Drawing on ancient Eastern philosophies that underpin both Chinese medicine and martial arts, Dr. Cort provides a simple, rational alternative to the  resource intensive, bureaucratic approaches that most organizations take to quality. Along the way he introduces timeless ideas that can transform individuals and organizations alike.

In a separate session Dr. Gary Cort answered questions from the audience on a broad spectrum of questions ranging from promoting innovation to attaining quality, from operational excellence to organizational dynamics. As in past years, Gary shared his pragmatic, contrarian views on achieving excellence without resorting to cumbersome bureaucratic systems and stifling organizational bureaucracies.

In this posting we will look at the PEAK measure from a much lower level to illustrate the details of how it is configured and used. To do this we will work through a real-world example that is common to every organization. The particular example we have chosen represents the most notoriously underperforming process found in business today. It is also the most pervasive business process. Many of us are forced to participate in this process multiple times per day. For some, it is the only process in which they are involved. This universally detested and vigorously vilified process is, of course, the business meeting.

To understand how truly ineffective this process is deemed to be, consider the responses to two questions posed to over 15,000 respondents drawn from all levels of more than 1,000 diverse enterprises of every size and description. Representing operations on six continents, these organizations covered spanned the full spectrum from for-profit and nonprofit companies, to government entities to nongovernmental organizations NGOs). We asked respondents from these organizations the following two questions:

1. What percentage of the meetings you attend as part of your professional duties provides value to you that is at least equal to the cost of the time you spent in the meeting?

2. Considering the same meetings as above, what percentage provides value to the company that is at least equal to the overall cost of the meeting?

The startling answer to both questions was the same – the median response: 0%! So clearly this is an activity that we would all benefit from understanding better, and the PEAK measure presents us with a perfect probe of the process. For the purpose of our example, we will consider a generic meeting process, but one with sufficient structure to be realistic.

For our generic meeting we will distinguish two types of participants: the meeting leader and the other required attendees. We call out these two categories of participants because each is likely to have unique responsibilities resulting in distinctly different criteria for computing the Participation and Fidelity component scores. The required attendees typically share responsibilities for performing the technical activities of the meeting. The meeting leader, on the other hand, has unique responsibilities associated with organizing, executing, and preserving the decisions and agreements of the meeting. Consequently, we use the following criteria for the meeting leader and meeting attendees, respectively:

Of course, one might create additional roles that would require criteria of their own. For example the leader role might be split into two separate roles (leader and scribe, for instance), splitting the criteria between the two. It would also be possible to create specialist roles for attendees. In this case each attendee role would share the existing criteria but would presumably have one or more criteria unique to the particular role.

Below is a sample spreadsheet used to compute the PEAK score for a meeting consisting of four people: Mary (the meeting leader) and attendees John, Denise, and James. Note that Mary has two roles (leader and participating attendee) so she is listed twice in the spreadsheet and scored separately against both the leader and attendee criteria.

Scoring should be done at the end of the process execution in the presence of (and with the participation of) the process participants. It is important that all participants be made aware of their impact of their performance in the process, and this should be done in the presence of the other participants. This approach will drive a very beneficial group dynamic: each participant will work harder to meet the meeting criteria so as not to let down the group in public.

That said, individual PEAK scores should not be shared with management and should not be used as input for employee-rating or compensation decisions. The surest way to ensure dishonest, dysfunctional behaviors that undermine the PEAK measure and the overall process is to use this information to punish the process participants. Deming railed about this effect for 50 years, so I will not further belabor this point. Suffice it to say that it is better to use individual scores for proactively coaching and mentoring participants to help them achieve better performance within the process.

Overall PEAK scores should be maintained for the process. A simple run chart can give you a great deal of insight into your process’ performance and whether things are getting better, getting worse or staying the same. For nonperforming processes (like the meeting above) you can use the individual scores to analyze the causes of the problem – often isolating particular fidelity or participation causes. But the biggest benefit of all occurs as process participants internalize the PEAK criteria and naturally incorporate them into their behaviors throughout the company.

In closing, we have attempted in this post to demonstrate the use of the PEAK measure at a nuts and bolts level on a nonperforming process that exists in virtually every enterprise. It has been our attention to provide sufficient detail that you can use this measure on meetings of your own, without the need for further modification. That said, there are many other, subtler, aspects of PEAK that simply cannot be addressed in a short posting such as this.

So if you would like to learn more about the PEAK measure, contact Exxeos today. Let us introduce you to our acclaimed PEAK training courses and hands-on PEAK workshops to unlock the hidden potential of your processes and empower your workforce.

First of all, our BREADTH. We are not wedded to a single method or flavor-of-the-month management theory. We know that the issues you face, day in and day out, are much more complex than that. So we look holistically at your systems, your approaches, and your operational context. We consider the resources at your disposal, including your people at all levels, and the culture they work in. Then, drawing on our extensive, real-world experience with a broad array of approaches, we collaborate with you to tailor an innovative, low-overhead solution specifically for your situation. We may draw on our years of success applying systems such as ISO 9000, ITIL, CMMI, Six Sigma, Lean, and Malcolm Baldrige, mixing and matching from these systems and a host of others. Or together we may abandon convention altogether.

Second, our EXPERIENCE. Dr. Gary Cort and Dr. Corinne Cort, Exxeos’ principals and senior consultants, are internationally recognized thought-leaders in the area of operational excellence. Each has broad and deep experience in transforming the effectiveness of real-world organizations and a proven track record of success across industries. Focused on practical approaches to improving bottom-line performance rather than implementing compliance-based systems, Gary and Corinne help organizations reinvent themselves within their own operational context, rather than just redefining them in terms of an ivory-tower quality model or management theory. Learn more about Gary and Corinne’s background and experience at:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/garycort and http://www.linkedin.com/in/corinnecort.

Our KNOWLEDGE sets us apart. Gary and Corinne are credentialed experts in numerous, diverse fields. From engineering best practices to human resources; business planning to quality systems; performance measurement to decision analysis; and in a broad array of related disciplines, they combine advanced theoretical knowledge with decades of successful application in companies like yours. Furthermore, Gary and Corinne are the authors of the revolutionary XForm (pronounced “transform”) Execution Model, a unified system that harmonizes formerly competing management systems into mutually supporting components comprising a high performance whole.

Our SIZE works for you. We are a boutique management-consulting firm. We are intensely focused on providing sterling, personalized service to a small group of select clients. When you work with Exxeos, you always work directly with the principals. We have no account executives, project managers, junior consultants, or associates to get between us and achieving your goals. We have no canned solutions to repackage or force-fit into your environment. And because our overhead is so low, we are not obsessed with generating countless consulting hours. Indeed our goal is to make you self sufficient — to get you to a sustainable solution as rapidly as possible and then to disengage.

Our PHILOSOPHY is grounded in business reality. At Exxeos we do not believe in conventional, compliance-based systems. We reject the notion that you can improve performance by adding overhead. We have no confidence that volumes of procedures, detailed process maps, or bureaucratic improvement methodologies will make you more competitive. Instead, we approach your performance challenges from the point of view of the global execution crisis: a complex web of identifiable organizational deficiencies, mostly self inflicted, that sap your company’s vitality and limit your performance to only a tiny fraction of its potential. Working collaboratively with you and your staff, we employ the XForm model to help you understand and eliminate the underlying causes of your execution deficit. As equal partners we craft practical, understandable, actionable strategies to propel your organization to the next level of performance — and the level after that.

Our APPROACH is not for the faint of heart. We accept only those clients who are genuinely committed to address the real, demonstrable problems that are holding them back. We shun superficial or formulaic solutions, and we are not proponents of any particular standard, model, or management theory. We understand that compliance-based systems will only increase your overhead, so we don’t include them in our solution space. We don’t believe in Silver Bullets and we don’t subscribe to New Age management theories that would have you wish or cuddle your organization to better performance. We believe that your performance challenges are uniquely yours. They are far too complex for simple, out-of-the-box solutions. As partners and guides, we will travel the road to excellence with you, but we won’t carry you. We will help you discover ways to unlock the vast, untapped potential of your organization, but you will have to turn the key. And we will strive to make you self-sufficient at your new level of performance in the shortest time possible, empowering you to disengage from us while sustaining and enhancing your new capabilities.

So if you are driven to lead your organization to the next level; if you seek to eclipse your competitors; if you want to do more, get more, and be more in every aspect of your operations; contact us today. Have a chat with Gary or Corinne, and let’s decide how a partnership with Exxeos Group can help you achieve your goals.

The group succeeded in completing the first draft of the proposed standard, which has now been circulated to the international community for comment. Subject to international approval, the standard is scheduled for publication as ISO 17582 in late 2012.