Final Reflections

I found this experience to be challenging and time intensive, yet it offered a great opportunity to experience what it would be like to be a performance consultant in the real world.  A few of the experiences/lessons I will take from this experience include, but are not limited to the following:

- Identifying the true client is key to this process.  If the client you're working with is unresponsive or unable to make necessary decisions, then they likely are not the true client.  The question I will ask myself in the future when attempting to identify the true client is; "Would this problem/business need keep this person up at night?"

-  Star performers are reliable and responsive data sources, but watch out for the average performers response rates.

- Educate and keep the client in the loop whenever possible.  They know more about the company than you, but also challenge some of their assumptions of what the cause of the current situation is.  Keeping them involved and engaged in the process will make it much more likely that they will buy in to the process and successfully manage the change when the engagement ends.

- The GAPS! map is a great organizer of logic, and should be used in addition as a conversation piece and feedback tool.

- Interviews take a long time, and having pre-work for the interviewees will help pull out richer information from the interviewee because they will have time to reflect on the questions prior to the interview.

- Group work is messy.  Having a project plan with important milestones documented from the beginning of the project will help keep everyone on top of what's going on.  Also, schedule meeting times in as far advance as possible.  Everyone is so busy, that if the group experiences a hiccup in the process, there is built in meeting time to address it instead of calling a meeting that group members scramble to attend. 

- Highlight group members' talents.

- The client should co-create the interventions and evaluation methods.

- Don't underestimate the amount of time and energy a project will take.  Overestimate if nothing else.

Although this project was only 5 weeks, albeit 5 intense weeks, in length, I gained a full experience that will help me greatly in my future career.  One day I will review this blog and compare what else I have learned about the performance consulting process.  Hopefully I will conclude that follwoing this course,  I had a good introduction and foundation to build upon .  Thank you!

Ups and Downs

As my group is reaching crunch time to complete our project with Wake Forest RL&H, there are elements of this project and the performance consulting process that we're attempting to facilitate that stand out as cool and not so cool.

 

The cool stuff:

• Almost every member of my group is completely reliable, hardworing and extremely competent.  How nice it is to divide work and know that we trust eachother to do a good job.  I've worked in many groups where this is not the case, and I end up picking up the slack for the slackers.
• 3 of my group members are data driven and have experience and know how to manipulate and measure the data we've collected.  This project is definitely DATA DRIVEN, and it is driving the actions and recommendations we make.  For example, from three different data sources (archival resident satisfaction surveys, star RA interviews, and average RA survey data) the performance gap became clear and convincing.  Our clients, because of the data driven reports we've provided them that points to these needs areas, have completely agreed with our logic and have had an A-Ha or two.
• I've been able to see how I fit into this group.  My skills and talents have definitely been highlighted, while many of my weaker areas, especially math, have been able to stay hidden.  I've enjoyed being the planner, the scheduler, the template maker, aka the tasky one, and my group seems to appreciate my efforts to keep us on track to complete an awesome project.
• My computer literacy and competency continues to grow as I'm challenged to create new things.  I'm becoming ever more comfortable with Excel, have first time experience with Survey Monkey, and I participated in my 1st Google + hangout .  We used Google+ at our last meeting with our clients, and it worked SO well.  What an awesome tool to use in future contacts with clients.

 

Not so cool stuff:

•  I felt underprepared for the last meeting we had with our clients.  I felt like we scrambled together for the hour prior to our meeting to get stuff in line to discuss with our clients.  It was a bad feeling.  I personally like to have everything in order the day prior.  The meeting went well, but we sent them the documents that were going to lead our discussion two minutes before our scheduled meeting time!  The clients had no time to review or think through our work.  I would like to build into my future professional practice pre-work as often as possible.  I feel it generates more reflection time which then leads to deeper and more meaningful discussions during meeting times and builds strategic action thereafter.

Follow the Map!

The GAPS! Map is where it's at!  Never before have I used a model that makes things as simple as the GAPS! map for getting my logic and actions in order.  My group is now working in box 3; identifying the "is".  The work we did in box 1 and 2 basically set us up beautifully for the work we are now doing.  It clicked for me when my group was guided in the right direction to build a performance model for the "should" performers prior to collecting data on the "is" performers.  We were going to collect data for both groups at the same time, but now understand that we need to see where the average performers are falling short on the behaviors/best practices that we identified in our performance model to identify the "is".  I truly hope that the GAPS! map doesn't lead my group astray for the remaining boxes, but with a little guidance, I doubt that will happen.

Our performance model that brings the work from box 1 and box 2 of the GAPS! map all together is below:

Wake Forest RA Performance Model:

Performance Result: What must be accomplished	Best Practices: How the result can be accomplished	Quality Criteria: How to know that result has been accomplished in an excellent manner
Build dynamic relationships between residents and RAs Definition: Going beyond the transactional part of a relationship to build peer relationships with clear boundaries.	Ensure that RAs actively establish connections with their residents in the first week. Establish open door policy for residents. Regularly develop creative programs to meet residents’ diverse interests and needs. Develop one-on-one relationships with residents.	RAs successfully complete a first week project. Increase in satisfactory resident feedback on accessibility on satisfaction survey. Increase in satisfactory resident feedback on programs on satisfaction survey. Increase in satisfactory resident feedback on accessibility question on satisfaction survey.

On a side note, one of my group members completed an interview of a star performer after we built our performance model, and I was so pleased to see that the interviewees behaviors/best practices completely complimented the performance model we had built two days before.  It was reassurance that we are doing this thing right!

Reflection Points

Point 1:  Interviewing is hard! 

This fact I discovered when we conducted peer-to-peer interview in class during week 2.  Having a sound interview guide will prove extremely helpful when conducting interviews for our group project.  I think having some type of interviewee response organizer would prove helpful too.  Just from being involved in interviews, I find it is a much richer source of data collection than a survey because you add in the human element that surveys are missing, and as a performance consultant this technique allows you to gather best practices and quality criteria in one attempt.  The more I practice the easier it will become to conduct such interviews.

Point 2:  I'm a failure, or is my system?

Wendy shared a quote from Thomas Gilbert, the founder of behavioral engineering, in week 2 that claims all deficiences in a system point to the management system.  Gilbert states "...and whatever the most immediate cause of the performance, I, as the manager, have no one to blame but myself.  The cause of the incompetence is my management" (Gilbert, 1978, pg. 76).  This statement really hit home with me because of my background as a teacher.  As a teacher you are assigned a group of students to educate within the existing school system.  If they do not perform, then it is the teacher's fault?  Yes.....and no. 

As a reflective educator working in a school for at-risk students, I have to constantly modify and individualize the "education" I provide my students.  I manage the educationally gifted, educationally lacking, engaged, apathetic, ever-present, chronically absent, and of course I have to manage behavior and lack of home training.  In my 10 years working with youth in the local school system, I feel that I am an effective and caring teacher, but do all my students perform to their highest ability?  The answer unfortunately is no.  Is this due to my incompetence in managing my environment, or is the larger bureaucratic system of management at fault?  This is an extremely tough question because there are factors external and internal to the organization that are setting some students up for failure, but I still am responsible for my students within this system.  Sigh.  I will wrestle with this quote this upcoming school year because I am responsible for my students, and I need to keep wrestling with the system and management to help those in my environment find more success.

Week One: Wendy's Mantra

Wendy's mantra  of  "send a changed person back to an unchanged system, the system will win everytime" made a bigger impression on me during week one's  introductory session than it did in my OD class.  Perhaps it is because I'm thinking ahead to my future potential career as a consultant, or because I feel I'm a changed person because of what I've been studying over the last year in my program.  It is so frustrating to study and discuss what a functional organization should encompass, but then feel stagnant and powerless in a broken system.  The system is  winning.

This frustration guided me to pursue a different, although related, career path, and I think I finally understand why.  I went into education because I wanted to help society, and what better way than to help educate its youth, but in my ten years I have found that many parts of the system are broken.  Perhaps with my 10 successful years in the system to guide me, in combination with the lessons and theory I'm studying, I'll be able to make a larger impact on society as a whole by helping fix the education system in whatever small or large ways possible.  I'm definitely feeling it though!