for the inclusion of high order outcomes, guiding principles and values, and the ability to link the mandate of an organization to an implementation and performance framework.

There are two sub-agendas:  the Sustaining Agenda and the Change Agenda.  The implementation of these agendas is guided by the Strategic Plan, which provides the linkage between the goals and implementation priorities of the two parallel agendas.  The Strategic Plan articulates clear goals and objectives and is time based.

The Sustaining Agenda represents the "meat and potatoes" business of any organization or company.  These are the activities that deliver the day to day outputs that contribute to the ongoing development of the Excellence Agenda.  The Sustaining Agenda is guided by the Mission, the key executive role is management, and there are specific business/operational plans that management uses to monitor progress.

The Change Agenda represents the initiatives that are required to move the organization forward.  The Change Agenda is guided by the Vision, the key executive role is a leadership role, and there are project plans that management uses to monitor progress.

The foundational base is the Performance Measurement Framework or Strategy that gathers the data, and does the analysis to tell the performance story of all three Agendas and the progress on the Strategic Plan. The PMF is the glue that binds the whole process together.

What makes the Excellence Agenda different from a Strategic Plan is that the Excellence Agenda provides a rigour in the identification of the enduring outcomes that an organization is mandated to contributes to.  This is bedrock.  The Strategic Plan will be updated over time.  Activities and outputs in the Sustaining Agenda and the Change Agenda will undergo regular updates but will always contribute to the Outcomes in the Excellence Agenda.

The Excellence Agenda, with the Performance Measurement Framework are the enduring pieces of the "sandwich".  The filler of the Sustaining and Change Agendas can be modified to fit the menu - but the bread is always the same!

Performance Measurement and Management for Government Conference

I just spent Tuesday and Wednesday this week at the Performance Measurement and Management for Government Conference.  The conference was organized by ALI Conferences.  I have never been to one of ALI's conferences before, but was impressed.  As a speaker, we had great facilities, the technology worked and the participation level from the group was extraordinary.  We had about 45 in total at the conference, and because of the size the conference turned more into a workshop than a series of presentations.  The sessions were informal, interactive and really great.  Over the two days I attended, you could see the participants take in the information and start to apply it to their own situations.

From the municipal space there were attendees from four municipalities.  I will post the presentation from City of Brockville on my website here: Clients and Resources.  In talking with the organizers, there is an interest in the possibility of doing a Performance Measurement for Local Government conference.  I will keep you updated!

Be the Excellence You Want to See

“We must become the change we want to see.”  Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi's quote, above, reminds us that if we want to see change in the world, that we need to demonstrate or be an example of the change we want to experience.  If we wish to get more love, we need to give more love.  If we wish to see more prosperity, we need to promote prosperity.  

In the same way, if we wish to experience excellence in the world around us, we need to demonstrate and promote excellence in our own lives.  In my own life, there are areas that are more excellent and areas that are less excellent.   My desk is a case in point.  One of the joys of a messy desk is all the great discoveries I make!   There are many areas in my life where I have an ongoing excellence journey.  Some areas in life are just more excellent than others.  That means I can have different excellence targets for different aspects of my excellence agenda.  It gives me the freedom to accept that there are areas of growth and development, and areas of high functionality.

As you start this week, what are the areas where you have natural excellence?  How will you share that with the world?  Are there areas of clean-ups where you can continue to demonstrate a willingness to promote excellence, at a lower target level?  What is your excellence agenda for this week?

Upcoming Events

I will be speaking on performance measurement at the Performance Measurement  and Management for Government Programs event being held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada next week.  I am co-presenting with Dave Paul from the City of Brockville on work we did to develop a comprehensive performance measurement framework for the City's Strategic Plan.  More information can be found here: Performance Measurement and Management for Government

I will also be doing a presentation for the Brockville Chamber of Commerce on The New Key Success Factors on November 24th.  When I get the details, I will post a link.

On Steve Jobs

The passing of Steve Jobs gives us all a moment to reflect on the extraordinary genius and influence he had on our world.  I first purchased a Macintosh computer in the late 1980's to do graphics for the marketing firm I was running at the time.  We went through several versions and in 1994, I brought one home, put it on a table, plugged it in and left it.  By the time I came home the next day, my ten year old son had it all figured all out and could literally make it sing.  My children use only Apple products.

I think the key to Steve Jobs genius can be summed up in four words: the stuff just worked.

Apple products move you away from needing to understand the technology - to getting stuff done. You move from process to outcome without interference from the technology.

A couple of Christmases ago I was given the book Inside Steve's Brain.  It was a fascinating exploration of how Steve Jobs created an innovation culture at Apple. Dozens of prototypes were developed and discussed and reviewed in great detail.  Then more prototypes were created until a consensus was reached on function, form and ease of use.  The user interfaces that Apple pioneered have resulted in devices that give us access to the stuff we want quickly and easily. Steve Jobs obsessed over how the product was packaged so that the consumer had a major Wow factor when they open the box.

The genius of Steve Jobs was understanding, before we realized it, what we wanted and creating the technology and devices to give us that.  One of the conclusions of the book was that Jobs has successfully transferred the innovation culture and process to Apple and that it will continue long into the future, even without him.

Jobs recognized the value of the experience.  That dedication to the customer's perspective resulted in raving fans willing to pay a premium for the products and the lifestyle he created.

His excellence approach is an inspiration to all of us.

Managing the Gap

"Ordinary people are capable of acommplishing extraordinary things."  

Barack Obama

After reviewing the concepts of An Excellence Agenda with one of my clients, she said;  "Francis, this is all great, but we are not excellent."  What my wonderful client was missing was the concept of The Gap.   The Gap is one of the basic tools for managing An Excellence Agenda.

If you have ever been frustrated, anxious, worried, angry or upset, it is probably because you are experiencing a Gap in your life.  The Gap is the difference between your expectations and your performance.  The greater the gap between your expectations and performance, the higher the level of frustration, anxiety etc.  Motivation comes when the Gap is very small - we then feel that with some additional effort, we can meet our expectations, and our performance and expectations will be aligned.

Gaps are built into our system as human beings.  We cannot get rid of the gaps, we can only manage them.   In managing An Excellence Agenda, we need to manage the gaps between our expectation:  what we believe Excellence is and the performance we see in front of us.  

There are three ways to manage the gap:

• lower our expectations
• raise the level of performance
• let go of our expectations - and work with the performance only

Lowering our expectations

  

This is often called compromise or making do, which many people resist.  There is, however, another side to this.  In a series of interviews with business leaders, virtually every business leader felt that that they were above average in abilities, decision making and accomplishments.  Our natural self regard puts us in a high achievement category.  We are, each of us, legends in our own minds.  The problem is that it isn't true, all of us are excellent in a several areas, average in others and downright dangerous in others.  Don't ask me to do brain surgery !  

One of the key ways we frustrate people as colleagues, managers and leaders, is that we believe that our personal performance is close to 100%, and we expect those around us to be at a similar level.  After all, if we can do it, so can they.  Our actual performance is actually probably closer to 80 - 90%. If we lower our personal expectation to 85% and set our acceptable performance standards at 75% we will see a huge positive impact on both ourselves and those in communities of excellence around us.  One of the keys to promoting environments in which excellence can happen is to lower our expectation levels slightly, and then celebrate like heck when those around us perform at levels that are more average.  

The result of the positive feedback is that those communities of excellence will start to perform at higher and higher levels and the accomplishment cycle goes through the roof.  

It's worth a try.

Raising performance

See note above.

Eliminating Expectations

There is another way to build excellence capacity.  That is to let go of expectations.  In Eastern Philosophy, this is seen as a key way to achieve a sense of peace and accomplishment.  By letting go of expectations, you eliminate the Gap and can free yourself up to enjoy what you are doing right now - today's current performance.  In this way you give yourself permission to be as excellent today as you can be.  Some days are really high performance days, other days are less high performance days.  The key is to let go and let excellence emerge. 

If we truly believe that everyone in our COEs, comes to the table desiring to be excellent, then we can let go and let each of them be excellent.  Where performance is suffering, then we need to understand the gap in the performance (resources, capacity, expectations, other blocks) and either accept them, or eliminate them.  Sometimes our expectations cannot be fulfilled because the environment just will not allow it.  Letting go is the only solution.

I decided several years ago that I no longer have problems in my life - only Gaps.  What gaps are you experiencing today?  Are you willing to lower your expectation?  Can you enhance performance?  What would happen if you lived in the moment and let the expectation go?

In managing An Excellence Agenda if we look at managing the Gaps, we get to let people around us be excellent in their own way.  The result is enhanced Communities of Excellence and unbelievable performance.

Caelan's Story

This week's Excellence Agenda story comes from Caelan, one of our two whippets.  In an earlier post I suggested that Mission is the foundation of the Sustaining Agenda.  This is a story about mission and perseverance, and one dog's sustaining agenda.

Whippets are born with a mission:  catch the bunny.  They are called sighthounds because if something moves - they are attracted to it and have the acceleration and speed to catch it.  The "job" (sustaining agenda) of a whippet was to catch small game for the pot.    A whippet friend of mine tells the story of one of his original females who, riddled with cancer, was still catching squirrels in the last week of her life.  The mission lives on to the end.

We got Caelan because we were looking for a small sized sighthound.  What we did not realize is that what we got was an elite athlete.  As she approached a year old, we began to see her muscles develop and how quick she was.  We got invited to a race practice, to help train her for straight racing and realized this was her natural element. (Whippets race only for fun and the straight races are 200 yards in distance.  No betting and just fun prizes.)  Caelan loves to race - this is pure pleasure for her.  Over the past few years it has been a thrill to watch her develop and she has won her share of events and has earned three Certifications.

Caelan is now seven and a half years old and the youngsters are now much faster than her.  She won't be winning any more races, and I wondered if the competitive spirit was still there. This past weekend we attended a practice and it was a lesson in the value of an Excellence Agenda.  Caelan did three runs and it was like watching three years drop from her age.  Caelan was totally into her game.

An Excellence Agenda is not just for people, it is part of evolution and nature.  Caelan has an Excellence Agenda based on her natural athletic ability.  The ability to run at 35 miles per hour and to have total focus on her mission of catching the lure is her "job".  The fact that she will not win races against the younger dogs does not diminish her commitment to her agenda.  The ability to show up for the game and deliver her best effort is what counts. It is part of who she is as a whippet - her true being.

How often have we given up on our Excellence Agenda because we felt we could not compete?  How often have we not gotten into the game and lost the chance to be a part of something bigger because we could not be the "winner"? How often have we excluded others from expressing their Excellence Agenda because they would not be a "winner"?  By building on our community members individual excellence and abilities, we are building a community of excellence where everyone's contribution counts.

An Excellence Agenda is about being in the game.  It is about living our personal Vision and our Mission.  It is about contributing to communities of excellence, where every individual's abilities counts, that makes the world a better place.

Caelen was born with her mission; it is part of the breed, the encoded DNA of the dog.  Watching the new puppies at practice go after the lure, you can see the instinct coming into play.  This past weekend Caelan was living her mission, and living her Excellence Agenda.  And I learned a valuable lesson about showing up, being totally engaged and the value of contributing the best of your ability.

PS:  Whippets don't have owners, they have staff.

Seth Godin on The Forever Recession and the Coming Revolution

On his blog this morning Seth Godin posted this commentary on the Recession and the new world:

The Forever Recession

The concept of an Excellence Agenda and promoting/fostering Communities of Excellence, are part of the coming revolution.  Communities of Excellence can be the platform for "impromptu innovation and inspiration that involves connections between and among people."  And yes it is totally unlike factory work.  I believe that to succeed in this new world, an Excellence Agenda and fostering Communities of Excellence are vital.  The future is based on an ability to leverage you own personal excellence in environments that promotes creativity, innovation, experimentation and growth.  Computers, the Internet and software give us the tools that can leverage our creativity and distribute excellence in a real time world.  As Seth Godin suggests, this is a world of collaboration, not competition.  It is a world of multiple connections to different Communities of Excellence for different projects, gigs or creations.

Not a bad place to be at all.

Excellence vs. Perfection

I have been thinking a lot about this topic over the past few days.  I am not sure entirely what to say, just that it is important to say it. So here goes...

There is a profound difference between Excellence and Perfection. They are not the same things at all.

Excellence is an outcome.  We never achieve excellence, we contribute to it.  It is like healthy children or healthy food - we need to constantly strive to work towards healthy children or food.  Profitability, likewise is an outcome that we continue to work towards.

Philip Crosby in his book "Quality is Free", says that we do not have to be perfect to have zero defects.  What we have to do is meet the requirements.  Excellence can be defined as meeting or exceeding the requirements of your clients, customers, stakeholders or fans.  That is different than perfect.

Perfection is a target, a destination. Perfection is a how much. Perfect (the root of perfection) has two meanings.  One meaning of perfect is something without blemish.  As in "this rose is perfect".  This is the commonly accepted definition of perfect, but it leads us down a blind path of trying to achieve the impossible.  A study of Chaos theory or dynamic systems tells us that there is nothing in nature, including a rose that is without blemish.  Trying to achieve perfection can drive you nuts!

The second definition of perfect is that something has everything it needs to be what it needs to be.  When a baby is born with five toes on each foot and five fingers on each hand, we say it is perfect.  If we take this definition of perfect, we an see that many of our systems, organizations and businesses have everything they need to be what they need to be.  That does not mean they are without flaw or requiring development and improvement.  It does, however, give us space to be human, to listen, to be leaders and to respond to changing environments.

How do you know if you are Excellent?  You need to compare your actual results against the targets of the Performance Metrics in your Excellence Agenda. Then you need to validate your results with the people you serve.  Seth Godin suggests that if you have absolutely raving fans - then you know you have achieved some form of Excellence.

Excellence is a journey that we take.  Perfection, as in without blemish, takes us away from what is important.  Perfection, as in ensuring that we have everything we need to be what we are supposed to be - is a target we can all aim for.

An Excellence Agenda Fundamentals

An Excellence Agenda is based on the following fundamentals;

1. Excellence starts with individuals.  Every individual possesses unique talents and abilities that allow them to be excellent.  Every individual has a desire to matter to others because of those unique talents and abilities.  That results in a personal Excellence Agenda - an approach to how we are going to express our excellence and matter to the world.  However, each of us has areas of unexcellence and we therefore seek out other individuals who can balance us and give us excellence in all areas of our lives.   That leads to...
2. Communities of excellence.   A community is a group of people with an affinity or bond.  The affinity can be demographic, psychographic or utility based.   A demographic affinity could be a bond based on geographic location, family, professional interests, education, age, income etc.  A psychographic affinity is based on how we see ourselves and our self image.  We will associate with others who have a similar sense of attitudes, outlooks and values.  A utility based affinity or bond is when people create a community of a common sense of value delivered to the members.  A community of software users for instance may have a spectrum of demographics or psychographics, but they all share in the value delivered by the software.  Each of us belongs to a variety of communities of excellence, including our families, our workplaces, our clubs and even community and religious organizations. (For the balance of this posting we will look at communities of excellence within an organizational framework.  We will come back to individual Excellence Agendas in another post.)
3. Every community of excellence has an Excellence Agenda.  This excellence agenda sets out what the community aspirations are, and how it will strive to meet those aspirations.  At an organizational level the Excellence Agenda is often articulated in the Vision, Mission and Goals statements.  These represent the highest outcomes of the organization and managers work to develop a community of excellence that contribute to those outcomes.  Since Excellence is an outcome:  it is not something that is ever fully achieved.  You do not get to a place where you can say; "we have reached excellence, what's next!".  An Excellence Agenda is an ongoing journey and each agenda is unique to each organization.   
4. Every Excellence Agenda has two sub-agendas:  the Sustaining Agenda and the Change Agenda.  The Sustaining Agenda refers to the "meat and potatoes" of what a community does.  These are the day to day activities and outputs that contribute to the outcomes.  This is also known as "the work" that gets done.  The Sustaining Agenda is guided by the Mission of the organization.  The Change Agenda refers to the activities and outputs that will enhance An Excellence Agenda and take the organization to a higher level of excellence.  The Excellence Agenda is guided by the Vision.  The Change Agenda is typically a series of projects that could be related to infrastructure, building new knowledge, research and development, new product launches, new marketing initiatives etc.  The Change Agenda will eventually become the Sustainability Agenda as the Change gets embedded into every day operations.  (Thanks to John Harrison and BMB Consulting for the concept of Sustaining and Change Agendas)
5. So how do you know if your Excellence Agenda is working?  For that you need a Performance Measurement Framework (PMF).  The PMF is a tool that allows you to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) that give you feedback on your progress in contributing to the outcomes, including Excellence, the organization desires.  There can be KPI's for both the Sustaining and the Change Agendas.  In working with PMF's and KPI's for a number of years, the key lessons learned are: what gets measured gets done, gets alignment and gets funded.  An Excellence Agenda without a PMF is only marketing.  An Excellence Agenda with an active PMF is an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. 
6. But we are not Excellent everywhere or consistently.  We need to be able to manage an Excellence Agenda. Managing an Excellence Agenda means managing the Gaps.  The Gaps are the areas where reality and expectations do not meet.  One of the paradoxes of managing an Excellence Agenda, is that we will always have Excellence gaps.  It is part of the journey.  As discussed above, we never actually achieve Excellence - we contribute to it.  We will discuss managing gaps in greater detail in a future posting.  
7. The role of Executives and Managers is to create environments in which an Excellence Agenda can be delivered.  This includes financial excellence, product or service excellence, customer excellence etc.  An Excellence Agenda has multiple facets and dimensions.  An Excellence Agenda can include outcomes of profitability, environmental sustainability, service standards, the development of social, cultural or intellectual capital.  In short, an Excellence Agenda can be as broad or as narrow as you require.  What an Excellence Agenda does is focus attention on what is important - what the key success factors are to contribute to the aspirations of the organization.

Stay tuned, there is more to come on all of these ideas.