WHICH LEADING INDICATOR IS THE BEST PREDICTOR OF PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT?
The correlation between leading and lagging indicators of performance is a fascinating one. Clearly it is also hugely significant given that the lagging indicators are effectively the business results.
I reflected on this recently albeit with a laser focus on the offshore oil and gas industry where I have advised on front line performance improvement for the last 10 years. Lagging indicators tend to be about safety, productivity, efficiency and cost. Leading indicators tend to be about team induction and recognition, safety management participation, efficiency and cost improvement contribution, planning, review, and closing the learning loop.
I trawled the data that we have collected in that time and realised it aligned with my intuition; whilst on all projects there has been clear evidence that improvement and innovation has benefited from a rigorous approach, the difference between the good and great projects has been project leadership adherence to the regular weekly lessons learned conference call.
On projects where there has been performance creep on this fundamental discipline, there has always been performance creep in other key areas as well. Operational reviews have typically slipped and planning rigour has been eroded too. Ultimately, on projects where lip service was paid to the necessity for a weekly lessons-learned-conference-call between the office and the front line, trouble has continued to interfere with progress, and results have been inconsistent.
It is arguably the less tangible benefits of the weekly learning conference call that have the greatest impact and these benefits are therefore most significantly missed when this discipline is dismissed. I am talking here about leadership cohesion, collaboration, camaraderie, mutual respect and a sense of fun – soft elements that are hard to achieve – elements which emerge when stakeholders from different sides of the contract table go through the hard yards together, and become one team with one mission…
An investment in a declared improvement initiative as distinct from assuming that daily business as usual will naturally lead to improvement, is a declaration of intent, it is a signal to the project team that ordinary will not suffice. It is an investment in a project performance legacy. A project less ordinary and more extra-ordinary.
Weekly one hour lessons learned conference calls driven by the project leader convey the following key messages to the team:
- We do the right thing
- We do what we agreed and committed to do
- Learning is important for everyone at every level of the operation because we don’t know everything; in fact, we are all learning all the time
- Going into a repeat operation with a related lesson still open is unprofessional
- World class results are driven by a world class team which maintains the highest standards no matter what
The engine of performance improvement includes planning, review and closing the learning loop. The way these disciplines are applied may look different from one industry to the next, but they are fundamental in order to grow and learn. They require teamwork and communication, organisation and attention to detail. They require effort.
Our project data conclusively shows that there is a very clear correlation between team adherence to rigorous, professional, weekly lessons learned conference calls, and the slope of the improvement curve for the key measurables of safety, time and cost.
Capture, discuss, close and implement lessons learned for next time improvement and you will raise the performance bar – guaranteed.
